For over a year, talk, time and talent has been focused on the Norwich downtown economic redevelopment effort from the months of Saturday meetings and public discussions that created the bonding proposals through voters' approval last November to the structuring of the program, detailing of responsibilities and the mechanics of management. We've heard 'we're one step away' so often it's hard to believe we are no more steps away, but if you have any doubts, you should visit the Norwich Community Development Corporation, NCDC, website.
We've got hopeful starts down to an art form around here. The big applause, the dazzling smile, the gathering around a new venture as the ribbon is cut...here have some cake and coffee and a heaping helping of congratulations and welcome to Norwich.
Trouble usually follows what's supposed to happen next and often doesn't. That first step was a snap-it's the creation of the footfalls that follow it to where we want to go that we need to learn.
First a path, then a trail, then a road--each ripple of progress making a larger circle that covers a greater area of Norwich as development reaches farther and brings the benefits of enhanced property tax revenues to the grand list and elevates our community's quality of life throughout each of the neighborhoods in Norwich.
Patience and perseverance are called for and a talent to not only see the next move but the one after the next one. Some cynics say "he who hesitates is lunch" and Norwich has spent too many years on the menu. We've wasted a lot of time competing when we needed to cooperate. We're catching on but we have a ways to go before we catch up.
Each of us needs to be a part of greater and broader effort that requires us to not only say the right things but to do them, on our street, around our block until we meet a neighbor, who is doing the same thing on their street and neighborhood. One engaged person is a revolution, two energized people are a movement and three can not only make a difference but can be the difference.
It's important we communicate openly and clearly with those whom we send to the City Council and to whom we entrust our children's education, as it is important that they be clear when speaking to and with us. Here's some numbers that might make you numb: in non-Presidential elections (for decades), registered voter turnout has been less than twenty-five percent.
Put it another way, one out of every four of us is telling the other three what to do. In case you hadn't noticed, that hasn't been working out very well for any of us. We have hundreds of thousands of men and women in uniform defending our way of life in shit-holes around the globe, and seven in ten of us can't be bothered to make a decision as to whom should run our city. Seriously?
In addition to low (= lousy) voter turnout, too many of us have left too many others to do the heavy lifting on boards and commissions ranging from the Historic District Commission through the Recreation Advisory Board to the Commission on the City Plan. The same people we join with on Neighborhood Watch, whose kids are with our kids in scouts, are the volunteers on about three dozen agencies nearly all of whom meet in secrecy because so few of us attend their open and advertised meetings. Don't get me started on the vacancies that exist on so many of these panels-there's probably one with your name on it.
We have to hold ourselves accountable for the development and improvement of our city and that means realizing when you finger point as if that has ever solved anything, three of the fingers on your hand are pointing back at yourself. We've looked everywhere for solutions-maybe we should start with the mirror. So many people in the same device.
-bill kenny
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