With the seating of John Zaragoza as its newest supervisor, Ventura County is launching into a new era.

Gone is the contentious and uncooperative John Flynn, whose last term was marked by infighting and a mean-spirited effort to derail progress on a number of fronts.

The region’s largest county — and its most fiscally sound — now represents a broad section of business, consumer and environmental interests, and it holds out the promise of getting a lot of work done on Channel Islands Harbor, the environment and infrastructure.

It was fitting that the new Board of Supervisors started 2009 with the inauguration of a plan to cut greenhouse emissions and build three cost-effective solar projects at public facilities. A new day is dawning for Ventura County, and that’s not all bad.

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