Commentary: Some New Year’s resolutions — for others

For many of us, the advent of a new year is accompanied by a list of resolutions. The end of the calendar year has always been a time for review, and the beginning of a new one gets us thinking about goals for the future. It’s the time when we are most likely to contemplate specific changes we want, or need, and most likely to make and resolve to follow through on those changes.
This year, money was the focus of most Americans’ New Year’s resolutions. According to a recent telephone survey by TD Ameritrade and Opinion Research Corp., more people have resolved to increase savings in 2010 (63 percent) than have set the more traditional goals of exercising (62 percent), eating better (60 percent) and losing weight (46 percent).
But then, according to another survey (of 12,000 people who make resolutions regularly), a whopping 45 percent of us don’t even maintain our decisions into February. Just 20 percent actually stay on track for six months or more, and not 10 percent of our New Year’s resolutions are actually achieved.
I usually steer clear of the whole exercise. It seems like rationalization to put off a desired change until the New Year; and if the goal or change isn’t deep-seated, a resolution is a road to failure and frustration.
This year, I did put together a list of resolutions for others, however. I look at it as a public service, because — no matter how obvious the need — these people and agencies aren’t likely to do it themselves. Ever.
Here’s what I came up with:
• Friends and neighbors: It’s time to take down the Christmas lights.
• Local water districts: Stop browbeating us about drought and water shortages. Yes, of course it’s always good to conserve, but the water problems we have do not stem from residents washing cars or watering the garden. The problem is water district management. We live in a county with a small population. There are two rivers, numerous year-round streams, creeks, and subsurface tributaries, easy access to seawater for desalination, and (except in the Pajaro area) a healthy aquifer. County-wide average annual rainfall is 30 inches — that’s almost twice what is received in any surrounding county. The San Lorenzo Valley often sees a rainforest-like total of 60 inches, and even in a dry year, we receive 35 to 45 inches of rain. That’s a wealth of resources. What is it that water managers are paid for? If they are unwilling or unable to actually manage, to make the decisions and take the actions necessary to provide the community with water, they should stop telling the county that it’s OK to allow new construction, new businesses and other modifications.
• County supervisors: Stop being petulant about the tough fiscal conditions. Prioritize the damn budget. Instead of hacking up mainstream programs, cut back or eliminate pet projects and the narrow-focused nonprofits that have been created and funded without (and often in spite of) public input. It’s disingenuous to maintain programs that constituents did not agree to (or even know about) at the expense of more broad-based community services.
• State legislators: Grow up! Stop trying to divide the electorate by issuing punitive taxes on folks who might not get much sympathy, like smokers, motorcyclists and millionaires. Stop nickel-and-diming us with “fees” to pay for services that should be covered with tax money. Fix the budget. Prioritize. Do not authorize any new funding. We all know you’re in bed with special interests and are stooges for your parties — you’re welcome to sell your soul for whatever you can get, but at least pretend to represent those who elect you.
• Federal legislators: See above. Stop shaming the noble office you hold.
• Presidential cabinet officials: Eliminate from your lexicon the phrase “Mistakes were made, but steps have been taken to see that it doesn’t happen again.” It’s already happened again, several times. None of us can get out of anything as trivial as a parking ticket with that lame excuse, yet government officials routinely and repeatedly use it to explain how there will be no consequences for egregious mismanagement and mistakes on a very large and very dangerous scale. In the real world, people are getting fired for flirting in the workplace, but no one is fired for the Hurricane Katrina fiasco or for ignoring specific warnings about the underwear bomber on Flight 253 or the Jordanian suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents or intelligence about the specific attackers and the threat of airplanes as weapons before Sept. 11. Accountability — it’s a heck of a concept.
• President Obama: We know your plate is full, but stand up and fight, harder, for a universal health care bill — one that actually provides accessible, universal coverage, not something that requires citizens to spend more money with the insurance companies bent on covering only the healthy. It’s important to all of us, and it was a centerpiece of your campaign. Demonstrate commitment.
• OK, then, as for myself: I’ll get my weight down to 190, be more open and accessible to friends and family, stop beating the dog and eat less red meat.
• Steve Bailey, who also writes a recreation column for the Press-Banner, lives in Boulder Creek. He accepts e-mail at

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