Keep Kicking the Can

A crisis is "a time or state of affairs that is unstable or crucial and may lead to a dangerous situation." You can look it up if you wish. And yet our ongoing collective effort to build a new police station, a sojourn that has been a work in progress for a decade, without a resolution, is seen more as a 'what do you want? This is Norwich.' rather than a 'state of affairs that may lead to a dangerous situation.'

We've devoted over a decade to talking about building a new police station and here we are, on the threshold of the Spring of 2024 and will you look at that: still waiting for a new police station. Maybe we didn't talk enough about one; haven't written enough newspaper articles on the need for one, or had enough jabber-jaw sessions on local radio stations outlining the expanded requirements necessary to support a modern public safety effort. 

The only thing more puzzling/annoying about the continued lack of a new police station is the amount of surprise from so many on social media that it hasn't happened. I was part of the original committee about a decade ago that evaluated various sites throughout Norwich for their suitability as a future home. In my memory, about two dozen sites were being proposed. I doubt they are all still available or that they are still affordable. That referendum failed, and a decade later, a refloated referendum also failed. All we got from kicking the can farther down the road was scuffed shoes.

One of the things I never understood, based on an evening's tour of the police station at the time was how/why the original decision to bundle the tooth (the holding cells, processing stations, locker rooms for all the police officers, the armory and range) with the tail (the administrative, archival, community rooms, and clerical support) as one package. Everywhere we toured that evening had stacks and stacks of files on top of other files across what seemed to be every available square foot of floor space.  

I mention this because at the time, as is still the case for me, I'm not sure we are looking at the issue the way we need to solve our crisis, and make no mistake, we have a crisis that will continue to worsen no matter how much longer we delay creating a solution. 

The police chief has a very good idea of what core competencies a new facility needs to support-he is the expert on police operations. Let's consider for a moment a building, that accommodates all of those requirements, and, here's the tricky part for some, you take all the administrative (and essential) components, and place them in some of the vast amounts of vacant office space in Down City. 

Norwich Public Utilities has over forty-four miles of secure fiber-optic cable across the city, let's consider using some of that bandwidth to support routine law enforcement activities and I'd wager it will be a lot more economical than creating new floor space to stack files on. Support and clerical staff in downtown will put ‘feet on the street’ as we’re so fond of saying and be more economical than creating additional floor space to stack files on. 

If you were to ask anyone on our current City Council what they see our city looking like in a decade (or generation) be prepared for seven different answers. And if you ask how what's to be situated in Chelsea fits in with the 'rest of' downtown' brace yourself for silence. As it is, no matter whom we elect we end up with members of the City Council who plan the way horses run, one footfall in front of where they are.

When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. Based on the maps and plans we've made and discarded for decades, where we are now is where we have always wanted to be. 

Just repeat after me: Crisis? What Crisis?
-bill kenny