EDITORIAL: High hopes for new year

As the year draws to a close and we look back on 2007, it’s a time to reflect on the successes and the failures, the highs and lows of Laguna Beach.

The year was marked by some shocking, but isolated, incidents that we won’t go into here because they are detailed elsewhere.

While animal beheadings, multiple bank robberies and police shootings at a posh hotel captured a lot of attention, the real news is that Bluebird Canyon was rebuilt and a new day is dawning for those who lost so much in the 2005 landslide.

The year, indeed, ends on a hopeful, high note of better things in the future.

In mid-December, concrete was being poured for a new senior and community center that will give support and sustenance to elders and families alike.

A new city maintenance yard will open in January at the ACT V remote parking lot site, and the city employee lot will be turned into public parking in the first tangible evidence of a long-awaited Village Entrance project.

Here at the Coastline Pilot, we are also looking forward to a period of building and rebuilding.

Our newspaper has had a change in ownership. We are very proud to now be an employee-owned business, along with the rest of the Los Angeles Times and the huge Tribune Company, of which we are a part.

We are still learning what changes, opportunities and new responsibilities may be in store under our new leader, Sam Zell, but there is a fine feeling of accomplishment — and empowerment — here at the Coastline Pilot, probably the smallest entity in the Tribune empire.

To start the ball rolling in our new venture, we have some resolutions for 2008.

We resolve:

To continue to be fair to our public officials, while holding them to the strictest levels of scrutiny;

To publish fewer letters to the editor by the same people;

To uphold the highest journalistic standards;

To not allow minority voices to be shouted down;

To give voice to as many people as can be accommodated in our pages;

To be mindful that this is a community of artists, and that creativity and new ideas must be fostered; and last but not least,

To always keep in mind that we are writing history as it happens.

Happy New Year!