Another year has passed, and The Bethlehem Press has been happy to share in our community’s trials and triumphs. Each week we bring you stories about our local government, places and events of interest, and people you probably know as friends and neighbors.

Here are highlights of items we brought you in 2018:

January

• As the nation contends with conflicting views of immigrants, Congressman Charlie Dent meets with business owners and undocumented youngsters to discuss the likely negative impact of losing farm labor and “Dreamers.”

• Former Northampton County Council member Lamont McClure is sworn in as county’s eighth executive since the inception of the Home Rule Charter in 1978.

• Governor Tom Wolf declares statewide disaster emergency in fighting the escalating opioid crisis.

• Keystone Canna Remedies opens on Stefko Boulevard, becoming the first medical marijuana site in Pennsylvania.

February

• Two-and-a-half years of protests, arguments and negotiations ends when the Bethlehem Authority comes to a deal with PennEast Pipeline Co. about building a massive gas pipeline across thousands of acres of the authority’s watershed.

• Southside groups discuss impact of ending statewide gerrymandering and resettlement of Puerto Rico citizens fleeing the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

• Pleasant Valley mourns death of 1986 graduate Chris Hixon, who was killed while working as athletic director at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS, one of 17 students and staff members to die in the Feb. 14 mass shooting.

March

• Paige Van Wirt is appointed to city council to fill the seat of resigned Eric Evans, who accepted a city job. Van Wirt had amassed 1,700 votes as a write-in candidate during the election.

• Freemansburg’s Gerald Yob, at 88, who began as a borough council member and spent 36 years as mayor, returns to his council roots.

• Northampton County District Attorney’s office charges two men with the 2017 killing of 19-year-old Teayahe Glover, a Southside resident. Gang members allegedly targeted Glover for cooperating with police during an earlier investigation.

• Local high school students join a nationwide walkout and other activities both to mourn the Marjory Stoneman Douglass victims and protest gun violence. Bethlehem school officials allowed the walkouts as brief, peaceful demonstrations.

April

• Celebration for the release of the movie “Getting Grace,” filmed in the Lehigh Valley by star, writer and producer Daniel Roebuck, a Bethlehem Catholic HS graduate, who was present for the festivities.

• Rep. Charlie Dent (R-15) announces he is resigning the following month. He served in the Pennsylvania and federal houses since 1991 as a vocal moderate. He cited new job opportunities and criticism of the presidential administration and its ardent followers for his early retirement.

• The Borough of Bath is permitted to leave its partnership with Hanover and Lower Nazareth townships for coverage by Colonial Regional Police more than a year before its contract expired.

May

• A young man, Tyrell Michael Homes, is allegedly stabbed and left burning alive in a large trash container at a Westside apartment complex in late April. Police later report this homicide was perpetrated by members of a small local gang involved in drug sales.

• Lehigh County Commissioners derail own agenda in growing partisan disputes

• The city acquires the two-year-old Labrador Silver, who is highly trained for arson investigations, able to sniff out chemicals and accelerants. She’s also an adorable friendly face for fire safety community outreach.

June

• Local educators join the Pennsylvania School Board Association in publicly condemning Senate Bill 2, which provides for a form of school voucher, saying it is an unnecessary burned designed to undermine public schools.

• Council introduces, and later adopts, ordinance prohibiting conversion therapy within the city.

• A new Community Wellness Center opens at 502 E. Fourth St., in conjunction with the city’s Hispanic Southside Center.

• Amid national backlash of migrant children separated from their families at the county’s southern border, we learn KidsPeace in Fountain Hill is hosting about a dozen, and though they are comfortable, an immigrant youth advocacy lawyer says, they are traumatized emotionally.

July

• St. Luke’s University Hospitals relatively new Anderson site breaks ground on still more expansions, including a Women & Babies Pavilion and a helipad, which will contribute to nearly doubling the facilities at the Bethlehem Township campus.

• Former longtime city council member Jean Belinski is laid to rest at 83.

• Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, Pennsylvania’s most senior DA, calls for the results of a statewide grand jury investigation into Catholic Church misconduct to be made public. It reveals decades of alleged clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups across the state, involving more than 300 priests and 1,000 victims, leading to outrage locally, nationwide and as far as The Vatican. Similar investigations are launched or ongoing across the country and beyond.

• Royce Atkins, 25, is sentenced to four to 10 years in prison for the hit-and-run death of nine-year-old Darius Condash on Schoenersville Road in 2015.

August

• Musikfest, the country’s largest free music festival, celebrates its 35th year.

• Northampton County’s Hanover Township joins nearly 300 other counties and municipal bodies statewide calling for gerrymandering reform in Harrisburg. With progress impossible in the government, the state supreme court eventually steps in and redraws Pennsylvania congressional districts evenly.

• Bethlehem’s beloved Mounted Unit, four police horses used to patrol the city’s downtowns and large public events, has a new home. They are cared for by about 25 local volunteers, whose time and energy save their fellow taxpayers nearly $400,000 in expenses since 2014.

September

• The Allentown Diocese opens The Kolbe Academy, a high school specifically for youth suffering from drug and alcohol addiction, the first Catholic institution of its kind, on Bridle Path Road in Bethlehem.

• The Borough of Hellertown honors Robert and Victoria Hero upon the closure of Hero Electric store on Main Street after 54 years.

• ArtsQuest announces plan to expand its Banana Factory arts facility.

October

• Tom Nolan, a Bethlehem Township council member for decades, dies at 76 of leukemia.

• Lehigh County Humane Society rescues 65 beagles from an Upper Saucon Township home.

• Northampton Community College offers a community class on pumpkin carving.

November

• City council endures an hourslong meeting as residents use public comment periods to demand more transparency, using technology, damage done to residential areas because of “spot zoning,” and the consequences of a wintertime homeless shelter.

• Touchstone Theatre premiers a play about S. Charles Seckelman, known as the “king of Bethlehem firemen,” depicting him using horse-drawn carriages to battle blazes in the 1880s.

• National mid-term elections weigh heavily in favor of Democrats; Susan Wild wins Charlie Dent’s empty 15th District seat, which will be redistricted into Pa.’s Seventh Congressional District in 2019.

December

• Nine-year-old Brooklyn Pronovich visits the Bethlehem mayor and police chief to donate $1,205 raeised at her summer lemonade stand to support the city’s four-member K9 unit.

• The historic century-old Grace Mansion on West Fourth Street is approved for exterior renovations, and the new owner says the building will be converted into apartments.

• Bethlehem emergency shelters offer refuge to the homeless during harsh winter weather, and those who work, volunteer and stay there are described as ‘family.’