Insight

FOR MCCLELLAN: A late Christmas present in the form of an ambitious and far-reaching economic development plan from the hired guns at Angelou Economics.

FOR THE JOINT POWERS AUTHORITY, WHICH IS CHARGED WITH TRANSFORMING MCCLELLAN: Wisdom to implement a marketing plan that tells the world of the benefits of moving to the former Army base.

FOR THE JOINT POWERS AUTHORITY, PART 2: Public officials willing to serve on the board.

FOR MOTORISTS STUCK ON QUINTARD: A rapid completion of the Eastern Parkway that would connect Interstate 20 in Oxford to McClellan Boulevard and Highway 431.

FOR LOCALLY ELECTED LEADERS: A plan to raise the remaining $30 million that would finish the Eastern Parkway. It’s past time for locals to stop waiting on the federal government to build this road. We’ll use it. We’ll benefit from it. It’s time we paid for it.

FOR THE CITY OF OXFORD: To see the tension between Mayor Leon Smith and certain members of the City Council ease. To realize that anything-goes development is, in the end, a loser as sprawl gives way to congested streets which gives way to unhappy residents who vote with their feet.

FOR COUNTY SPORTS FANS: A resumption of the Anniston-Oxford football series that was abruptly cancelled following a shooting incident outside the stadium this year. To see well-intentioned people of both towns find a way to restart the series.

FOR CALHOUN COUNTY: A drop in the homicide rate. We can’t go through another year with 17 homicides in a county that normally does not reach double digits.

FOR THE LOCAL BANKING INDUSTRY: Successfully weathering the makeover of the county’s financial institutions. Consider what happened in 2006: the mergers of SouthTrust-Wachovia and Regions-AmSouth, the prominent emergence of Noble Bank & Trust and even the starting of another new local institution, Southern States Bank. If you don’t think Calhoun County’s banking climate is shifting, you’re not paying attention.

FOR SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS: Wisdom in dealing with overcrowding concerns at schools in Oxford and other areas of growth, namely Saks, Alexandria and White Plains. The county’s population isn’t rising, but those schools’ numbers certainly are.

FOR COUNTY SCHOOLS: Wisdom in finding a replacement for Calhoun County School System Superintendent Jacky Sparks, who is retiring at the end of this school year. Here’s hoping a revamped school board with four freshmen members gets up to speed quickly; how that board operates — and the decisions it makes — will be critical for the county system’s 9,000 students in 2007.

FOR ANNISTON CITY SCHOOLS: Bold leadership, something hard to find in 2006. With the district needing to overcome lackluster academic achievement and dwindling financial reserves now is the time for decisive action.

FOR CALHOUN COUNTY: Development of a countywide public education foundation that would serve as a critical ally of public schools.

FOR DEVELOPERS: Lots of smiles as substantial, upscale residential developments mushroom (as it has been) all along the Highway 431 corridor, bringing more outsiders into Alexandria and Ohatchee.

FOR THE ARTS SCENE: A further groundswell of support of the county’s entertainment, cultural and outdoor activities. If 2006 showed us anything, it is that Calhoun Countians will sustain quality pro-jects — the Knox Concert Series, Music at McClellan, the Noble Street Music Festival and the Cheaha Challenge, for instance — if they are well-run, well-funded and well-organized. And fun, too.

FOR BOB RILEY: Success. In a word, let us resolve to see the governor boldly adhere to his second-term plans. Particularly, let us see Riley pull this state onto a more progressive path that brings Alabama residents a more fair tax system, greater local control and better schools.

FOR THE ALABAMA LEGISLATURE: The maturity to look past petty election-year squabbles. Alabamians care less about who’s in charge than they do about who can improve their state.

FOR THE SPECIAL INTEREST BIG MULES: To look beyond their own self-interests and realize a more progressive state means a better chance at success for everyone.

FOR ALFA, AEA AND ALABAMA ARISE: Sit down together and come up with a plan that would tax Alabamians fairly, which adequately supports education and human services in the state. Then all three lobby for it in the Legislature.

FOR BETH CHAPMAN: To make a lot of money when she, as Alabama’s new secretary of state, sells the luxury SUV her predecessor Nancy Worley infamously bought with state funds.

FOR GAMBLING FRIENDS AND FOES: The realization that Alabamians, or at least a sizable percentage of us, like to wager. Alabama residents keep the lotteries of three states — Georgia, Florida and Tennessee — in business. They also contribute to Mississippi’s casinos and, until the state Supreme Court ruled them illegal, kept Alabama’s loophole gambling emporiums in business. Best to acknowledge this fact, fix the state’s pitiful system of capturing revenue and then look toward establishing a lottery or some other form of wagering.

FOR PRESIDENT BUSH: The resolve and wisdom to make peace.

FOR CONGRESS: To make peace if the former can’t find the stomach to.

FOR THE NATION: To demand peace if the above two can’t find the stomach to.

FOR THE U.S. COURTS: To remain faithful to the Constitution in the face of the administration’s authoritarian lurches in the so-called war on terror.

FOR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Prove to the world that the United States is not an aggressor nation. To find new diplomatic skills to end not only the current wars and suffering around the world, but to head off the disasters in the making, including those involving North Korea, Ethiopia and Somalia and not to neglect those most oppressed places in the world, including the ones in the Middle East, but also Darfur, Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe and many others.

FOR PRESIDENT BUSH: Return to the true meaning of compassionate conservatism. To return to the spirit of bipartisanship Gov. Bush practiced with the Texas statehouse. To end the practice of corporate welfare and the weakening of the social safety net through the eviscerating of federal agencies. To no longer offer tax relief in a time of war. To halt runaway federal budget deficits.

FOR THE PRESIDENT’S ADVISERS: To find the courage to speak truth to power, to have the gumption to explain to the president the reality, to advise him to be open, to leave stubbornness behind, to read the newspaper.

TO THE MEMBERS OF OUR ARMED FORCES: To come home safely and soon.

TO MEMBERS OF CONGRESS: To go to work on the business of the nation, not of the party. To be pragmatic, to practice the art of problem-solving. To remember that the constituents are the boss, not the lobbyists.

NASA AND THE NATION: To build a permanent base on the Moon for the further exploration of the solar system.

FOR BELIEVERS OF IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS: To see Southern people, black and white, develop the self-confidence — a belief in the self-worth of each race gained through traveling a hard road through history — so that they could display the symbols of their story in a way that draws curiosity rather than inciting anger. It is probably an impossible dream, because we are human; we hold our symbols close to our hearts, and demean the totems of the other race, in order to feed our own egos.