Ready Or Not

I went for an early morning walk yesterday after the rains in and around my neighborhood, near Norwich Free Academy.

Like a lot of the Northeast, Norwich has spent the last couple of weeks in an unending do-loop of almost spring temperatures punctuated with grey skies, ill winds and chilly temperatures while trying to convince ourselves that eventually the weather would agree with the calendar and spring would be here.

It was the kind of morning with a high haze that, as the sun clears the horizon, after seven or so, burns off quickly leaving a blue so deep and true you could get lost in it just looking at it. One of the things the unkind weather had distracted us from, or at least me, was how much farther along the trees, bushes and grasses are now than a week or so ago.

Where there were hints of red buds, and you could also see light red glow on the tips of branches, now there are light green, tiny leaves pushing their way into the day.

And where there were brown and matted patches of grass at Chelsea Parade (the cut across at Lincoln Avenue to NFA; Sachem has a traffic light and Williams has a cross walk), now there's green or will be if we stop stepping on it long enough to let the grass grow.

I’m not alone in feeling that this has the Spring that Almost Wasn't—and why not? Take the last couple of years; not the kindest time in our history, either nationally or globally and I’m deliberately NOT mentioning COVID-19 or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I think we can all be forgiven for wanting to hunker down a little bit and worrying more about ourselves while hoping the big world outside will sort itself out or leave us alone. Fat chance.

Ready or not, the City Manager's Proposed Budget at Monday night's City Council meeting was the first step in what should be an annual, informative exercise in participatory governance though if the past is prologue, I’m not all that sanguine about that even as I type those words

You can find the budget online, and it’s worth reading, literally because in some shape, size, or form, the discussions and decisions about it we should and will have with one another, with our municipal department heads, and our elected officials determine the quality and quantity of municipal services, from public education and public safety to trash removal and road resurfacing and everything in between, and what we are willing to pay for them.

The city budget is a compact we make with one another, for one another. We owe it to ourselves to do our best to be successful as residents and as a city. Find the time to read the online explanations on the city’s website and look at the impact the proposals will have on your own household and think about what you’d change and why.

Our first opportunity to speak publicly on the proposed budget is tomorrow night at 7:30 in Council Chambers before the members of the Council and one another. We should be prepared to speak and to listen to others when they speak because that's how reasonable people build the future.

And budgets, while developed today, are always about tomorrows. 
-bill kenny