Through the Past, Darkly

I mentioned not long ago I've been at this for quite some time, another roadside attraction on the internet with gerunds and participles. This (slightly edited to minimize dated references) is from almost a dozen years ago, and while its subject, the Vibrant Communities Initiative, was front-page news at the time, it sank like a stone from public sight. I couldn't find a single reference to it anywhere on The Bulletin's website.

It pains me that so much of what we were then, we still are now. Let me revisit a moment when I thought we were moving forward. I’ll bet you can guess what happened.

“For decades we've listened to laments about missed opportunities, bad luck, poor faith, and lack of working capital as the municipal Grand List puttered along at a rate of growth just above that of inflation which basically meant we've had no real growth at all.

“Of course, if you've looked at municipal infrastructure from roads to sewers, class sizes and extracurricular offerings for students in public schools, manning and staffing of public safety agencies, and, most immediately and importantly, your property tax bill, you already knew all of that.

“The small businesses that quietly folded or relocated to another town, the forest of 'For Sale' signs scattered throughout every neighborhood, and the families everywhere who just stopped being our neighbors from one day to the next and disappeared have all become part of who we are and how we live.

“In late September 2011, the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation (CTHP) announced it had awarded one of its $50,000 grants from its Vibrant Communities Initiative (sadly, the page no longer exists on the website) to Norwich to assist in developing an action plan for underutilized historic places and/or for a city-wide preservation plan.

“The grants were intended to stimulate investment in historic preservation projects; for underutilized historic places/structures; and for developing town- or city-wide preservation ordinances.

“For Norwich, with a wealth of historic buildings, the initiative combined with an effort to update the next decade's city-wide Plan of Conservation and Development (the road map by which we determine the future direction of our city for the benefit of all of its residents) all buttressed by an on-hand pool of nearly ten million dollars for downtown building owners and business owners, real estate brokers and anyone interested in locating a business in downtown Norwich,and we had some weight instead of wait.

“By themselves, none of these initiatives would do anything for anyone. And even combined, blended, melded, or whatever word you want to use, nothing was guaranteed in and of itself. But please remember in November of 2010, supporters of the downtown bond initiative spoke about the importance of demonstrating we, the residents, were willing to invest in ourselves, about the signal we would be sending and the tenor and tone we would be defining for ourselves and those whom we hoped to welcome.

“Critical mass describes the existence of sufficient momentum in a social system such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and creates further and future growth. Where we are in ten, twenty, or fifty years is the result of what we choose today. One thing leads to another.”

Or so I thought. 
I wrote those words on September 28, 2011. And what have we accomplished?

If all we ever do is TALK about change then all we ever get is hoarse.
-bill kenny