Lincoln's Log

I have two recurring nightmares. The first is missing a final exam while still in college. The second is losing all my town privileges because I failed to prove my residency in Greenwich.

Is it my imagination, or are we compelled to prove our residency in more ways than required by any other municipality? It’s the virtual chastity belt around Greenwich that keeps the unwashed from Port Chester, Stamford and, God forbid, The Bronx from soiling our beaches, stealing from our schools and polluting our parks. When I applied to store my canoe at Greenwich Point, I had to prove my residency just to get on the waiting list. It didn’t seem to matter to the marine division that I already had a marine use permit, a mooring permit for my sailboat, and fees that I paid annually to store my boat, and to maintain a boat locker. So back to the house I went, in search of the CL&P bill from last month and various sundry other annoying evidence of an over-subscribed lifestyle, to sate the beast of Field Point Road.

The latest was the requirement that all incoming kindergarten and ninth graders schlepp down to the Havermeyer Building to prove they are residents before they can partake in Greenwich’s prized educational system which is struggling to best inner city schools in Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford for bragging rights as having better Connecticut Mastery Test scores.

Then there is the library card, the membership at the Griff, tennis card, and the granddady of them all: The Greenwich Beach Card – all requiring separate proofs of residency.

I have a simple suggestion: Can’t we do this just once a year? Compile the required documents once and submit them to a single authority once and have all the agencies in the town access that data base when they need POR. Think of all the time we would save each agency and department. Think of the reduction in the chances that we misplace our auto registration, our passports every time we have to cycle those documents through the cuisinart of the multiple POR requirements.

Of course, if it were up to me, I’d dispense with the nonsense totally. My bet is that there actually are very few non-residents dying to steal our services. And even if there are some, I’d welcome the diversity.

But I’d settle for streamlining the process for now …