Town Eating Day - Valley News (2/17/08)

As political controversy season nears here in Norwich, I'd like to issue a friendly challenge to the Valley News and your readers.

When the feathers start flying; as our worst-behaved neighbors and town officials begin to dominate the headlines, we'll have a choice. On the one hand, we can entertain the outrage-peddlers as they angle for headlines. We can continue to stoke the factional flames by lending them an audience, hoping they'll somehow learn to listen with humility and wisdom once they've chased their adversaries from the stage. Or we can refuse to play, demanding more of ourselves and our community to move beyond the scorched-earth tactics of recent years.

Last winter, a group of Norwich residents -- fed up with the state of politics in town -- began building an alternative approach. We held a day of events meant to complement Town Meeting -- tentatively called ""Get Off Our Duffs Day." We invited townspeople (and journalists) to a day meant as a celebration of the human scale of town government and small-town community.

The morning was spent in a series of break-out sessions focusing on individual volunteer town committees, boards, and commissions. The sessions are designed to break down the distance between these boards and the public by dedicating time for open dialogue without the agendas, deadlines and formality which so often stifle a free exchange of ideas. They also seek to promote transparency, giving townspeople an opportunity to learn about the duties and time commitment involved in serving on these volunteer boards, while providing board members a chance to solicit public opinion on issues which fall within their authority.

Following the morning sessions, a free hot lunch was provided in the school gym, allowing townspeople time to get to know neighbors they've seen around town but never met or follow up with town volunteers on conversations from the morning. After lunch, we held two general sessions, first with our school board, followed by a plenary session on our fire and police protection -- all lightning rods here in Norwich. These sessions explicitly addressed how our community should make decisions regarding these difficult issues, eschewing the headline-dominating debate focused entirely on "who" might be to blame and "why." While these sessions lacked volume and vitriol, they proved this community can address difficult issues in a deliberate and sensible manner.

Sadly, the event received no press coverage whatsoever. We understand the Valley News is in the business of selling papers. Faction and scandal sell papers and are even arguably newsworthy. But it's time for the Valley News to dig a bit deeper, using its pages to help our communities find constructive solutions to the real problems we face.

Your readers live in a region with a rich and storied tradition of self-reliance, where democracy still means not simply the right to vote, but also the corresponding duty to serve. Our communities are of a scale -- a human scale -- where bureaucracy remains the exception and citizenship means more than merely consuming government services. Our volunteer-based model of civil service -- and the subtle virtues that service fosters -- will only survive if we work to preserve it. That struggle, found to some degree in every town where the Valley News is delivered, is itself surely newsworthy.

So we're going to do it again this year. Renamed "Town Eating Day," we'll gather Saturday, March 1st, in Marion Cross Gym. We'll follow a similar format with some refinements we hope will help establish this day as an annual tradition here in Norwich. As "Town Eating" takes root, we hope it becomes a perennial antidote to the politics of outrage which have done so much to diminish Norwich town government this past decade. The day is open to all Norwich residents (and Valley News reporters). We hope to see you there.