2012 may be remembered as a year without much winter, and too much presidential politics. But there was also a great deal of big movement on a local level, from the promise of casino gambling now pending at the old Nevele resort site to revived efforts from the Rondout Valley Growers Association and a new bar — the community's first in years — in the middle of Pine Bush.

Of course, there were also controversies and fights a-plenty, from major drug busts in Ellenville and Pine Bush to charges of bullying, anti-Semitism, and even arson against some of our students.

The year 2012 may very well be remembered as a year that saw the stirrings of a rebirth of the Ellenville/Wawarsing area.

A judge decided in February to allow Michael Treanor to purchase the 500+-acre Nevele resort property for $6.7 million. Nevele Investors LLC now has big plans for a family-friendly resort and spa, highlighted by a gaming casino, and is in the midst of their environmental review process, with a draft impact statement expected next spring. However, all that work will go for naught if a state referendum denies non-tribal gaming, at which point Treanor and his group will walk away from the project.

Wal-Mart became a visible reality on Nov. 28 when town officials gladly cut the ribbon on a new building on Wal-Mart's property that houses the Napanoch Post Office and a liquor store. This paves the way for demolition of the Napanoch Valley Mall structure and construction of the 132,000-square-foot store by September 2013.

Along with raised hopes came dashed dreams. In March, the Western Mohegan Tribe, owners of the former Tamarack Lodge resort, filed for bankruptcy protection to stave off a sheriff's auction of its 255-acre property. A month later, fire destroyed more than 40 buildings and a supposed buyer of part of the property was accused of starting it all by burning brush. The tribe tried again to file for bankruptcy in November, but was denied.

Meanwhile, water from the leaking Delaware Aqueduct continues to ruin homes built above the tunnel. Ulster County is using more than $7 million from the state and New York City to buy the structures, which will be demolished and the land left undeveloped.

Ellenville schoolteachers had an up-and-down year. The 2012-2013 school budget originally slashed 21 teaching positions; a state-aid bump later restored nine. In September, the remaining teachers agreed to a new contract that gives them 1.5-percent raises through the 2015-16 year. The former contract expired in 2009.

Speaking of money, the town will save more than a million dollars over the next three years after Ulster County agreed to take back the cost of the Safety Net program; if the county hadn't taken back some costs, the town itself might have needed to go begging.

In Rochester, the year began and ended with the memories of fires which ravaged historic and familiar landmarks. Just prior to ringing in 2012, one of the few remaining one-room schoolhouses in the area was gutted when three neighbor boys started a fire with a lighter and were unable to extinguish it. The Rainbow Diner on Route 209 also succumbed to flames in July, and as of this writing it's still not clear if and when the owners will be able to have the site cleaned up due to asbestos-abatement laws.

Water was also front and center, with the town board passing a ban on hydrofracking for natural gas after a few fits and starts. The first attempt, by resolution, was deemed ineffectual at best, so the town held extensive public hearings on a new law that would forbid the practice and all related activities within the town's borders.

Marbletown had a year of new ideas taking off. The Transition Marbletown movement spawned an alternative health clinic, which packs the community center one night a month. The first Common Grounds festival was held to great acclaim, and a new private high school, Sun River School, announced that it would begin classes in September, 2013. The school will use space at the Marbletown Multi-Arts Center for classrooms, as well as using Ashokan Center in Olivebridge as a field campus.

After considerable criticism from local officials and praise from activists for the time it took, the DEC issued its list of conditions to approve permits for the Williams Lake project in Rosendale. The plans to convert the old hotel property into a resort community with hotel, townhouses, and private residents nearly brought neighbors to blows at one meeting. Proponents say the project could bring more jobs and tax revenues to the town, but critics say that it's too risky to build such a large project for a number of environmental reasons, including endangered Indiana bat habitats and concerns about wetlands in the area.

Rosendale's town board has other worries, including being forced to close the town pool because repairs are unaffordable, and figuring out how to pay for much-needed upgrades in its water and sewer systems.

