Hot on the trail of the expected New Year’s Day hangover is sure to be the flimsy New Year’s resolutions which will be broken almost as soon as they are made.

          Though this city’s population is comprised of many wildly diverse factions, there should be one common thread running through the resolutions of each: a genuine respect for and understanding of the rights of their neighbors to live, learn and love in this city.

          If such tolerance and goodwill could exist among two local cliques in particular, this town will only strengthen its quest to be a world class urban center made up of local neighborhoods where friendship and love run deep.

          Those two cliques are longtime residents who have loved the city since birth and new residents who share that same affection but, through no fault of their own, lack the decades of devotion of the older residents.

          For the long-time residents, the working class ethnic white neighborhoods they grew up in have disappeared and become the habitats of 50-year-old college professors and their elementary school-aged children.

Triple-deckers have become ritzy condos and pick-up football games have been expelled from the parking lots of uptight businesses. Certainly this city has lost a certain charm and sense of community with these changes and it is easy to see why longtime residents can be angry at such losses.

          But what’s done is done and there is no going back to the days of triple-deckers in West Somerville going on the market for less than $50,000. The rest of the world has discovered this cozy little corner of greater Boston and is clamoring for an address inside of it. So there is little to do for the longtime residents but to accept the new residents as warmly as they bid farewell to the neighbors who were priced out of their old digs.

          If that is done, veteran Somervillians will find that their new neighbors share many of the same values and traditions as their own families and that there is no good reason to view a neighbor with suspicion just because of the sandals on his feet and the slice of whole grain wheat zucchini egg bread in his hand.

          Meanwhile, new residents should understand that, if handled in an inappropriate manner, their entrance into town could mean a decrease in community. Sure, they have the right to live anywhere they want but if they think being a good neighbor means keeping the noise down and recycling on every other Tuesday they are sadly mistaken.

Most new residents are reasonable, supremely intelligent people with an enormous amount to offer their communities. In the New Year, those assets should be devoted to building a greater sense of neighborhood in Somerville before the old charms of community solidarity disappear and this becomes a city where people are trapped in a hellish ping-pong game between work and home.

But regardless of how cheaply you bought your home or what kind of zucchini egg bread you prefer, Happy New Year neighbor, from The Somerville News!