As we count down the days until summer arrives, a more urgent countdown is ongoing in our City Council chambers as the annual agonies over the next budget near their inevitable and never happy conclusion (until next year).
I’m struck by how often I’ve penned something like the following (always mindful nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it, me). Stop me when you’ve read this before, but I can promise all of us will live through the circumstances that prompted it again and again.
Municipal budgets are much like the weather, everyone talks about them but nothing gets done, unless (of course) you’re on the City Council where the buck, or what’s left of it, comes to rest. Aside from elevating one another's blood pressure at public hearings, with letters to the editor and online comments, what have we succeeded in accomplishing in helping grow our tax base, creating relief for property owners, and (I think most importantly) making Norwich a place to come home to?
That’s not a rhetorical question, because, to me, it’s hard to tell what we're doing except we keep saying better days are ahead (and I want to believe that). But wishing ain’t doing.
People prefer a problem that's familiar to a solution that’s not. We are, and should be, concerned at what we pay in taxes for what we receive in services, but after we've said we're angry about one or the other (we rarely if ever complain about one and the other), we seem to resign ourselves to whatever is about to unfold and leave our protests at that, until the next year.
We choose to forget to live as we do is a 365/24/7 job for all of us, not just some. We changed the charter almost twenty years ago in an attempt to make how we govern ourselves more transparent and responsive with better-defined responsibilities and accountability for increased economic development and enhanced community quality of life.
I'm not sure how that worked out, despite the efforts of so many talented people who volunteer to serve in elected positions like the City Council and Board of Education or on one of the nearly innumerable agencies, boards, commissions, and committees we have in the city.
Perhaps just me but instead of an effort to help those trying to help all of us we point fingers at one another. The problem with finger-pointing is three fingers on the hand point back at ourselves. Perhaps we think if we all wear mittens no one will notice.
Economic vitality isn’t just growth of the grand list, improved property values, and reduced taxes; it’s about enhanced opportunity and increased quality of life for every resident. We need to stop talking about how much we need to change and actually change. I can’t imagine a greater 'good' for a government, at any level, a greater need for it and a more appropriate time to seriously work towards that than right now.
- bill kenny
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