Commuter traffic was heavy and backed up on all the ramps at 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 13, as people headed home early to try to beat the snow.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

JANUARY: CICILLINE IN CONTROL OF COUNCIL

Coming off a landslide victory in November, Mayor David N. Cicilline was sworn in to a second term in office in January. His second term began with a luxury he lacked in his first: control of the City Council.

The November election led to the loss of several council members loyal to former President John J. Lombardi and the introduction of new members who backed Cicilline’s pick for president, longtime Councilman Peter S. Mancini. Mancini heads a slim 8-to-7 Cicilline-friendly majority on the all-Democrat council, although it is not a concrete one: on occasion, members of Cicilline’s majority have crossed the proverbial aisle and sided with Lombardi’s minority on important votes.

In his first year as president, Mancini has taken a back seat in public to the council’s majority leader, Terrence M. Hassett, and its finance chairman, John J. Igliozzi, who have aggressively pushed for pension reform and have emerged as the biggest voices on the council.

Also noteworthy: Plan to close West Broadway Elementary School sets off months-long furor; West Broadway eventually closes.

FEBRUARY: PARKING WARS HEAT UP

With millions in unpaid parking fines left on the streets, Cicilline came up with a plan to grab them: hire a New Jersey company, PayLock, to roam the streets with a scanner, putting an immobilizing boot on cars that have too many parking tickets — two tickets totaling more than $235 in fines. Drivers would have to pay all their back tickets and a booting fine before they could unlock their car. Some of the money goes to PayLock, the rest to the city.

But the threshold for booting proved too low for the public to tolerate and after an initial outcry, it was raised to five tickets.

Booting began in May and the city also hired more meter checkers and stepped up enforcement efforts. In the spring and summer, city business owners began to agitate, arguing that the city was handing out tickets for laws that it had never enforced before, like those banning parking fewerthan 25 feet from the curb.

Also, city residents agitated for an end to the overnight parking ban, pushing the mayor’s office to introduce pilot programs in the Valley neighborhood and on West Broadway. The Valley plan is on hold, but the West Broadway plan appears to be moving forward.

Also noteworthy: City opens Botanical Gardens at Roger Williams Park, the largest in New England.

MARCH: RAPPERS WITH GANG TIES BARRED

The Dunkin’ Donuts Center was set to host a hip-hop fiesta March 29 with rappers L’il Wayne, Birdman, Young Jeezy and Jim Jones slated to perform. But Providence police didn’t like the sound of that — Jones, they said, is a member of the national Bloods street gang, and L’il Wayne and Birdman have gang ties.

Providence, they said, is aligned with the Bloods’ national rival, the Crips. If a Bloods concert came here, they feared violence.

After a wrangle over license restrictions managing the performers’ time in the city, the city pulled the plug on the concert license.

DJ Rukiz, a promoter who had booked a post-concert party at The Complex nightclub, slammed the city for a bias against hip-hop.

“They’ve lost track of reality,” he said. “They don’t understand the younger generation listens to this music.”

APRIL: SUB TAKES UNPLANNED DIVE

When a submarine heads underwater, it’s usually doing something right. But when the Juliett 484, a Soviet-era ballistic missile submarine on display as a museum ship in Providence Harbor, capsized and sank in April, it made national headlines.

The 47-year-old submarine turned on its side and settled halfway under the water after a storm on April 16. The museum’s directors said they would take their time refloating it; it was only partially submerged and wasn’t going to get any worse, they thought.

“It’s not like the sub is going to float out into the channel. It’s not going anywhere,” Frank Lennon, the museum director, said the day after it capsized.

The next day, the submarine turned on its side and sank completely.

But the submarine’s sinking wasn’t a total disaster: the military saw a training opportunity for its dive and salvage teams, which arrived in September for two weeks of exploring, securing and stabilizing the submarine. They plan to return in the spring and try to refloat the submarine and the military is footing the bill. But the chances are poor that the waterlogged old boat could be reopened as a museum.

Also noteworthy: The mayors of Providence and Rome talk about a 2009 WaterFire in the Italian capital. And, the city decides to nearly wipe out the pension of Kathleen Parsons, a parks employee who embezzled money from the city.

MAY: MASONIC TEMPLE OPENS AS A HOTEL

It only took 81 years, but in May, the Masonic Temple finally opened, blossoming into the popular Renaissance Hotel.

