By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

The happenings that drive the news cycle are typically either something big that changes the lives of a few people or something incremental that affects many. Major news — something big that happens to many — is rarer.

The year 2008, however, is an exception. Going into it, we all knew it would be a big year, in part because of the pending election of a new president, governor and much of our council of state.

In Orange County, we entered the year in the midst of a serious drought and prepared for a somewhat less seismic but still significant shift in local politics and leadership, with a new chancellor search started, a state Senate race contested by two well-known and well-liked candidates and the board of county commissioners expanding from five to seven.

What most of us did not see early in the year were the clouds on the horizon. The national economy may not be in ruins, but it is in tatters. And even though the old bromide that here in Orange County we’re immune, or at least buffered, from downturns has been dutifully repeated, this community enters 2009 far less well off than a year ago, on the street as well as on paper.

Big decisions were made this year, among them the approval of new developments that will reshape the downtowns of Carrboro and Chapel Hill. The economy may delay or alter these, but the trend is clear — a denser, more populated and multi-story central business district is in the cards.

Other decisions affected the rural areas. One was the much-protested decision by the county to build a new waste transfer station near the White Cross community on N.C. 54. Another decision, this one by state water-quality officials, denied a request by the county for a local public hearing on the continued application of biosolids — a nice word for what comes out of sewage treatment plants — by the City of Burlington.

The university’s decision to seriously pursue a new airport to replace Horace Williams and the state Legislature’s decision to write into law that it must be in Orange County combined to set off alarms among wary rural residents, particularly those near relatively flat lands within a short drive to the hospital.

We spent all too much of 2008 in tears. The early-morning shooting on March 5 of UNC student body President Eve Carson wasn’t just another sad example that this community is a lot less safe than it appears. It drove town and campus into deep, profound mourning before the eyes of the world. Shame, anger and soul-searching followed. Carson was a vibrant, brilliant and dedicated woman, and her death weighed on all of us, especially community and campus leaders who knew her well.

In 2009, we will relive those events when the two young men accused in Carson’s kidnapping and murder go to trial.

It won’t be the only horrific, brutal killing to be replayed in a court of law. Six young men, most of them in their late teens, stand accused in the late-July killing of Joshua Bailey. The parents of one of those accused have been charged with assisting in the gruesome aftermath. With so many defendants, there are likely to be pleadings, and as a result we are going to learn more about this crime than we’d ever want to know.

The sudden loss of young people, some as victims of crime and most through accidental means, cast a pall over the year.

Still, the youth of this community also cast the brightest lights of the year when they showed what an energized, informed and dedicated generation can do in an electoral system that had for too long been characterized by ugly slugfests over handfuls of undecided voters. No attack ad could stem the tide of new voters, and on the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 5 Barack Obama was president-elect. Throughout much of the community, especially in traditionally African-American enclaves, there was a sense that change had indeed come.

The youth vote, and the thousands more who voted for the first time or the first time in a long time, significantly altered this state’s politics and, along with Virginia’s similar shift, changed the common — and wrong-headed — view that the south was a monolithic, predictable entity. Call us the New New South.

Much of what we saw this year will carry over to the next.

The challenges facing new administrations at the national, state and county level are tremendous. There are still optimists, but the drumbeat of bad news in the economy is not going to cease with the coming of January. (Anticipate a very loud thud when end-of-year 401k and 403b statements are opened in about two weeks.)

Also carrying over to next year are continued disagreements over the waste transfer station, the impact of tight budgets, the negotiations between local governments over the Carolina North project and the airport controversy.

The year ahead may not be quite as intense as the one just past, but in many ways ‘08 set the stage and the tone for ’09. If past is prologue, then take a deep breath after you toast the New Year. And buckle up.