Clickity-Click

I've always enjoyed "Groundhog Day" with Bill Murray and thought it was a funny movie that stood up well even after repeated viewings. I confess I never really thought of it as a training film for our current circumstances but I suspect I'm not alone in sometimes losing track of the days and how one day seems to blend into the next as we continue to self-quarantine (and hope for the best).

When I sat down to write these words and glanced at the desk calendar I was surprised to realize this Sunday is Mother's Day. It sort of just snuck up on me, to be honest, so for those who are mothers (and not just the ones called that sometimes in anger or exasperation), best wishes on your special day in a year that in retrospect (if that ever happens) we'll call many things but I suspect 'special' will probably not be among them.

And as much of our world has changed, so, too, have how we respond to the challenges of those changes. We have federal, state, and local programs with financial support for businesses and individuals that we hope will help them weather the current storm but at the same time, as you probably saw Monday night either on the city's website or on the Comcast government access television channel, the business of city government must and does, go on. 

Okay, for a moment I thought I was watching an audition for an episode of Fox's The Masked Singer (Alderman Nash convinced me otherwise), but bad joke aside, serious discussions were had and decisions were made by our neighbors, and perhaps, friends, who volunteered last Spring to serve on a city council elected last fall in circumstances vastly different now than when they stepped forward. 

We call politics the art of the possible and looking to both Hartford and Washington, there's not a lot of comity and cooperation going on these days despite the peril threatening all of us with the COVID-19 pandemic. 

There's still way too much 'for me and my party to look good, you and your party need to look bad' pouting and posturing going on at both of those locations so I smiled (actually grimaced from the painful truth of his statement) when as the discussion on a "Request for Proposal to complete an analysis of the entirety of the City's Fire Services" became somewhat heated, Alderman Nash suggested sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees. 

He reminded his fellow City Council members and all of us across the city that the members of the City Council, while of two different parties, strive to see themselves as residents first, and always, and make decisions on what they believe to be in the best interests of all of us.

So much of what we all do every day we tell ourselves is business as usual, except, and here's my point, it's NOT business as usual. We're not treading water waiting for the flood to recede and if we are, we have ZERO guarantees that the dry land to which we hope to return will be anything like what we once had. 

Those in elected local leadership right now must plan for everything and nothing in terms of revenues, expenses, programs, and promises. If ever there was a moment when we needed to listen to one another more than speak, this is it and will remain it for the foreseeable future because quite there are too many home fires burning and not enough trees. 
-bill kenny