I don't have a particular politics, especially when we're talking about my local zip code. When cornered, I will admit to being a Relentless Pragmatist.
I think if you look at the correspondence between the Founders, the documents they used to create this nation through to The Federalist Papers, they weren't too keen on ivory tower concepts, preferring down-to-earth as they built this Republic.
I don't think I'm alone in NOT seeing government, at any level, as either the solution to every problem or the obstacle to finding solutions.
I don't pretend to know if it's us or the times in which we live, but we (and I mean all of us across the country and not just here in The Rose City) suffer from selective memory while also lacking the capacity to forgive.
Not even a year ago, we elected a substantially different City Council and Mayor than we had previously. One of the promises each of those elected had made while a candidate was to do what he/she felt best to advance Norwich economically, politically, emotionally, and socially. That promise is the critical component in making our government work.
I leave to your judgment what has happened, or not happened, beyond our City limits. I have just the right size brain to think locally, and so that's what I do.
All of us have to believe those whom we elected to the City Council or the Board of Education will do the best they can for all of us, to the best of their ability, always (or at least more of the time than they won't).
Many of us voted for the very people whom, in recent months, we've had less than kind thoughts and words about for their attempts to master economic (and other) challenges none of us could have possibly imagined.
Too often we've become so partisan, even in much of what goes on in our State Capitol, that I wonder what's gotten into us. We're spectators, actually consumers, of political campaigns where a candidate decides 'for me to look good, my opponent needs to look bad,' and no issues of substance are ever debated or even mentioned.
As awful as that is, in terms of tone and tenor of a campaign, it's even worse for us, those who must decide whom we support and choose a direction when so many others are leading us in circles.
This election, we are choosing a Governor, a Congressional representative, and populating a whole new statehouse, upper and lower chamber, as well as literally dozens of other offices and deciding local ballot initiatives.
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| Photo by Norwich Bulletin |
Here in Norwich, it will be a yes or no vote to bond 55 million dollars for a new police station downtown to replace one that's been inadequate for about the last thirty years.
This is not the first time around the block on this initiative. Every eight to ten years we try to pass this referendum item, for usually ten million dollars more than the last time, and we never succeed (because 'it costs so much!'). But we all see the need for a new police station. Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
We just keep kicking the can down the road and hoping (maybe) that the Mayor will have a Powerball scratchoff ticket that pays for it all rather than bite the bullet and do what we know we should do. I fear we won't, and then we'll wonder why the next time the proposal comes up it costs more money. On this issue, for me the choice is simple, especially since I already know what happens when we do nothing.
-bill kenny
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