ITEM PHOTO BY SPENSER HASAK
Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, left, signs Marblehead’s community compact as Chair of the Marblehead Board of Selectmen Jackie Belf-Becker and other town officials look on.
There was a time not too long ago when living in a small town was a lifetime experience that included attending schools, running a local business or working for one and occasionally going to Town Hall to fill out paperwork or pick up permits.
The rhythms of small town life still ebb and flow in Marblehead, but Tuesday’s visit by Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito demonstrates how no community is immune to global concerns. Polito has been touring the state signing community compacts aimed at helping local officials take on modernization or improvement projects that lie just beyond their ability to tackle.
These “best practices” partnerships, in Marblehead’s case, provide opportunities for the town to address climate change and cybersecurity challenges. It’s worth pausing to consider that climate change and cybersecurity weren’t even words found in everyday vocabulary 20 years ago.
Today, they represent global concerns and challenges that have found their way into the little corner of the world Marblehead occupies. Polito and state Rep. Lori Ehrlich announced the town will receive $17,000 to “inventory resources and assess vulnerabilities” Marblehead potentially faces as a coastal community.
This Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness money is intended to help town officials kick off efforts to determine how Marblehead can “increase resilience” in the face of future climate change affecting oceans.
Talk about thinking globally and acting locally. A town government primarily focused on keeping streets patrolled and snow cleared is pitching in to help tackle a problem that even dwarfs the combined efforts of nations.
Polito announced the state is also giving the town money to hire a consultant to perform a cyber security on town computers. It’s hard to conclude which threat — climate change or cyber intrusions — is scarier. But both threats overwhelm the resources and capabilities of small town government.
No one is asking Marblehead or any community to go it alone against melting icebergs and cyberbullies. The logic behind the Commonwealth Compact (Marblehead is the 288th out of 351 Massachusetts communities to sign the Compact) is that communities equipped with added resources supplied by the state can become pieces in a mosaic spelling out a collective solution for combating global problems and more localized challenges.
There is no guarantee this many-little-pieces-spell-out-one-big-answer formula is going to work but it’s worth a try. After all, Marblehead’s donation to the American Revolution — Glover’s Regiment — made a contribution to freedom that echoes across the centuries. Ehrlich put it well when she said on Tuesday, “There is something very special about this partnership.”