Jiminy Cricket was NOT elected to City Council

Tomorrow afternoon at 5:30 in room 335 of Norwich City Hall is the second iteration of the ongoing "review of suggestions received for the Norwich State Hospital Property as well as other items of interest for development." (as Mayor Lathrop's secretary phrased it in her note of 3 July to me). The first get-together was on 30 June and involved by my count less than two dozen of us, either in the front of the room drinking bottled water and offering very little advice, or sitting in the gallery scribbling away in our little black note books trying to understand why we weren't getting anywhere.

That meeting ran until eighteen minutes past seven. I've studied my notes carefully and I take careful and voluminous notes, and that meeting produced no consensus on a way ahead. Unless we had a meeting either before or after the meeting (something not unknown here in the Rose of New England). I found it amusing that at least two of those at the conference table had little placards identifying them as 'community activists' since I've watched them for many years, and I'd have never guessed that was what they were. Live and learn, I suppose.

But that's the problem. We don't do much of the former or any of the latter. Maybe just me, but tomorrow's meeting should have the members of the city council at the table, NOT watching the proceedings and offering comments as the meeting ends (and if that means 'we' need to repost the meeting to comply with State of CT guidance on open and public meetings, have at it-form should follow function). There was some murmurings at the June soiree about perhaps working on language 'for a referendum question for the Fall election', though I never understood as to what the ballot question(S) might be or how electorate answers, when they weren't in attendance for the discussion that created the need, would be anywhere near a good idea.

Norwich remains stuck in a 'do loop'. We all agree someone should do something, but we cannot agree who that someone should be and what that something might look like. A fanatic, Churchill once wrote, is someone who will not change the subject and cannot change his mind. What's the opposite of a fanatic, because that's who we are. We hold the same meeting over and over again (take a look at the Journal of the Norwich City Council for the last two years, or five years, or longer. Strike out the name of a particular street that is getting, or not getting, sewers, or the parcel being zoned commercial, or being prevented from being zoned commercial, and it's basically the same meeting. This summer's concern with the Norwich Police Department is last year's argument with the former City Manager, which was a variation of an earlier skirmish involving the budget for the Board of Education and before that, yet another variant of kabuki theater), we're firmly anchored in 'if we don't do anything, we can't do anything wrong.'

We don't, or won't, realize in life you cannot stand still-there's growth or death. We have enough grave markers for dreams that failed dotting our downtown, they're called abandoned buildings-far too many, but then again, I'm not from here. We are not victims of our time, but, rather, our own inability if not flat-out refusal to accept these times as different and to behave accordingly. We continue to manage our City as if Ike were coming for a visit next week with Mamie, so make sure the golf course is all pretty, and unless we open our eyes and see where we actually are, we will continue to take things as they come-which means they will keep coming at us. All of this 'when you wish upon a star' jazz, notwithstanding, Pinocchio didn't get to be a real boy because he really hoped it would happen.

For all those with whom I went to the polls last November in an effort to shift where I live into the Now, bad news, my friends: just voting for change doesn't make it so. There's a lot of heavy lifting yet to be done and while we've chosen good people to shape our city and, they, in turn, have great people to execute ideas, we're all failing to live large enough to rise up and move on. We need to pack Room 335 tomorrow afternoon (you can skip watching the Olympics for two hours and everything else is repeats, okay?) and listen to what those whom we've chosen to make decisions are receiving as counsel and insight and then make our feelings known. Nothing comes without a cost and right now we've got the market cornered on nothing.

We are all we can count on, and, actually, are all we can ever count on. Waiting for someone to come along, deus ex machina, will not happen. That dream is over and it's time to stop punching the snooze button and wake up. We have all the help we need with our own two hands at the end of our own arms. We have enough ideas to shame Edison and enough vision to give Madame Cleo a run for her money.
If not now, when? If not us, who? This is the time and we are the people. See you tomorrow at 5:30 in Room 335 at Norwich City Hall.
-bill kenny