Concerns about the impacts of the closure of Rosendale Elementary turned around towards the end of the year as the supervisors of Rosendale, Rochester, and Marbletown discussed a possible deal for the district to allow the building to be turned into a government center. The school was closed as the Rondout Valley School District struggled to keep within the new tax cap legislation.

Reconfiguring the district in the wake of the closure led to busing concerns when it became clear fourth graders would be housed in the old middle school building, meaning they'd be riding buses with high schoolers. The situation was complicated by a bullying incident which led to an arrest; and a promise to implement a bus safety program has yet to be realized. However, the district did pass a policy allowing drug-sniffing dogs to periodically sniff at lockers and unattended bags.

In Pine Bush, the year will go down for Pine Bush Football's taking of the Section IX Division AA crown. Not to be outdone, Pine Bush Boys' Swimming won their fourth sectional title in a row, and the volleyball team advanced their dynastic sequence to eleven titles.

It was an election year and in May, board president Roseanne Sullivan was first counted out, and then back in, to her seat on the Pine Bush School District due to a polling error. In November, Sullivan won a narrow victory over R.J. Smith, appointed earlier in the year, for the 18th Legislative seat, again with an error at the polls.

The November election was also the first that put the Town of Crawford into the strange "Catskill Snake" 101st Assembly District, one of several new configurations resulting from the year's redistricting moves up in Albany.

The UFO Festival returned for a second go round, but the pressure for changes in the format sent the original organizers out the airlock. And Buddhists were on people's minds. Residents near Thompson Ridge were up in arms about a proposed temple while Cragsmoor residents questioned a temple retreat center planned for their community.

Watchtower's problem with long buried printing waste surfaced briefly, but the DEC has still not completed its analysis of findings. The waste was apparently dug up and spread on fields.

Meanwhile, the area was in the midst of unseen and almost invisible assaults and regulatory changes. The NY DEC's remapping of wetlands in the Wallkill River watershed is now beginning to show up in the nightmares of developers as they come to planning boards for approvals and re-approvals of building projects. What was once dry land is now considered wet. And above our heads, and in our soil, dire threats to our forests and streams are in motion via Emerald Ash Borers, Didymo in our streams, and Japanese Knotweed and Stilt Grass running wild across the landscape, strangling native plants and even poisoning the soil. Could any of this have to do with the fact that 2012 seems set to close out as the warmest year on record, warmer even than 1998?

The biggest story from Mamakating in 2012 was the formation of the Rural Community Coalition, a grassroots movement born in protest of local government. The RCC took on three main issues during this past year. The first was the high-density housing project on Winterton Road, called the Villages at Chestnut Ridge by developer Shalom Lamm. Local residents are afraid that once the 396 units are complete and occupied, the scenic rural character of Bloomingburg will be irrevocably altered. This project was fully approved before the RCC was formed, however, and the coalition was unable to prevent it from going forward. Complicating matters, instances of anti-Semitism came up — as it did in a lawsuit's charges against the Pine Bush School District at year's end — during several massively-attended and loudly cantankerous public meetings.

Also hot in Mamakating was proposed rezoning of four Planned Office zones to allow more commercial and industrial uses. Some of the land affected by the rezoning is directly adjacent to village and hamlet centers, leading residents to charge that rezoning would further damage the rural appeal of the area. Because of major public opposition to it, the proposal was withdrawn temporarily by the board, but the issue is to be revisited in 2013.

Finally, members of the RCC started a campaign for consideration of dissolution for the Village of Bloomingburg. More than enough signatures were collected to necessitate a referendum on the issue, but village officials said there were "hundreds" of errors on the petition and disqualified it without any clarification about what those errors might be. This issue will also be revisited in 2013, and will likely be litigated in the courts... and at the ballot box come November.

Seems like 2013's already shaping up to be a big one. Happy New Year!