I come to you by way of The News & Observer, where I covered real estate and development on the business desk for the past five years. It was a rewarding job, and I think it has prepared me well for this one.

Most of my coverage focused on growth -- more jobs, more people, more traffic, more shopping centers. It's a story I'm sure you know well, living in the fastest-growing section of this fast-growing region, and it's just one of the big-picture stories we'll continue to bring you each week in our pages.

Our goals at the Cary News and Southwest Wake News are to be your best source for community news - and to use the resources of The N&O to keep you up to date with regional developments you may have missed.

Our staff writers will be contributing to The N&O when big news breaks in our part of the county. We'll also focus on our Web sites, carynews.com and southwestwakenews.com, to update the news as it happens. We'll use our staff's deep knowledge of the region to provide local angles on regional and national news that has impact on your lives.

Take crime for instance. Last week, we learned that while crime rates dropped across North Carolina in 2008 compared with the year before, crime climbed overall in the Triangle's three largest cities.

Data released by Attorney General Roy Cooper shows that crime was up 9 percent in Cary, which is often ranked among the nation's safest cities.

Some of the most common burglaries occur at construction sites and from residential garages that are left open.

So in today's edition, we made sure you could hear from Pat Bazemore, the town's police chief. In a guest column, she shares with us how Cary's police department is changing the way it fights crime.

We also followed up with commentary from readers about David Bowden, the Cary man -- the "sign guy" -- who is in a spat with the town over road work near his home.

A community newspaper is also the place you'll find updates about schools and clubs, about new businesses opening, about achievements of people who may live on your street. We'll keep providing all of that.

I hope you'll join in - by sending us information about interesting and newsworthy goings-on, by writing letters to the editor and by reading us closely.

If there's an issue you think we need to cover more closely, let us know.

And if there's something you like -- or, for that matter, don't like -- about the Cary News or the Southwest Wake News, let us know.