Illegitimi non Carborundum

If your mind is made up, then don't let yourself get confused with facts about the proposal to bond fifty-five million dollars to construct a downtown police station in Norwich, Connecticut. 

The voters rejected a similar proposal, albeit without having a specific location, for forty million dollars about a decade ago. The discussion at the last City Council meeting precipitated some lively, and borderline illiterate comments on that News Service for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Think for Themselves, Facebook.

The station, finished in the late Seventies while lacking a disco ball, was very much a project of its time-built in the moment and for the moment with little thought given to expanding requirements and future needs and is inadequate according to the people who work there, whom, I assume should know. The Facebook Did My Own Research crowd seem to be unmoved. 

Many of the (mostly anonymous) Facebook experts' comments mention how high their property taxes are while opposing any initiative to make Norwich more attractive (to include downtown police station).  

So many 'not now!' comments. Okay. If not now, then when? 

For decades, the police like other aspects of the municipal workforce were encouraged to improvise and adapt with their present resources whenever budget hearings rolled around. Norwich never has the money for what we need but finds the money for what we want and too often, creates the need after the fact (yes, I'm speaking about the Intermodal Transportation Center among other built projects in search of purposes both in downtown and beyond).

We're talking a lot of money here and we should think about we want and what we'll get for those dollars. In order for the police station to play any significant role in the rebirth of Chelsea and a renaissance across Norwich, let's hear a detailed vision by our elected leaders of what they see our city looking like in a decade, in a score and in a generation. In a perfect world we could all benefit from a dialogue with our elected officials and police station advocates to help us make an informed decision. 

The exigent circumstances that precipitated the original need for a new station have only kept growing for the past decade that we've been 'discussing' this. Closing our eyes to a problem doesn't solve it. 

No one wins unless everyone wins and, in this town, we're still caught up in a zero sum 'for me to look good, you need to look bad' loop that will destroy us all. And then we wonder why we fail....

We can do better, and today (actually this week and I'm not sure why), because I'm feeling revitalized, I refuse to allow us to go down without a fight or at least an intelligent conversation. Illegitimi non carborundum. do NOT let the bastards grind you down.
-bill kenny