Next Week's Elections

Some things age like wine, such as good music or ink stains on dress shirt pockets. Others age more like milk, such as the words I first offered in this spot on the interwebz back in the heat of the election season a dozen years ago.

I’m not sure if I’m heartened that so much of what I see as drama this election season is the same movie with different actors, or depressed that we keep having the same discussions and arguments on the same issues all this time without ever resolving anything.

The distinctions between national and local politics, as events in recent weeks have shown, can be stark. While beneath the Capitol Dome of The District, the differences between Democrats and Republicans are visible from space, at Norwich City Hall in Council Chambers or in Kelly Middle School at a Board of Education meeting, it's more a matter of nuance than differences in ideology.

Again, this election season, we are blessed with choices and voices that many in neighboring towns wish they had, and yet, let’s face it, we’ll struggle as we always do to approach, much less exceed, 35% of all registered voters going to the polls and casting a ballot.

And that’s a puzzlement to me. We have two multi-million-dollar bond issues on the ballot, one for capital improvements and the other for a sorely needed and long-delayed (and not without criticism) new police station. If we won’t turn out for big-dollar concerns, what’s to become of us?

After all, by this time next week, we will have selected six city council members and nine members for the Board of Education. Here on earth, party labels don't mean as much as ideas and the personalities who espouse them. None of those seeking your vote are unknown to us or to one another.

Local government is always about neighbors who pitch in and help. We know many of those seeking office from block meetings, school outings, church groups, and other neighborhood activities. They are those who feel 'someone' needs to do something and are willing to be one of the someones who will do it. It's not easy and with declining federal and state aid and regional economic challenges everywhere you look, it doesn't promise to get any easier anytime soon.

We've spent decades talking about "turning around" downtown. And when you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. But those whom we elect next week have the beginnings of a better map of where we should be going next and how to get there. We need to make sure we choose wisely and well.

For those who see education as the fulcrum to leverage economic development, there are nearly as many challenges as there are opportunities ahead. What attracted me and my family thirty years ago to settle here was the Environment of Excellence in Norwich Public Schools. We need people willing to make the hard choices to return us to that standard, The days of the old schoolyard are long gone. Turn the page and start a new chapter.

We have a week remaining to look at the issues and at those seeking office and arrive at our decisions. Don't expect anyone to tell you how to vote and don't let anyone try to.

We owe it to our neighbors seeking office and to ourselves to make the best decisions we can. 
-bill kenny