We Are Worth the Effort

As we near the first Tuesday in November and hopefully (finally) think more about the large issues that afflict and affect us locally (and how they often are a reflection of our national concerns) maybe it will help to see our local elections as a way to work on solutions from the bottom up.

What is looking like the one and only opportunity to hear from all of those seeking places on both the City Council (six seats are up for grabs) and the Board of Education (which has nine members), ask questions, hear explanations, policies, positions, and maybe (if we're lucky) some hopes and visions will be next Tuesday at NFA's Slater Auditorium. 

Doors open at five with the BoE candidates' debate from six to seven followed immediately by the City Council debate. Government is a contact sport so make the time to be at Slater Tuesday because each of us needs to get off the bench because we have skin in the game and need to behave like it. 

I know you're busy with kids in school, jobs, projects around the house and a hundred other tasks clamoring for your attention. Who isn’t? The effective range of an excuse is less than a meter, so your choices are to show up Tuesday or to shut up about how things get done around here.   

Not unique to Norwich, admittedly, but as true here as it is elsewhere, we have streets in need of paving, neighborhoods transitioning, infrastructure renewal and replacement that’s been postponed and delayed for decades (not just years), public safety systems addressing more institutional, physical, and mental health challenges no amount of funding can ever address, and schools where the tasks facing teachers and the instructional staff stretch far beyond the classroom walls requiring a wholesale reinvention of public education that no one wants to think about because we've invested so much in what we have.

All of that is on all of us. You've read it here before; we are all we will ever have to rebuild and reinvent where we live. And that's fine by me, as we are all we should ever need. For too long we believed if we did nothing, we did nothing wrong but forgot every Next Thing begins with a leap of faith and good works to back up our words. We chose to live where we choose to be, and it's what brought us all to this place and this moment we are in. So many people in the same device.

All that we carry is all that we are-and it includes our hopes for a better city for our children and ourselves. We cannot continue to allow those whom we have selected to elect to be so cavalier and unmindful of our dreams. There's an old Spiritual that sings about "I am but one-but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something." We are not too late and we are not too few. Make the time to be in Slater Tuesday because we are worth the effort. 

-bill kenny