While, as Yogi Berra once observed, it’s not over until it’s over, the three-year battle between the Berlin Fire Company and the Town of Berlin has reached a détente and appears to be on its way toward closure.
While that, of course, is a good thing, it’s even more important to Berlin’s residents, who are dependent on both for their health, welfare and safety.
It would be counterproductive at this point to revisit the various circumstances of the episode or to argue about who was right or wrong in a mess that divided the community.
Further, there is nothing to be gained by either the town or the company dragging this history behind them as they enter into future discussions.
What the community needs is two entities that can address the needs and requirements of each other without being adversarial about it or being inflexible without good reason.
Some pride will have to be dispensed within the months ahead because the fire company needs local government’s support and local government, financially secure though it might be, can’t field a fire department of its own and pursue its other goals and objectives with any hope of accomplishment.
No one expects a group hug or even smiles and handshakes all around, but residents should expect that consideration of their needs will come first in all interactions between the company and town.
To be sure, there were no real winners arising out of past disputes and certainly, as is the case with any divorce, pinning blame on one side or the other doesn’t make the breakup any less painful or an eventual reconciliation any easier.
Suffice to say that it’s time to move on and to make a clean start of it by acknowledging that whatever may have happened has no bearing now on what’s good for the community.