Looking forward to the fresh start and opportunities of a new year, we offer our wish list for 2015:

• Build the campus. Overcome objections and work together to solve the challenges so we can all enjoy the myriad benefits of a four-year Oregon State University-Cascades Campus in our midst. It’s frustrating that a small group of critics has managed to stall construction; it would be a tragedy if the stall dragged on.

• Preserve the heart of Mirror Pond. After years of meeting and talking, we’re still being asked to approve or disapprove a plan without knowing its costs. The new scheme is appealing, but it vastly complicates and elongates the process. We need to act before the pond turns into a wetlands, building on the emerging compromise between those who want the pond exactly as it is and those who want a natural free-flowing river.

• Resolve Cover Oregon’s future. Although folding the failed agency’s duties into other state departments sounds smart, lawmakers must be sure that doesn’t cause individuals to lose subsidies after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the issue. Settlement must also be achieved in the state’s legal battle with Oracle, where legal fees are mounting.

• Finish the Bridge Creek Pipeline Replacement Project. The new Bend City Council must respect the investments already made and proceed to preserve a full dual-source system. The city surely did stumble early on by failing to engage the public, but it has regained its footing and made the right choices going forward.

• Solve the traffic congestion at the north end of Bend. While we’ve been contemplating a variety of plans, the region keeps growing and traffic flow deteriorates. The north needs the kind of extensive revamp now underway to the south as the city continues to grow beyond the original limits of the parkway.

• Add balance to state education reform. Gov. John Kitzhaber has launched aggressive projects with positive goals, including his focus on early childhood education and the effort to get 80 percent of students to get some post-secondary education and the rest to earn a high school diploma. The reforms need constructive critiques to ensure other educational values aren’t ignored.

• Get it right with pot. This is far more complicated than legalized-marijuana advocates acknowledge. There’s much to learn from Colorado and Washington state, which have taken different approaches and encountered different challenges. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission has been charged with designing and implementing the regulations, with possession becoming legal in July, and retail sales starting in 2016. Of particular concern is controlling potency, managing edibles and protecting children. The governor should keep a close eye on the process, as he failed to do with Cover Oregon.

• Thin the forests. Preventing devastating wildfires and creating jobs go together, but progress has been hampered by distrust among loggers, environmentalists and the Forest Service. Study and try to duplicate the successes at collaboration, such as the project in John Day that provided a lifeline to the Malheur Lumber Co. mill and the town of 1,700 residents.

• Give the Common Core State Standards and Smarter Balanced assessments a chance. It’s a process that could vastly improve our nation’s education system, but it will need adjustments as we gain experience with it. Criticism has come from a variety of directions, starting with conservatives who saw the standards as a government takeover of education. Later, teachers said they didn’t get enough preparation. Educators and parents worry students will spend too much time on testing and be discouraged by high failure rates. The furor has obscured the core value of higher standards shared across the nation.

• Provide funding for an additional judge for the Deschutes Circuit Court. As the region has grown, the court has struggled to meet the need despite extensive efforts at designing more efficient systems.

• Reject a moat of private land around the proposed Cathedral Rock Wilderness. The plan solves a number of problems, including consolidating public land in what is now a patchwork of public and private property and giving the public access to a stretch of the John Day River. But a ribbon of private land surrounds the wilderness area. The public needs easy access to its own lands.

• Keep Cylvia Hayes out of the governor’s office. The governor’s fiancée should have no official state role. Recent revelations have shown she failed to draw appropriate distinctions between her public role and her private consulting business.

• Recruit superior educational leaders for Central Oregon Community College and Bend-La Pine Schools. Longtime COCC President Jim Middleton retired at the end of last year, and the search has identified several finalists. Bend-La Pine Superintendent Ron Wilkinson resigned effective at the end of the current school year. Both institutions have been superbly led and deserve continued excellence at the top.