Eastbayri.com

With the optimism stirred by the start of a new year, here are a few Sakonnet/Westport wishes for 2012:

• That state, town — everybody — cease turning their backs on the misery that is life in Tiverton’s Bay Street neighborhood.

• That some ease up on their knee-jerk opposition to shellfish farms. One is operating off Portsmouth, another in the Westport River and hardly anybody notices.

• That operators of the Mount Hope Bridge come up with a smarter idea than tolls.

• That Tiverton’s new Financial Town Referendum really does bring peace and fair play to budgets (and that it’s not merely a devious way to cut the life out of town services).

• That local government rediscover the beauty of brevity. Prime candidates: Portsmouth ‘perpetual postponement’ Zoning Board; Tiverton ‘late, late show’ Town Council; Westport — after how many town meetings should one cease calling them “special.”

• That participants in Westport meetings realize that once the dust has cleared they are, after all, neighbors in one of the world’s nice places (with a property tax rate that is the envy of most towns around).

• That the Tiverton Yacht Club, which was there long before its neighbors, gets to rebuild what it had before the fire. Eight years? Outrageous.

• That Little Compton schoolchildren not have to wait until 9th grade to experience a proper school building.

• That these towns finally get real bike paths (that thing along Portsmouth’s Burma Road doesn’t count).

• That scrap dealers raise an eyebrow when people deliver bronze sculptures, manhole covers, railroad track etc. in the backs of pickup trucks (to be fair, a few dealers are diligent — others, not so much).

• That town/school unions grasp the fact that Rhode Island (which is losing population faster than any other state) is in this tax mess because the gold plated benefits they demand cannot be sustained (they need merely glance across the border into Westport and other Massachusetts towns for a dose of contract reality).

— That pensions were meant to help people through their golden years, not from their mid-fifties to support second careers or decades on the links.

— That a $600 contribution toward a $14,000 family health plan scarcely qualifies as “co-pay.”

Unlikely, yes, but long shots do happen — Tiverton library approval, Westport Harbor dredging, Sakonnet River Bridge more or less on schedule and budget, LNG sent packing ...

May 2012 bring more such glad tidings.