Sweeping Old Dust

I began attending Norwich City Council meetings in the winter of 1993 when those on that Council and the members of the Board of Education differed so strongly on funding levels for the school system the Council's budget hearing was relocated from City Hall to the gymnasium at (then) Kelly Middle School where dozens of speakers both implored and berated the aldermen (and woman) to reconsider allocations for the Norwich Schools while hundreds of others sat and listened.

In three-plus decades since the issue hasn’t changed very much. The City Council are the folks to whom we turn to repair our roads, ask about additional public safety concerns, and argue incessantly about the budget for our schools.

I voted for a City Council to partner with a mayor to work on ‘Big Picture’ issues like long-term economic development and community improvement (‘growing the Grand List’). I’m still waiting for someone, anyone quite frankly, to do that.

We, city/state/nation, have spent money for far longer than any of us have been alive as if we'll find extra folding money in a trouser pocket to pay additional state mandates for our schools, or enough change between the couch cushions in the living room sofa to fund the increases in special education costs. It doesn’t work that way. We know it but pretend to be surprised.
 
We had a long and civil discussion with one another and our elected leadership on what we were willing to invest our tax dollars in and our expectations for how that money was to be allocated. Some wished to 'share the pain' of reductions more equitably and others were more concerned with generating more of the revenue that's required for funding at levels we know we must have. Not everyone is happy with the decisions made. Again.

Those decisions and the tax increases as a result, start arriving in the mail in less than a week and will generate angry words, finger-pointing, and possibly a few more ‘for sale’ signs when what we do is resolve to create a collaborative, cooperative, and coordinated effort enhancing commercial and business development and growth so we can break the cycle of stupid and end the blame game we keep playing with one another. 

With cable access coverage of Council meetings, meeting agenda and minutes readily available on the city’s website, accounts in local newspapers, and sometimes caustic comments from those newspaper's readers (guilty as charged), you’d assume we’d have gotten better at solving our problem, or at least as good as we are in creating it.

Instead, we keep dividing the city into 'us' (never well-defined perhaps because 'we' already know who 'us' is), and 'them' (another unknown group keeping 'us' from returning Norwich to its days of glory when downtown was jammed Thursday nights (and Eisenhower was President)). Yeah, about all that. It’s stupid and it needs to stop. Today would be a good choice.

Sitting at the confluence of the Shetucket, Thames, and Yantic Rivers we should realize no one steps into the same river twice because both they and the river have changed. Yet we want someone, somewhere to make the cost of city government what it was in (pick a year, or better, a different decade) when times were good, and the living was easy. 

This year’s budget (with the uncertainties created by a property reassessment that left many homeowners stunned), was as painful to watch as a slow-motion car crash and just as avoidable.

We, city/state/nation, have spent money for far longer than any of us have been alive as if we'll find extra folding money in a trouser pocket to pay additional state mandates for our schools, or enough change between the couch cushions in the living room sofa to fund the increases in special education costs. It doesn’t work that way. We know it but pretend to be surprised.
 
We had a long and civil discussion with one another and our elected leadership on what we were willing to invest our tax dollars in and our expectations for how that money was to be allocated. Some wished to 'share the pain' of reductions more equitably and others were more concerned with generating more of the revenue that's required for funding at levels we know we must have. Not everyone is happy with the decisions made. Again.

Those decisions and the tax increases as a result, start arriving in the mail in less than a week and will generate angry words, finger-pointing, and possibly a few more ‘for sale’ signs when what we do is resolve to create a collaborative, cooperative, and coordinated effort enhancing commercial and business development and growth so we can break the cycle of stupid and end the blame game we keep playing with one another.
-bill kenny