So these Are the Good, Old Days?

I attended Norwich City Council meetings since the winter of 1993 when those on that Council and the members of the Board of Education differed so strongly on the funding levels for the school system in the proposed budget that the Council's hearings were relocated, as the hearing was just beginning, from City Hall to the gymnasium at Kelly Middle School. 

As I recall, dozens of speakers implored and berated the aldermen (and woman) to reconsider allocations for the Norwich Schools while hundreds of others sat and listened. Nothing changed.

In the three decades since, we've had the same struggles on the same topics at this time of the year, every year. The people in the front of the room have changed and as I've looked around City Council chambers, so, too have those who attend the meetings. 

With cable access coverage of Council meetings, meeting agenda and minutes readily available from the municipal website, extended accounts by at least one local newspaper reporter, and sometimes caustic comments from that newspaper's readers (guilty as charged), the scale and scope of involvement has seemingly expanded.

The issues we come to the Council with haven't really changed all that much--they are the folks to whom we turn for repairing our roads, extending a sidewalk, asking about additional police patrols, understanding why schools close--the daily operation of our city. 

They, in turn, route our concerns and questions to and through the City Manager and his Department directors for answers that more often than not generate additional questions and sometimes don't end with the happy ending we sought.

I'm not sure, even though in theory we vote for City Councils to partner with the Mayor in working on Big Picture issues like long-term economic development and community improvement, that we're comfortable with having anyone actually do that. 

Some divide our city into 'us', never well-defined perhaps because 'we' already know who 'us' is, and 'them', another unknown group who is keeping 'us' from returning Norwich to its days of grace and glory when downtown was jammed on Thursday nights and Eisenhower was President.

If it were only that simple--sitting at the confluence of the Shetucket, Thames, and Yantic Rivers we, of all Connecticut cities, should be most aware no one one steps into the same river twice because both we 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, in another very austere financial environment, has been painful to watch as it has developed.

We, as a city, a state, and a nation have spent money for decades (at least as long as I've been alive, not that I'm suggesting cause and effect) as if we'll find enough paper money in our trouser pocket or enough change between the couch cushions in the living room to offset the stagnation in the Grand List. 

Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't, I guess. At least not so far. But what never changes is how swiftly and ruthlessly we seek out someone other than ourselves to blame. Every time.
-bill kenny