It was a blustery Thursday wasn't it, yesterday? It sure was around here. We had one of those days in Southeastern Connecticut where the thermometer says a number and you sort of wrinkle your nose and furrow your brow a little bit because you don't quite believe it. At least that's how I do it. The outside thermometer at the window where I feed the squirrels read close to 58 degrees, Fahrenheit, in the early afternoon but I noticed none of my guys were running around in sweater vests. They still had their full fur and later, as I was walking to my parked car to head home, the wind seemed to underscore, in a less than pleasant manner, that it may be late April but that doesn't mean much around here sometimes.
I went from a cold day outside, to a bleak one, of sorts inside, later in Norwich City Hall as much of the City Council sat down with the City Manager, his recommended 2009-2010 budget and many of the city's department heads so the aldermen could get first hand updates on what impact the proposed budgets would have on city services for employees of the city and on the citizens for whom the services are intended. I smile looking at the cover of the proposed budget with its two shots of beautiful, new public sector buildings, both in Norwich though neither has anything to do with the City of Norwich. I lost the dollar bill in the basement, but I'm looking for it here in the living room because the light is better.
The workshop was slated to be long and I felt for the Council members, who in November of 2007 were elated to be elected (or in one case, reelected) to office and were eager to embrace the challenges they knew they faced. The elation has long since faded and their first budget as a City Council, last year, working with their recent hire, the new City Manager, had been hard times in the land of plenty, with a lot of unhappiness, tempered by hopes that things could be looking up by the Spring of 2009. All of us, everywhere, know how that fairy tale turned out, right?
So last night I watched as sincere, well-meaning people who vowed to make positive changes and improvements when elected some eighteen months earlier sat across from sometimes decimated and beleaguered department heads and agency leaders and avoided eye contact while shifting uncertainly in their chairs as each of the latter, in turn, detailed dryly the depths of calamity and catastrophe they were attempting to manage as their 'fair share' of the next municipal budget.
I'm not trying to play 'can you top this?' with you and the budget your town, wherever it is, is struggling to put together. It's grim everywhere and last year's wan smile of hope for 'next year' has disappeared when looking from this year to what's ahead. The everlasting good time has run out and the dish has run away with the spoon. I sat through an overview of what's in store for those who go to the Otis Library, as just one example, and it's not pretty and it's no one's fault but it also seemingly cannot be averted nor avoided. The same cold and cutting wind is whistling through the American dream, lost and found, city to city and coast to coast. Spring needed to be here by now. "Broken idols, broken heads,People sleeping in broken beds."
-bill kenny
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