Time to Care if You Dare

I realize I sound a lot like one of those curmudgeons who complains about all 'those punks on my lawn,' but that's only because I am. 

I can remember in past decades when annual City Council hearings on the school's budget requests were shifted to a middle school gymnasium because so many people wanted to attend, and you'd have thought the governor was speaking.

Those days are over, and, not surprisingly, no one is expecting them to return. The expression 'think globally, act locally' works only if we are willing to act and accept the responsibilities of our actions locally. Let's face it, when we look to Hartford and Washington D.C., there's a lot more confrontation and much less collaboration on almost every issue we can imagine.

At the state and federal level, the attitude has become 'for me to look good, you (the other side) need to look bad', always forgetting the dangerous part of the phrase 'zero-sum' is the former. 

To acknowledge we can't afford to continue to do business in Norwich the way we always have is a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but based absence of encouragement or even feigned interest for so many issues ranging from the City's Plan of Conservation and Development, through suggestions on improving the downtown revitalization programs to department work-ups on the annual budget, we have to do better at owning our future.

We must accept the realization that we are the ones who make the final choices on our future and the paths we walk to get there. These are our children, our downtown, our neighborhoods, with our businesses, schools, police, streets and sidewalks (and the thousands of other moving parts that make Norwich, Norwich). 

No one else will care about any of this the way we should. We must stop waiting for someone to step up and, instead, become the someone who does. 
-bill kenny