Resolutions for My Town

Resolutions are a tricky business, easy to make and easier to break. I am the worst. Instead of accomplishing a bit of spit-and-polish, I aim for the major overhaul and fail miserably—and annually. I bet I am the only no-show member at 24-Hour Fitness who has a lifetime membership. How’s that for good intentions?
But hey, I’m still all for self-improvement, my own and everybody else’s. Since I’m quitting resolutions until at least January 2004, I will have to focus my need to improve elsewhere, and what do you know? There’s a big fat coastal city right outside my front door in need of a New Year’s suggestion or two. Here are mine:

1. From now on, let’s be really, really careful when it comes to NAMES. We should arm ourselves with the knowledge that we must have very bad name karma or perhaps our feng shui on the harbor revitalization is inharmonious. I hope the word “Dana Point” doesn’t add up to some unlucky number. Maybe we should switch to “Laguna Point” just to be safe. It would make things easier for our local hotels. I don’t know the answer, but this has been a cesspool of a problem in the past. Some possible ground rules: Don’t pay for any new names, even if there is a boat attached. If the rest of this town is as memory-impaired as I, they won’t remember the name anyway. By the same token, don’t pay to banish old ones. Don’t offend, embarrass and humiliate citizens for being…top-drawer citizens. Stick with what we can pronounce—you know, Spanish, as in Capistrano by the Sea, not Bal Harbour. It’s not unlike naming children. Think it through.
2. Don’t rile the natives. Live and let live and all that jazz. Don’t go hauling off people’s homes just because they have wheels under them. The homes may be mobile but the people are rooted. Leave them be. We’ve already lost a nearby historic structure only to be replaced by a chain link fence and pipe dreams of a big-talking developer. Do we really want to clear a big plot of land so Home Depot can give us a closer look?
3. Poop happens. At least when it comes to dogs. It’s time to put some fangs in our dog excrement ordinances and get those piles off our pavement and parks, and shoes, and kids’ hands…My theory is that 95% of the petrifying poop comes from 5% of the dogs. Those sweet, innocent dogs belong to chronic pigs, not people. Book em’ Dano.
4. Focus on what’s important. Now that we have confirmed by satellite the exact stats on each and every one of the 10,000 trees in Dana Point, we can monitor them closely. Who knows when some undesirable seed may drift in on a Santa Ana wind? Do we want an explosion of illegal saplings all fighting for a tiny plot of our soil? It’s sickening. We better start on the blades of grass next.
5. Promote and protect local business. I have taken this to heart, spreading my husband’s hard earned dollars around Dana Point with the zeal of a missionary (for which I get no thanks from him.) I cannot do my job when concrete barricades bar me for months at a time from making left turns on PCH. How can the mom and pops survive street strangulation? They deserve better.
6. Combine our smallpox vaccine and radiation pill and make them available at the freeway onramp signal at Stonehill and the 5 so we can all wait in a familiar line. Better yet, we can hire the homeless entrenched at our ready-for-my-makeover harbor entrance intersection and have them pass out the “terrorist protection” to stuck motorists idling all the way out over the bridge.
7. Instead of spending $250,000 on one bathroom at Creekside Park, spend $25,000 each on ten bathrooms at strategic points at the harbor. Better yet, just buy each DP family a membership to Dana West or DP yacht clubs, so we can access the sparkling clean boater facilities (and park our cars too).
8. Most of all, let’s think—twice--before we act. Instead of doing damage control caused by the ripples of our wake, let’s just slow down the boat.

So maybe Dana Point will fulfill all my resolutions for 2003. Then this town can follow my husband’s lead and refuse to make resolutions. As he reminds me every January, “Why mess with perfection?”