This Friday evening we'll be lighting City Hall which ushers in the traditional start of the season around here (I'm hoping the Tourism office (whose link on the City's website is a non-starter) is selling the annual Christmas ornament at the lighting-my wife has one from every year the item has been offered and they are all beautiful, as is my wife (I'm never sure if she reads this, so hello Honey! just in case). For me and mine, the season really all gets started with the Winterfest parade (this year falling on the 67th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor). One year the parade was held in nearly-seventy degree weather and the following year, I think, it had to be rescheduled because of the blizzard. It's always something, I guess.
Meeting-wise, it's a light week because of Thanksgiving and the day after (what do you suppose the Pilgrims and the Native Americans did on the first Friday after the first Thanksgiving? There were no Black Fridays, no college football games on big screen TVs, just leftovers) but that doesn't mean there's not important work to be done.
Tonight at five, the Redevelopment Agency meets in Room 210 of City Hall. Neither the agenda nor the minutes of their previous meeting are available on line (only the latter, by CT public law needs to be), so we still have some work to do on full (and timely) disclosure. Maybe the City Manager's second informational meeting on obligations and requirements of the State's Freedom of Information Act will have attendees who take the message on board and act accordingly.
Also tonight at 6 in Room 335, the City Council holds an informational session on the next budget. Suspect for some in the front of the room, the session will confirm many of their concerns while for those of us in the cheap seats, this will be our first look a the challenges facing all of us as the next budget gets developed. We have a tendency (a little) too often to complain about the landings, so it behooves all of us to attempt to be present for the take-off and to see what our City Manager, his Department Heads and our Aldermen will see in terms of resources and demands for the next budget.
What a pity that the often talked about, but NEVER held, joint informational session with the Board of Education has disappeared. The city's budget is basically the Board's budget, with whatever is left over going for public safety and public works. It could have only benefited all of us to have had such a session, announced twice I believe and cancelled both times, actually held. Instead we get to have another fire sale on regrets and roads not taken.
Tuesday has the Harbor Management Commission meeting at five in Room 108. Here's their draft minutes of their October meeting though I have NO agenda (I smiled on page two, item e, about the characterization that a condominium 'project has gone bust'-Stay classy, San Diego). I'm struck by how two names I recognize are on the committee, but how a third person, recently and frequently in the news, with (I suspect) the largest and most successful of the businesses, isn't. And to think that I saw it on Norwich's Streets.
One of the local newspapers has a listing for a meeting at 6 PM at City Hall in Room 319 of what it calls the "Ethics Committee" though there's nothing on the Norwich Website, nor should there be as the Ethics Review Committee ceased to be after turning in its recommendations to the City Council on the evening of 16 March. Curiouser and curiouser ...
The Norwich Board of Education has their monthly meeting at Kelly Middle School at 6 PM. Their website is consistently not updated, so good luck with an agenda for tonight's meeting as the minutes of the 28 October meeting aren't even there. Computers and the schools (and a now-former teacher) were just in the news--talk about disturbing (the peace).
That's nearly it for this week except for a look ahead (okay a longer than normal look ahead):
Put it on the calendar now because it will get lost in the holiday crush, three weeks from today.
On December 15th at 6:30 (before the Council meeting at seven) there will be an informational session by the Norwich Semiseptcentennial Committee (that dot com designation sure seemed like a good idea when the LLC was created, didn't it?) who have a big job and recent headlines suggest fewer financial resources than previously announced.
I, for one, wish I could help more, but (and I don't know about you) I'm tapped out from helping General Motors, AIG and Goldman-Sachs. Poor GM has had to cut its fleet of seven private jets to just three, so all over it's a time when we shall scrimp and save. Perhaps Ebenezer will have a change of heart and take Tiny Tim fishing for a Christmas carp off the the dock at Howard T. Brown Park. I hear you can hook the really big ones over at the 'busted' condo project.
-bill kenny
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