Our View: On this special day, we resolve ...

We asked Opinion Page contributors – editors, columnists, visiting editors – to come up with some New Year’s resolutions for our area. A few took it seriously. Others recognize the value of advice – especially to those who haven’t sought it. Here’s what we got:

To eat more almonds, especially if they start making them less salty – those nuts are using enough water as it is. – Mike Dunbar, Opinion Page Editor

To improve well-drilling techniques to a point that they can drill through the earth and take water from other countries and leave our aquifer alone. – Claudia Newcorn, columnist

To learn the difference between go-karts and shopping carts and explain to the city of Modesto how one really isn’t anything like the other. – Dunbar

To hold our noses while driving near Del Rio and to demand olfactory justice for the residents of Modesto’s toniest neighborhood. Perhaps they could ask for advice from those in west Modesto who lived for decades with the stench of the rendering plant before it was torn down. – Dunbar

To write only nice, non-controversial columns and start a series of stories on the many ways that bicycle riders contribute to an orderly society. – Dick Hagerty, columnist

To stop wondering why the city of Modesto always leaves at least one tree infested with mistletoe on every block after pruning. – John McGrath, visiting editor

To keep Modesto Mayor Garrad Marsh in his own city-planning pond, lest his name become mud. – Jerry Fouts, visiting editor

To open a gym called “Resolutions” for those making fresh promises to work out more frequently. By the end of February, when the gym empties, we can turn it into a bar. – Steve Taylor, columnist

To take the ACE train to 49ers games as soon as it arrives in Modesto ... or as soon as the 49ers start looking like a playoff team again, whichever comes first. – Dunbar

To pile more dirt on top of the Sierra mountains so the trees and animal species migrating to higher levels to escape climate change will have somewhere to go – or build a ladder to the sky. – Newcorn

To help Oakdale Irrigation District create a water policy that doesn’t suck, as in groundwater. – Fouts

To continue prodding legislators to pass a law allowing California communities to make their own rules about pet ownership, rules that recognize there is a difference between pit bulls and Chihuahuas. – Dunbar

To not mind being prodded by the hundreds of email messages (including such wonderfully colorful language) from pit-bull owners who feel pet-ownership rules shouldn’t make any distinctions between dogs that can kill people and those that might inflict injuries only to exposed ankles. – Dunbar

To shush residents who skipped their civic duty if they complain about this decision, that choice or whatever regulation that gets passed; then to remind them to get off their rumps for the next election. – Newcorn

To get a pet salmon. That might be the only way the species can survive, because all the rivers in our region are getting warmer every year and salmon die in water higher than 72 degrees. – Dunbar

To suggest The Modesto Bee move to Australia so its political view would finally be to the right of someone. – Fouts

To be nicer to politicians, public officials, elected representatives, candidates and even lobbyists ... when they do something to deserve it. – Dunbar

This story was originally published December 31, 2014 at 11:31 PM with the headline "Our View: On this special day, we resolve ...."