The huge structure, which was started in 1926 as a temple for the Masons but never finished, was gutted by Sage Hospitality Corp. of Denver and a 272-room hotel was built inside the temple’s remaining three walls. The completion cost $100 million, part of which was financed with state and federal historic tax credits.

Over its eight decades of emptiness, various schemes were considered for the temple, and it became a mecca for graffiti artists from around the region to exhibit.

The walls of the hotel’s restaurant, Temple Downtown, are adorned with graffiti in homage to that slice of the building’s past.

Also noteworthy: Mayor David N. Cicilline posts huge fundraising numbers, fueling talk that he may push for the governor’s office in 2010.

JUNE: LIBRARY, CITY END STALEMATE

City residents have always taken their library service for granted. But many had no idea that Providence’s libraries are not run by the city and are actually a private nonprofit with its own board of directors. It provides library services without a contract with the city. In return, the city makes a sizable annual contribution to the library’s operating costs.

When the library and its board agree with the city and its mayor over policy and staffing, there is no reason for conflict, and the unconventional relationship is more or less invisible. When they disagree, problems like those of the last three years result, as the two sides haggled over the city’s future contribution and how much control the mayor would have over the library.

Over the three years that the two sides tussled over their future relationship, the back-and-forth included the threat of closing much of the branch library system, the formation of several task forces and neighborhood groups, the layoff of library personnel and the potential sale of the library’s greatest asset, the 107-year-old Central Library building.

In June, the library and Cicilline hammered out their first written contract. The one-year contract has two renewable years and increased the city’s contribution to the libraries by $300,000, to $3.3 million. It also allowed the library to keep its board of trustees free of additional public appointments.

The library is still figuring out how to return significant library service to the Washington Park neighborhood,

Also noteworthy: Neighbors growl at one another and the city over the site of a dog park at the Dexter Training Ground.

JULY: BUDGET OPTIMISM, TAX TRAUMA

When he delivered his budget address in May, Mayor David N. Cicilline made a utopian prediction: no tax raise will be necessary. He made that based on the premise that the state would allow him to levy new fees that would raise revenue in lieu of taxes.

Three months later, that plan was a distant memory, and Cicilline and the City Council were raising taxes by the maximum allowable by law.

Not only did the General Assembly barely consider giving Cicilline what he wanted, it then took the rare step of reducing statewide education aid below the levels recommended by Governor Carcieri’s budget. All this left Providence struggling to fill a $27.8 million budget hole in July, which it closed with $10 million in cuts and the sale of $4.5 million in city property.

With the state facing a major budget crunch, all involved say that Providence is in for more of the same this year.

THE RETURN OF BUDDY CIANCI JR.

The return of Providence’s iconic criminally convicted former mayor, Buddy Cianci, from federal prison in New Jersey after more than four years set off a media maelstrom and a buzz at the street level. What, residents wondered, would the former mayor’s return mean — and would he wear his trademark toupee?

From prison, Cianci went to a halfway house in Boston. After an initial work-release assignment at the boutique Fifteen Beacon Hotel, Cianci returned to work in Rhode Island at fellow former Mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr.’s condo development, the 903 Residences. He lived with his nephew in East Greenwich.

He sentence ended July 28 and he made his public return to Providence at a WaterFire, greeting well-wishers from the terrace of CafÉ Nuovo. He had left his toupee at home.

“I’m so happy to be back, I’m so happy to be home, it’s been a long 4½ years,” Cianci said that night.

Cianci quickly settled into a daily radio talk show gig on WPRO 630 AM, flanked by longtime radio talker Ron St. Pierre, and soon set about needling his successor. He has secured a job on television as chief political analyst for WLNE-TV, the ABC affiliate. Cianci has said that he is making “far beyond” six figures for his media jobs.

Also noteworthy: 18-year-old Darren Reagans is stabbed to death outside La Rumba nightclub July 4 weekend, leading to the closing of the club.

AUGUST: IN ONE MONTH, 29 SHOOTINGS

After a quiet first six months, Providence exploded with gunfire this summer, peaking in August with 29 shootings that month. Amazingly, only two people were killed in August, Latin Kings gang leader Vidal “Lucky” Rodriguez and Marc Quintal, who the police said was involved in a drug deal gone bad.

The police responded to the shootings by flooding the streets with officers, and with the end of the warm weather, the violence abated.

“Providence is still an extremely safe city,” said Deputy Police Chief Paul J. Kennedy “We are an urban city and with that comes a certain level of crime. You have to realize that in this business you do have upticks in violence.”

