I've been fortunate in the seventy trips around the sun (so far) I've made to have encountered some remarkably talented and intelligent people (who might not be well pleased if I name-dropped here so I won't) whose patience and persistence in trying to teach me things have on occasion overcome my mental inertia and inability to learn. The faintest glimmer of comprehension in one eye is all the reward they've ever received for the time and talent they've devoted to trying to make me smarter than I am.
And one of the precepts they've drilled into me is a fundamental fact of human nature true everywhere and anywhere but most especially right here in the Rose of New England: People prefer problems that are familiar to solutions that are not.
In the last three(ish) weeks, we here have had opportunities to attempt to control events that we've talked about for almost as long as we've discussed the weather (and to just about the same effect).
We had the next installment of that long-running soap opera I like to call "As Route 82 Turns. Or Doesn't" sponsored, as always, by local collision insurance companies and auto body shops that featured well-meaning people from the Connecticut Department of Transportation armed with a lot of statistics to support their plan to construct (sooner and later) six roundabouts within a radically reconfigured Route 82, relegating they sincerely believe the sobriquet, "Crash Alley," to the dustbin of history.
A considerable number of residents, drivers, and business owners (though nowhere near what I'd have hoped to see turn out) shared their reactions, which, as someone who technically doesn't have a dog in this hunt (though I do have a car on the street), sounded to me a lot like 'can you do something without actually doing anything?' I'm wondering if there might have been a more positive response if the roundabouts were vertical like Hot Wheels Racing Loops instead of horizontal. I fear we may now never know.
Meanwhile on the last Tuesday in June was a public forum on a $381 million proposed school construction project (Norwich taxpayers' share would be $149 million) that reimagines and reengineers how public education will be delivered to our children for decades to come. Two things: yes, you read the numbers correctly and almost no one attended the meeting.
There have been efforts, somewhat fitfully over the last twenty-five years or so, to invest in our schools but this proposal is a big swing for the fences where, in the past, we've tried to bunt our way around decaying buildings, inadequate facilities and obsolete technology supporting outdated curriculum by telling ourselves 'When times get better, we'll see what we can do.' You'd think the last two years of COVID, and its consequences might have added some urgency to the process.
It doesn’t matter if you have children in our schools, you have a part in this. We all do. For our schools, our children, their teachers, and our city, the time is now for a serious discussion about the limits of making do as opposed to what we could and should do next.
Put this Monday evening at six on your calendar now because the City Council will hold a public workshop to discuss the project, its scale, scope, and costs with the architectural firm Drummey Rosane Anderson Inc., DRA, upon whose master plan the school construction project is based (you can see a presentation given to the Board of Education last month here (it's certainly not an IMax movie, but it'll do).
If you can't be in council chambers, then watch it on the city's website, or on Comcast's Government Access Channels (either Channel 182 or 1084). There are important decisions to be made and you’ll need every bit of information.
Every decision has a price and a cost. And when you decide to NOT make a decision, don’t kid yourself; that decision also has a price and a cost. We need to open our eyes and see what we need to do and then put our money where our mouths are.
-bill kenny
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