Same Movie, Different Actors

Don’t let the physical separation in City Council chambers or the long-distance participation by citizens via telephone line be anything more than a distraction during this Annual Municipal Budget Creation Season (I like giving things capital letters; it makes them seem important and costs me nothing).

While many aspects of our circumstances have changed, at its essence, the budget creation process, the reasons for the requests, the reactions by many of us to those requests and a thousand tiny conversations and discussions are actually all the same. 

It’s been suggested the best thing about City Manager’s proposed budget was that it wasn't worse. Sort of like ‘the good news is there’s no more bad news.’ Except, in this case, his presentation was a statement of where we are. We decide what happens next.

The budget is the result of discussions we, the residents of Norwich, will have with one another, with our municipal department heads, and our elected officials as we (and they) craft a document by which we determine the amount and variety of municipal services, from public education and public safety through road resurfacing and everything in between, and what we are willing to pay for those goods and services. Our city budget is a compact we make with one another, for one another.

It's okay to have had a reaction to what was offered-but, it’s more important to have engagement and informed suggestions as part of the remaining process. A great place to start is by having a copy of the proposed budget (‘you can’t tell the players without a scorecard’) and you’ll find that on the city’s website. It’s deserving of your time and attention but while it tells us what things cost-only we can decide what they are worth.

Our first opportunity to comment on the record is the first public hearing tomorrow night at seven-thirty in City Council chambers (and you can follow along at home as well). And at the risk of boring you, let me note again this is OUR budget. We should each be prepared to speak as well as be willing to listen to others when they speak because that's how reasonable people develop solutions, not by scapegoating and searching for the guilty.

Many of us have never been faced with the conditions we are confronting right now, but as a nation, we were here eighty-eight years ago as President Franklin Roosevelt led us out of the Great Depression with passionate, precise, and thoughtful words filled neither with alarm nor anger. 

"Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment. Yet ...(c)ompared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for.

“This Nation asks for action, and action now...It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. (I)t can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly."

We are each called upon in our way to act wisely and well for ourselves, our families, and our city.
-bill kenny