Alone in the Light (Norwich Meetings 15-20 February)

Week of contradictions in the Rose City--a shortened week because of a Monday holiday but a lot of activities, some catching up for last week's snow, others added because the events of the day just don't all fit otherwise.

Tuesday evening at six in Room 319 of City Hall it's a regular meeting (and investment meeting) of the Personnel and Pension Board. If you've got a retirement plan through your employer, and have watched the nine G turns the world's financial markets have been undergoing for the last eighteen months or so, you have a pretty good appreciation for the diligence and dedication of the volunteers on this board who help safeguard the retirements of municipal employees.

Tuesday night are separate meetings of organizations that I'd hope we'll soon see attempting to meet with one another as the various components and agencies and organizations with different responsibilities for advancing the city start to get a bit more orchestrated and coordinated as they work more closely together. In this case, I'm talking about the Commission on the City Plan, which meets at seven in the basement conference room of the Planning Department building at 23 Union Street.

I'm especially interested in item K on their agenda, which is a request to allow a 'community center at 87-91 Main Street' in the Chelsea (downtown) district. Makes me wonder about the disposition of the other community center at 377 Main Street, and without piling on (too much) perhaps if the City Council meeting earlier this month hadn't gone into Executive Session to talk about that project, we'd now all know more than some of us do.

Speaking of the City Council, there's a regular meeting Tuesday night at 7:30. While I'm thinking about it, thank you to those neighbors who made it to Saturday's session with Mayor Nystrom in the East Great Plains Fire Department. Especially Edward, who's a bigger fan of fire engines than even I am, which because he's nineteen months old, may be less impressive than is the case with me; you decide. I'm encouraged so many of us are getting comfortable asking questions out loud, always respectful but also insistent on getting answers and holding people accountable for the gap between what they say and what they do. Government isn't easy when times are good, and, as is true where you live too, it's hard times in the land of plenty around here right now.

There's some suggestions on line that there are pair of meetings today in the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments building up in the Norwich Business Park, but a check of their website suggests their monthly meeting is Wednesday at 8:30, with a full agenda of activity. We don't have county government here in The Nutmeg State to, at the very least, help counter the consolidation of power that has happened in Hartford, so alliances like SCCOG are often more important for what they are rather than what they do (especially as so many of us remain too suspicious of those we don't know to better work successfully together).

The Norwich School Readiness Council meets at nine o'clock in the community room of The Dime Bank on Route 82. I've more or less given up expecting their website to offer timely information on topics about which many of us have interests, but I don't doubt if you click here and drop a note to one of the two email addresses at the bottom of the page, you can not only learn more about their current initiatives, but possibly stimulate some interest in updating their website.

Thursday afternoon at five, is a regular meeting of the Historic District Commission in Room 210 of City Hall. At one of its earliest Saturday meetings, the City Council listed as a top opportunity, for community and economic development, the promotion of the city for its historic buildings and associations. It's encouraging to read in this organization's minutes about their desire to work more closely with other volunteer agencies and the Mayor and City Council and I'd hope to learn more about the depth and strength of that effort in the coming months.

Also meeting at five is the Ice Arena Authority, in their conference room at The Rink over on the New London Turnpike. The member appointments listed on line expired almost three years ago and if in accordance with Public Act 08-3, your most recent minutes posted are from July of last year, I'm going to question your sincerity (the Dorothy picture on the front page will load a LOT faster if you make it smaller, btw).

And at 7:30 in the Captain's Quarters in the Marina, is a special meeting of the Public Safety Committee (the meeting rescheduled from the snow blowout of last Wednesday). Because it's a special meeting, the agenda is ALL that the meeting can be about.

There's twofer Saturday morning starting at eight in the conference room of the Central Fire House, over on North Thames Street. As I've understood it, though the notice on the muni website isn't two clear about it, there's a workshop with the City Council and the Board of Education as a preliminary to this year's budget formulation. (There's a better explanation here, though not by much.)

To give you an idea of how grim this will be this year, unless someone strikes oil while mining the gold and titanium they've already found at the site of the Kelly Middle School renovations, all aspects of the city's budget, and because of its size, most especially the Board of Education's portion, will be reworked and downsized dramatically and traumatically.

The second of the two meetings, to follow (in theory) at ten, is the City Council reviewing the Plan of Conservation and Development as part of their holistic approach to righting the somewhat drift current ship of the city in some rather rough and deep waters (I have a copy of the most current Plan of Conservation and Development, which is from 2002 and you can have it by going here, and checking it out before Saturday's meeting).

There's a great line in the foreword, we'd all do well to heed, 'Good cities don't just happen, they are made' and a line I hope we don't forget, 'the future of Norwich depends(s)on the ability of City leadership to bring together disparate opinions around a common vision.' We need to do something more and different from (w)e held our hate in our hands because if we don't, we'll have nothing left to hold at all.
-bill kenny