I wrote this for a local election season FOURTEEN years ago. Looking at our current campaigns for City Council and Board of Education, it's unnerving to me that it looks like it's pretty much the same movie with different characters.
We're getting to that season, not just here in God's Little Corner known as the Rose of New England, Norwich, Connecticut, where the only space on your front lawn NOT covered by autumn leaves will have a sign urging others to vote for a specific candidate for City Council and/or member of the Board of Education.
Every two years, I'm overcome by a desire to pop a Literacy Volunteer right in the beezer. And don't get me started on the folks in the little wire frame leg business so the sign guys have someplace to put the sign. All you had to do was ask me-I could've told you where to stick them. I find myself wondering what Samuel Huntington would have made of all of this lawn signage or Benedict Arnold for that matter. Both are considered Norwich Native Sons, though we're still more than ambivalent about Arnold.
I'm waiting for debates between and among the candidates running for City Council as well as the Board of Education (BOE). Don't get me wrong, I support the notion that there's no such thing as a Republican or a Democratic Party method to educate third graders but here in Norwich, the operating budget for the Board of Education is in excess of 50% of our entire city's budget so we need to pay more attention to something we pay no attention to at all.
We had a City Council again this year making decisions on public safety and other city personnel staffing, infrastructure repairs, long-delayed investments, etc., attempting to balance the tax burden caused by a less-than-robust growth in the revenue stream and the escalation in municipal expenses. The Board of Education had to make decisions that changed, and not to the good, the location and size of classes and classrooms for practically our entire student body (among other unhappy choices).
I'd like to hear what those seeking seats on the BOE believe the priorities should be, and learn a bit more about what, if any, ideas for economies and/or enhancements (and how to pay for them) they wish to advocate during their tenure.
The first candidate who wants to organize the children for weekend redeemable-can-and-bottle drives to pay for field trips and administrator salary increases, I will applaud unreservedly (using your hands if necessary) knowing he or she will not get a second vote. I was obviously trying to be humorous with that observation, though you may have only gotten the trying part.
But right now, with less than seven weeks until Election Day, there's NOT a debate scheduled by anyone, anywhere on the horizon in Norwich and there should be one once a week, at least, everywhere around here because we have the blessings of choice and need to know as much as we can about the neighbors offer their time and talents in our service.
Our gratitude for their generosity will be replaced, sadly, soon enough by anger and annoyance (immediately) after their election because of their obstinacy and short-sightedness when they dare to NOT see things the same way we do.
Because I have the time, I've walked around various Norwich neighborhoods and there are scads of lawn signs for various candidates seeking office. Bravo and well done. But let's consider that there also is, I'm guessing, at least one "for sale" sign for every political lawn sign.
We're going to need boxcars of fallen leaves from trees the size of California Redwoods to cover the damage done to the neighborhoods in this city every day by those for-sale signs and the reasons they're up. And that's why I think we need debates now to ask all the candidates this: what are you doing to do to stop it?
-bill kenny
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