Something To Vote For

There’s nothing better than an election to remind us that we are all a part of something bigger than ourselves. To be sure, in the voting booth, we express a personal preference, but if we have been paying attention, our choices are probably as much about our families, our communities, and our nation as they are about ourselves.

The picture of our collective future emerges on Election Day as a kind of political pointillism, taking the color and hue of our individual opinions and throwing them up on the canvas of democracy to paint a picture of who we are and who we want to become as a people. If we cast our votes in antipathy or even in anger, as we are encouraged to do by so many political attack ads, we cloud that picture with our own manipulated negative emotional responses. Our grand self-portrait is bound to be far more impressive, however, if we know what we are voting for rather than what we are voting against.

Fortunately, this year an issue has emerged that appears to be getting bipartisan support and emphasizes positive action over negative reaction. This week, Gov M. Jodi Rell created by executive order an Office of Responsible Growth within the state’s Office of Policy and Management to address suburban sprawl, which is sapping the economic vitality of Connecticut’s cities, clogging the highways with commuters, and consuming the state’s forests at a rate of 18 acres a day. Between 1985 and 2002, 119 square miles of open space were developed in Connecticut. Ms Rell’s Democratic opponent, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, has long been an advocate of “smart growth,” which emphasizes renewal of the existing infrastructure of cities, the expansion of mass transit opportunities, and reform of the state’s tax structure to lessen the reliance of towns and cities on property taxes for local priorities, including education.

Of course there are differences of approach and priority between the candidates on this issue, and given the stakes we wouldn’t be surprised to see the political marketers pull a negative ad or two out of those differences. But on Election Day, we need to make it clear to the eventual winner that the end of urban sprawl through smart growth is something we, as voters, favor — quite positively. Something much bigger than ourselves is at stake: the future character of Connecticut.