Looking Ahead: Notes On A New Year

Looking Ahead: Notes on a New Year

I’ve been thinking about clocks lately. How arbitrary they are. Midnight on December 31st doesn’t really change anything—the same problems we went to bed with, we wake up with on January 1st.
And yet. There’s something we need about the ritual  of turning the page, isn’t there? The permission to believe that what comes next might be different from what came before.

2025 tested that belief. For a lot of us.

The economy found its footing in ways the forecasters predicted and ways they didn’t. Inflation cooled, but not enough for the family at the grocery store doing math in their head before they reach the register. The AI revolution kept accelerating—creating efficiencies, yes, but also a quiet anxiety about what we’re becoming when machines do more of our thinking. We gained tools. I’m not sure we gained wisdom about how to use them.

In public health, we saw breakthroughs that deserve celebration—new HIV prevention options that could transform lives, childhood cancer deaths continuing to fall—and we saw trust in institutions erode in ways that make the next crisis harder to fight. The homicide rate dropped significantly in cities that had seen so much pain. That’s worth noticing. Worth saying out loud. Because good news has a way of getting lost.

What I’m looking forward to in 2026 is mostly small. Local. The places where connection actually lives.

I’m looking forward to communities continuing to figure out how to take care of each other when the systems above them can’t or won’t. Mutual aid networks. Neighbors knowing neighbors. The nonprofit sector—despite the funding whiplash and the burnout epidemic among its workers—keeps showing up. That’s not nothing. That’s everything, actually.

I’m looking forward to the arts doing what they do in uncertain times: telling the truth, holding a mirror up, reminding us we’re not alone in our confusion. Theater, especially. There’s something about sitting in a dark room with strangers, watching people work out their humanity in real time, that still matters. Maybe more now than ever.

And I’m looking forward to watching the next generation of local leaders step into roles that will test them. City councils. School boards. Community nonprofits . That’s where democracy actually lives—not in the fever dreams of cable news, but in zoning meetings and budget hearings and the hard work of showing up.

What am I wary of?

The impulse to retreat. When the world feels overwhelming, there’s a pull toward the private—my family, my bubble, my curated feed. Understandable.  But also dangerous. Democracies don’t die from dramatic coups nearly as often as they die from citizens who stop paying attention, stop participating, stop believing their voice matters.

I’m wary of the way technology is fragmenting our sense of shared reality. When we can’t agree on basic facts, we can’t solve problems together. That’s not a partisan observation—it’s a structural one.

And I’m wary of cynicism masquerading as sophistication. The easiest pose in the world is the knowing shrug, the assumption that nothing will ever change. I spent seven years in local government. I know what’s possible when people decide to show up. It’s not perfect. It’s almost never fast. But it’s real, and it matters.

So here’s what I say as we step into 2026: Stay specific. The antidote to despair isn’t optimism—it’s action. And action happens in specifics. One meeting. One relationship. One hard conversation that you’ve been avoiding.

The clock is arbitrary. But we’re not. Happy New Year.
Notes:

Condolences to the family of Dick Hasko who passed December 22.

Mr. Hasko was the long time director of environmental services for the City of Delray Beach.

I had the pleasure of working with him for seven years. I always enjoyed his company and thought Dick did an exemplary job.

Mr.  Hasko  was widely credited with starting the city’s reclaimed water program and also stepped up in a major way during the many hurricanes we faced from 2004-2006. His intimate knowledge of our aging drainage system allowed him to deftly manage the storms making sure our lift systems worked despite the stress of the storms.

He will be missed.

I was remiss in not mentioning the loss of Betty Diggans a few weeks back.

A legendary Delray businesswoman and downtown advocate, Ms. Diggans was widely known and universally loved. She will be remembered and missed by all who knew and loved her.