It's been an intense, if not productive, spring here in The Rose City (a/k/a Norwich, Connecticut) as we make our way towards a final, approved municipal operating budget for the fiscal year starting 1 July.
If we could focus on that, I'd be happy, but we have distractions like the ongoing and very heated dispute between some, part, or all of our volunteer fire companies and the Chief of the City of Norwich Fire Department and the City Manager.
Everyone has an opinion, and like noses, they all smell. Mine? I live in the Consolidated City District and am protected by the paid fire department. I've not made a study of fire-fighting, but I'd be willing to bet that the average (or even above average) home fire doesn't care a fart to a pfenning who extinguishes it. Ditto for the homeowner.
My concern is that we allow these 'issues' fanned into blazes by one or more self-serving alderpersons on our City Council because they enjoy and benefit from the acrimony and aggravation that are the results of their actions, to cause us to lose focus on the core functions of, and reasons for, government, at whatever level you'd like to take this discussion.
Despite the machinations on Wall Street, here on Main Street, times, as seemingly always, are tough. We have more will than wallet, and maybe that's where we should concentrate and let the side shows take a break for a moment.
Many Norwich homeowners across the city (present company included; my property taxes have gone up 45% in the eight years we own our home) feel they are at the end of their financial rope and insist the City Council hold the financial line, whatever that is being defined as on any particular day, with 'not one more cent' anywhere in the budget.
We're a funny lot, we really are (though it's probably hard to see the humor right now through the pain). We prefer problems that are familiar (and the more general the description of the problem, the better) rather than solutions or ideas that are not.
I have changed a lot in the nearly thirty-five years since I nad my family arrived here from Germany. And so has where I live, with about forty thousand others who've also had their share of changes. Sometimes change is hard to see, because it's subtle and gradual, and other times we choose to close our eyes because we are comfortable being blind.
Some of our Brave New World looks a lot like the old one that technology, access to tools, equality of opportunity, and enhanced diversity were all going to change. The gap between the promise and the performance has grown not only exponentially but also obscenely.
Everyone talks about 'the children,' like maybe that should be capitalized, but the reality is we've got more children having free or low-cost breakfast in schools than ever before because how we live with one another has shifted from when you and I were school-age.
We also have health clinics in schools because we need to have them somewhere and can't figure out where else they could be located. And that's just two examples that impact our municipal budget and have feck all to do with fire engines and who gets to drive them.
We've spent, literally as well as figuratively, a generation using government to accomplish programs that have little to do with why we created government in the first place, offering the argument to one another that 'someone has to do it!'
Unless and until we can agree to define and then refine those tasks our government should be doing and which ones are our responsibilities, we can hold budget hearings until the cows come home (and guess who'll pay the dairy subsidy?) and never fix the fundamental problems. And to finish my opening point, we'll continue to put out our political fires with gasoline and take solace that our mileage may vary, but sadly, never the outcome.
-bill kenny
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