Providence has 14 homicides this year, up from 11 in 2006. Both numbers are well below the levels of a decade ago.

Also noteworthy: Demolition of the police and fire station Fire Station in La Salle Square

SEPTEMBER: TROUBLE FLARES IN CITY-FIRE UNION RELATIONSHIP

The long-simmering contract conflict between the city’s firefighters’ union and Mayor David N. Cicilline boiled over in September. Firefighters seeking better contract terms threatened to picket a $50,000 Homeland Security disaster drill in Providence, likely spelling doom for the drill, as other departments would be loath to cross their picket line.

At the last minute, the union backed down from demonstrating during the drill at the Rhode Island Convention Center, allowing its members and about 200 firefighters from 10 other cities and towns to take part.

The firefighters also threatened to picket a Hillary Clinton appearance in Rhode Island unless Cicilline resigned as local co-chairman of her presidential campaign and promised not to attend. Cicilline complied, but Clinton canceled her appearance anyway.

Also noteworthy: Construction unions picketing the Capitol Cove condo development downtown get into fights with subcontractors until the city brokers a deal that boots many of the contractors off the project. but ends the struggle.

OCTOBER: FEDS TELL HEAD START TO STOP

Parents taking their children to Providence’s Head Start programs were greeted with a rude surprise the morning of Oct. 24: the city’s Head Start program had been shut down, its federal funding pulled and handed to a temporary agency. Initially, stunned parents were told that the shutdown resulted from a lack of background checks on employees and educating children in areas not cleared for classroom use by the fire marshal. But the agency’s former director alleged far deeper problems in the program, from widespread nepotism to intimidation of employees by members of the board of directors.

Members of the board acknowledged that some of the concerns about Head Start as a place where directors found back-office jobs for friends were justified.

“It was a jobs fair, but the teachers were qualified,” said board member Kenneth Brown.

The program reopened under federal control after three days. Three employees were fired. Providence Head Start lost its appeal to win back its federal money.

Also noteworthy: Security officers discover a group of artists living in a secret apartment inside Providence Place mall.

NOVEMBER: HERITAGE MUSEUM, DYNAMO HOUSE PROJECT MOVES AHEAD

The long-delayed Heritage Harbor Museum project held its groundbreaking Nov. 8 as part of the larger Dynamo House redevelopment at the old power plant, known as South Street Station of Narragansett Electric Co.

It was originally envisioned that the museum would fill the entire complex, but after running into a decade’s worth of financial difficulties in getting the project off the ground, a scaled-back Heritage Harbor will now be a small part of a much larger $150-million mixed-use development by Baltimore Developer Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse.

Struever Bros. intends to build an aloft brand hotel, restaurant and office space for lease in 419,000 square feet of the complex. That will leave 55,000 square feet for the museum

Heritage Harbor, which owns the site, transferred title to the property to Struever Bros., which will divide the property as a condominium and eventually deed back the museum segment to Heritage Harbor.

The developers hope to have the entire space open for use by early 2010.

Also noteworthy: Refurbished Dunkin’ Donuts Center reopens after numerous cost overruns.

DECEMBER: SNOW PARALYZES PROVIDENCE, FALLOUT CLOBBERS EXECUTIVE STAFFS

A fierce midday snowfall dumped a half-foot of snow on Providence Dec. 13, but that was only the beginning of the public relations storm that would come for city and state leaders.

With the highways backed up, city streets were soon a parking lot, and tales of motorists taking five hours or longer to get home to one of Providence’s immediate suburbs were common. Worse still, by 9 p.m. more than 60 school buses were still out on city streets, loaded with schoolchildren. Once Police Chief Dean Esserman realized that the children were stranded, he sent police out in four-wheel drive vehicles to rescue them.

In the aftermath, Cicilline fired Leo Messier, the chief of the Emergency Management Agency, and suspended Deputy School Superintendent Tomas Hanna without pay. At the state level, Governor Carcieri canned state EMA head Robert Warren.

But Cicilline and School Supt. Donnie Evans were slammed by City Council members and the public for their handling of the crisis and everyone held their breath as a second storm was set to follow days later; after much hand-wringing, that storm led to none of the problems that plagued the city and the state days earlier.

Also noteworthy: City appeals firefighters’ contract arbitration award, challenges placement of state fire union head Frank Montanaro on arbitration panel for his connections to Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.

dbarbari@projo.com