Email Script Year

I'm working my way through all programs in our instance to add email script for year. I'm using $date.get('yyyy') from this community discussion, though Marketo support said it may cause email approval issues, so test drive $date.getYear() as well.

My question is that depending on the campaign, my team is cloning programs/emails or creating new. I know they won't remember to add script to each new program, and I don't want 2016 in any emails for the new year. In order to catch every email, does it make sense to both of the following:

1. Add script to all existing programs and input into existing emails.
2. Change year to 2017 in email templates in Design Studio. This would catch new program/email when user forgets to add script to new program.

I'm sure I'm overthinking this, so I'm open to any suggestions.