A Reality Check
By Kathleen Amoia and Gwenne Lally 
January 29, 2007

Perhaps Karl Rove has come to Killingworth, waving around his particular version of “1984” like poisoned pixie dust. How else to explain the recent “Republican Report”?

How can the Selectman’s office have been so busy with proactive initiatives if they were never planned? To name just a few: closing the sludge lagoons, purchasing property for playing fields and passive recreation, reconfiguring the intersections of Route 81 at Green Hill Road and Alder’s Bridge Road, and complying with a State mandate to replace the Reservoir Road bridge. The only way the Report could allude to a few of these accomplishments (and there are many more as well) is because they were planned for and acted upon under the leadership of the present Democratic administration.

Even a brief review of just one of the major issues hit upon in the Report reveals a lot of planning. There is a well thought-out conceptual plan for the Wettish property that was created through the coordinated and non-partisan efforts of the Field Study Committee, the Park and Recreation Commission, a steering committee and individual volunteers—coordination that was initiated by this Democratic administration. That same administration went on to enlist the support of Democratic State Senator Ed Meyer and Democratic State Representative Brian O’Connor in transferring a $500,000 STEAP grant that Killingworth was in danger of losing due to years of inaction on the project for which it was originally awarded. As a result, the money is now available for the development of recreation fields on the Wettish parcel.

Yes, Democrats do not always agree. That is one of the things that set us apart from the rigorous, often lock-step discipline of the Republican Party. Democracy is messy. But in Killingworth, disagreement has not impeded progress on many different fronts. This has been particularly true in making desperately needed emergency repairs to a deteriorating infrastructure that suffers from years of neglect under Republican administrations.  

Decorum and respect turn up or not in the calculated written word as well as in the heat of the moment. Let’s stick to the facts of the issues and spare our town the divisiveness of the Rovian approach. Criticism is welcome but not at the expense of truth.
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Visit the KDTC website at www.killingworth.dems.info