An Homage to The Happenings?

You better sit down for this part. There are no municipal meetings for the rest of August in the City of Norwich. Sorry, and you'd think in a month with thirty-one days we might spread the stuff out and offer you an all-you-can-eat buffet of democracy with a side order of representational advocacy in action, or fries, but nope, not happening.

Okay, I'm being a stickler for calendar logic-September begins Wednesday, so that there are no municipal meetings today or tomorrow isn't nearly as impressive as announcing 'there are no municipal meetings for the rest of August.' Pretty cool, eh? Got your attention, I suspect.

Wednesday afternoon at 5:30 in the basement conference room of the Norwich Public School's main office (a/k/a John Mason School) across from the Norwichtown Green is a regular meeting of the (Kelly Middle) School Building Committee. It's a timely meeting as the teachers at Kelly start their year this Thursday morning, and based on the minutes of the August meeting, there were some loose ends to tie up before classes get started again on Tuesday.

There are times we across this city play well with others, and a lot of those times seem to involve when we're talking about improvements that benefit our children. Hope we hold that thought as the Board of Education starts to work on designing the next generation of public schools for our children's children. A project that will require patience, vision and money, three items sometimes in notoriously short supply around The Rose City.

According to the city's website, a regular meeting of the Republican Town Committee is slated for Room 335 in City Hall at 7:30 though my recollection is this meeting just as often is held in a local downtown business so if you're interested in attending (and as I learned from very recent birthday person, Dennis B, you needn't be a Republican to attend), you might want to call the City Clerk's office and double check the location.

On Thursday afternoon it's a regular meeting (I guess; the posting of minutes on the city's website looks like the dog's breakfast and, probably, is in violation of any permutation of CT Public Act 08-3, even as modified) at 5:30 of the Downtown Neighborhood Revitalization Zone (Agency? Board? Commission? Committee? Perhaps) at the Marina at American Wharf. I don't need to spend a lot of time with a focus group to postulate that elevating public awareness of what the Downtown NRZ has done and hopes to do (and how) might be a very positive step in the right direction.

At seven that same evening in the conference room of the Planning Department at 23 Union Street is a regular meeting of the Inland Wetlands, Watercourses and Conservation Commission, whose August meeting minutes are nowhere to be found on the city's municipal website, again.

This time next week, we'll be celebrating Labor Day, hopefully by NOT working as oxymoronic as that sounds, and wondering what happened to the summer of 2010 as we watch the neighborhood kids brace for impact as the school buses roll up the following day, another school year begins, and the fall election campaigns get nasty as they heat up. We'll have time to talk about all of that, and more, in the weeks ahead instead of just watching the wheels go round and round.
bill kenny