Money and Mouths

Growing up on my block in the swamps of Jersey, kids would challenge one another to "put your money where your mouth is," that is, prove the truth of what you're saying or pipe down.

With the benefit of hindsight a sixty-six-year-old man possesses when looking back at his own behavior while an eight-year-old, I'll admit none of us in my neighborhood had two nickels to rub together (and truth was often subjective and usually rationed).

But I've never been accused of allowing a lack of knowledge to keep me from having and often loudly voicing an opinion and that's why more often than not you can hear me long before you see me. I guess it's true that you can take the boy out of Jersey but you'll never get Jersey out of the boy.

While with the passage of all the years since then I don't remember whether any of us really did put money where our mouths were (though we certainly yapped a lot with 'em), I still can clearly recall the intensity of the challenge itself.

An almost-lifetime later, and living in a city with about forty thousand or so mouths, many speaking at the same time and very rarely agreeing with one another I (too) often join the "Nope" Chorale when ideas are offered and proposals are made for moving Norwich into the Now and making us the city all of us can be proud to claim as our home.

So it was last Wednesday morning, reading in the pages of The Bulletin "City Council Pitched $8.47 Million Revitalization Program" and my first reaction was that we've been here before, back in November of 2010 when voters approved a $3.38 million bond that funded downtown revitalization with a matching grant program to finance building upgrades, a lease rebate program intended to boost building occupancy and a loan program for business development. 

I've walked across downtown probably a thousand times in the almost eight years since we approved that first bond and if you have, too, then we both know that what Bob Mills of Norwich Community Development Corporation told the Council last Wednesday night is true.

He told our aldermen and women that the investment, so far, has resulted in 124,000 square feet of improved space across 17 downtown properties. and  ".,.$2.47 million of that money has been spent or committed, resulting in $22.8 million of economic impact to Norwich." 

Money doesn't talk, said Dylan; it swears, so I was listening very carefully as I continued to read “We have put nearly $23 million into the local economy over the life of these projects,” Mills said. “That’s a return of $9.22 to our economy for each dollar invested.” 

I don't know much about investing but getting nine dollars back for every buck spent sounds pretty good to me. The proposal would continue to support downtown Norwich but also foster development at our key city gateways and across our villages and business districts. 

The City Council are still working out the details and must finalize the scale and scope by August 20 if we, the people, are to have the opportunity to vote on it this November. Betting on ourselves again? Of course! Where else would you want to put our money?
-bill kenny