Words into Action

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. That’s a truism that has the advantage of also being the truth. This is how (and more importantly, why) Norwich, I think, so often finds itself still trying to find its place in the world much as it has for over three and half centuries and many of us who live here seem to cycle through the various stages of surprise and disappointment as each old year ends and the next one begins.

The Mayor’s State of the City Address Monday night to mark the first City Council meeting of the new year, perhaps because one is delivered every year, somehow loses its impact as a statement of intent and purpose, and that’s too bad because sometimes we can do with a bit of what Teddy Roosevelt called ‘the bully pulpit.’

I think planting a flag, signaling a direction, sounding a call to action if not to arms is more than worthwhile; the State of the City speech may be the single most important thing the Mayor, any Mayor, can say in a year, topped only by what they do the rest of the year. But it’s not just what the mayor says, it’s what we hear and whether we choose to listen, especially when what we need to hear and what we want to hear are often two different things.

Again, in November we had full slates of candidates seeking seats on both our Board of Education and City Council as well as for the office of Mayor. Some might say we were spoiled for choice but in light of the generosity of those who volunteer for long hours, contentious public hearings where speakers take turns contradicting one another, served with all the lukewarm coffee you could ever want, in what certainly do not look like jobs that are the most fun you can have with your clothes on, I think we’re just spoiled.

Our voter turnout, the pulse if you will of the heartbeat of our democracy and the key to any effort to improve where we call home, remained at about the same level it has been for too many years. Perhaps we should have started a rumor that there was an iPhone or PlayStation giveaway at the polling places? 

See? This is why I’m no good at this political stuff but let’s be honest, too many of us see government as something done to us and not for us, and all the brave talk about regionalization, mill rates, enterprise zones, zoning variances, and the other nouns, verbs, and gerunds of political grammar get lost in what one former Mayor accurately calls ‘corrosive cynicism.’

Those whom we’ve elected will soon enough feel the sting of our disappointment if they fail to guess what we want before we ourselves know what that may be, or how to achieve it. That’s unfair and all of us need to do better. We need to learn to speak and collaborate with one another to better use ideas, ideals, and pragmatic plans to build bridges that join rather than walls that continue to divide

The New Year was just this past Saturday. What could be a more perfect time to begin again than now?
-bill kenny