Lowering Our Voices, But Not Our Expectations

This Sunday afternoon is the Annual Holiday Parade here in The Rose of New England, where in years past we've had everything from short-sleeve shirts and temperatures in the Sixties to parkas and shivers as the winds have howled and the snow has fallen. Many people from beyond our city limits come and march while others just come for the enjoyment. It's a much anticipated event, and speaking of which, so is something else happening more immediately.

Tonight at 7:30 in City Hall, it's the organizational meeting of the elected-in-November Mayor and Norwich City Council. For Mayor Peter Nystrom and the incoming City Council, risks and rewards are high, as high as our expectations for all of them, while the margins for error may be reduced because of what’s come before the ladies and gentlemen we’ve chosen for this chapter of our story.

Much of what our elected leadership face beginning tonight is disturbingly familiar: underfunded and ageing infrastructure, to include roads and bridges in need of repair and public safety equipment in need of replacement; a grand list that grows arithmetically while municipal expenses rise geometrically and a persistent worry that a wary and weary population is long on anger and instant solutions and too short on patience and understanding.

This Mayor and City Council also face a unique, and unwelcome, challenge: almost immediately, in concert with the City Manager and Comptroller, they must develop and implement spending reductions for the current year’s budget reflecting additional decreases in state aid while also bracing for impact on the next budget, whose formulation is just beginning. There's really no one to look to for help this time, except to one another.

We talked during the election campaigns almost exclusively about economic development. We’ll expect those we elected to do more than talk about issues as varied as purchasing the Norwich Hospital Property; taking meaningful and measured action to put feet in the street of a mostly-moribund downtown; and deciding what to do with the failed condominium projects that squat at practically every gateway to the city like gargoyles warning off development partners (and doing an all-too-good job of it).

If you attend the swearing-in tonight in Council chambers, to borrow a suggestion from a former alderman, let's try to hold off on the 'swearing at' our new elected leaders. Instead, let’s promise to remember this Mayor and City Council are our neighbors whom we selected because they promised to do their best for our good, and given the opportunity that's exactly what they will do. We may not always agree with one another (it would be amazing if we did) but we can disagree and NOT be disagreeable.

Norwich needs every one of us and all the help we can give one another. Perhaps that means less stridency and more civility in our civic discourse with each other. More talking to, rather than at. New Beginnings, again and as always. See you in Council Chambers, tonight at 7:30.
-bill kenny