Spoiled for Choice

Nearly all of our City Council and the City Manager attended a workshop Saturday morning, facilitated by Doug Relyea who has made a career from working with organizations, from multi-national to cottage industries and everything in between, to define their direction and map their progress on journeys to their destinations.

His workshop Saturday was Part One of a (at least) two part sort-of intervention without the reality TV drama that word has picked up in recent years. What he's trying to do is help this City Council create SMART objectives for Norwich-by SMART, he means, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.

During this past election, there was a lot of talk about 'revitalizing downtown'. His point Saturday was talking about revitalization without defining specifically what you will do and how you will do it, and how you'll measure your progress, is a lot like singing about football and is the same waste of talent and time.

At least that's what I heard him telling our aldermen and alderwomen.

The public was invited, and I really thought there'd be more of us, aside from the usual suspects, but, it is after all the holiday season and this time of year everyone seems to have so much to do. I guess the six members of the City Council and the City Manager have all their holiday shopping done already because while they probably had other things to do Saturday they didn't have anything that was more important to do than to sit together and learn to work towards clearly defined and shared goals.

The workshop lasted ninety minutes. If you're a Black Friday shopper, who stands in line for three hours before a store opens, this is nothing. The workshop's rules were clear and simple. Each alderperson and the City Manager, in turn, had to offer one difficulty or opportunity, each, for Norwich.

And all the other participants had to remain silent until it was their turn. All ideas, large or small, were summarized into a single line then scribbled by Relyea onto large sheets of paper on an easel. As the pages filled, NCDC's Bob 'Too Tall' Mills carried them to the far corner of the room and hung them on the wall.

I counted forty-three different points created by the seven participants-and they shied away from nothing. Challenges ranged from a lack of leadership through inability to work with others to lack of trust in local government and inability to establish and accept realistic goals. Don't misunderstand, it wasn't all dark. Positive opportunities were seen in the involvement of volunteers across our community, and in our schools and human services. Our diversity and arts community were seen as bright spots as well.

Doug Relyea will tell you he is a statistician--what he means is after he asks the question, he tracks the answer. After they'd offered nearly four dozen challenges and opportunities, he charged each participant to place all entries in one of three categories: very important, important and less important. They could not consult with one another. He then led them back through their collective notes and by show of hands, and no one was excused from voting on any topic, he had them tell him, and one another, what was very important, important or less important in Norwich.

Part Two will be driven his analysis of what our City Council and City Manager consider to be the absolute most important outcomes and issues for our city and will concentrate on developing plans to achieve the desired results-not just continue the endless and empty years of discussion we've had. And it's happening not a moment too soon.

This City Council, the neighbors we selected and elected, are preparing to address known issues of reduced state aid for the remainder of the current fiscal year, uncertain state funding for the next budget they are about to begin working on, as well as the ramifications of decisions looming on purchasing the Norwich Hospital Site and attempting to revitalize 337 Main Street, once known as the Norwich YMCA.

They, and we, need to acknowledge that people prefer problems which are familiar to solutions that are not. As long as all we do is talk about the negative perceptions we, who live here, have of Norwich, nothing will ever happen to change those perceptions. It's not enough to say we lack an economic development plan unless and until each of us is willing to roll up a sleeve and lend a hand to write, implement and measure the success (and failures) of a new one.

This summer we capped celebrations of Norwich's first 350 years and failed to grasp this history's most fundamental lesson--tomorrow is shaped by both what we do, and what we fail to do, today. Some will still be here for the Quadricentennial. When our grandchildren and their children ask you what we did in Norwich as America struggled to right its ship in the wake of the economic calamity that reshaped the face of our nation, I'm pretty sure no one wants to say 'I watched and waited.' Each of us needs to become an exclamation and not an apology.
-bill kenny