Won't Wait Until Wednesday

Don't be fooled by the picture of tranquility that is the Norwich City Hall in this story yesterday on the front page of my hometown newspaper about an item on the City Council's agenda for this evening at 6:30: approval of a municipal bond for $680,000 (plus fees) to purchase a new chiller for the (City of) Norwich Ice Rink.

Staying with ice as a figure of speech, what's NOT on the agenda is of far more concern and disquiet to me than the dollar figure (which is an untruth by the way as far more than the chiller needs to be replaced-add another half million or more to the estimate). I'm not the only one concerned about the magic bookkeeping.

There's this story that should have been a closed book instead of another chapter in a two-decades long money-hemorrhaging operation nearing a million dollars by this point that's drowning in its own sea of red ink.

The chairperson of the Ice Rink Authority is also the President Pro Tempore of the City Council. I have always found him to be an open and honest person who sincerely wants what's best for his hometown. Except.....

In one or the other of his two roles, he delayed the release of an analysis on the rink's operations completed in February (and mentioned in the editorial noted above) preventing his City Council colleagues from having time to study it before asking them last month to approve the bond (that vote was delayed until tonight).

Knowledge is power and I concede power sometimes is intoxicating. No municipality (especially ours of slightly less than 45,000 souls) needs to operate its own ice rink. Seeking a private public partnership was and is the appropriate path.

Anything else, actually everything else, is not for the benefit of those of us who live here. Dear Ice Rink Authority, with my apologies to those who love transactional analysis, it's not you, it's us. It's only been in the last eighteen months that anyone in elected city government gave a fried rat's hindquarters about the money pit on New London Turnpike.

Success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan-good luck getting someone to adopt the Ice Rink, but as news stories report, we have three someones prepared to do just that.

And yet, I've concluded we have those both within city leadership and without (the writer is too modest-he was the driving force to get the public to pay for the original bond that built the facility) who cannot or will not take yes for an answer.

So here's what needs to happen tonight. The motion for the bond needs to be voted down-not tabled and no withdrawn. V-O-T-E-D D-O-W-N. Only if the Council burns this boat at the water's edge will it finally be forced to face the reality the rest of us arrived at long ago.

After tonight's  Council meeting, because of  its singular lack of transparency and an intractable attitude that helped no one at a very difficult moment, the current Ice Rink Authority needs to be discharged of its responsibilities with our thanks.

But that's only the half of it. Because of his failure in judgment and casual regard for personal ethics and integrity, Mayor Hinchey should request and accept the resignation of the City Council President Pro Tempore. As Abraham Lincoln once offered, "(n)o man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent." I withdraw mine and encourage you to consider doing the same.
-bill kenny