Happy New Year! Yes, it's that time again, amazing how it flies. Along with the fireworks, toasts and sparkly hats, there is another end-of-the-year tradition that we here at The Observer have been working on-the yearly Top Ten. Looking back on 2007, taking that big overview that so often the daily rush does not give us time to enjoy, we realized that it has been quite an eventful year here in our little corner of the world. Those events have included some very exciting highs, we found-and more often than we would prefer, some quite saddening lows.

Again, reassessment and the county budget topped our Top Ten. Last year's Top Ten issue was actually pushed into the New Year as reporting on that topic kept hold of center stage. That pace continued through the first two months of the year as County Council made decisions about what direction to go-and citizens voiced their opinions of those decisions.

There were some hard choices to make and events that were quite sobering to go back and rehash-most glaringly tragic deaths, and the first murders our county has seen in more than two years. We had some amazing business news in 2007 though, two large industries moving in and the county's largest employer, Louis Rich, undergoing a massive expansion in both labor and size.

Another story making a recurrence on our year in review is that of downtown developer Ralph Liscio and Newberry Realty. However, last year it was taking note of all the changes that Liscio and his partners brought to the storefronts of Main Street Newberry. This year it was a much more fraught turn of events that brought them to the list as the developers headed to court to dissolve their relationship, rental clients debated who to give monthly checks to and others just plain wondered what this would mean for the latest renaissance downtown.

Rounding out the list were the firing of Acting Prosperity Police Chief Scott Wilson by virtue of the large amount of interest shown in the ongoing story and the fact that Boundary Street Elementary School and Whitmire Community School will be forced by federal education law to offer school choice starting this coming school term, something that potentially affects a large segment of the county population.

We repeat, there were some hard choices to make. The initial list of outstanding potential stories was at least double the final 10. And some very worthy candidates were knocked out as we held our annual newsroom debate. Consider for one, Dixie Youth winning the state championships and going to the national dance in Alabama. That was a huge story, touching many people, those who went, those who cheered the players on, even those who debated the appropriateness of Prosperity Town Council voting to give the team some travel money. However, the Dixie Youth story made it to the Top Ten on our sports pages, and we simply wanted to give another front page story a chance. Other stories we noted, but just could not fit, included the deployment of the 218th, the passing of Israel Brooks Jr., an anonymous donor giving significant funding to the new library building, the Frogman of Prosperity and the continuing questions over increasing numbers of gall bladder surgeries among Whitmire's children. And that is just a sampling. It was an eventful year. We are just so thankful to have spent it all with you.