It was a year where what was old — an unsolved Christmastime murder, unresolved controversies at Langley City Hall, lingering lawsuits — was new again. On the dawn of a new year, the Record looks back at the news that made headlines in 2011.

JANUARY

Gov. Christine Gregoire announced a plan to form a regional ferry district that would raise more money for the ferry system through a new government entity that could raise taxes in the nine counties served by Washington State Ferries.

Gregoire floated the idea as the solution to the ferry system’s continuing budget woes, but the proposal was immediately met with a bipartisan iceberg.

Local lawmakers and others were chilly to the idea, to say the least.

“This just creates another layer of government,” said Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, chairwoman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “We already have too much government in this state.”

Around-the-clock emergency pumping in the upper Glendale Creek area near Clinton helped spare Glendale Beach from the threat of flooding.

The water levels on both sides of private Frog Water Road, which had increased to more than 32 million gallons this month because of a collapsed culvert, dropped more than two feet since county public works crews began pumping Jan. 5.

County officials said they were worried water surging over the road would have overwhelmed two beaver dams downstream, which could have caused another flooding event for the tiny beach community of Glendale.

Organizers of the Whidbey Island Mudder said they would take the year off while trying to find a new location for the off-road bicycle race.

Founder Robert Frey said the Mudder, a South End fixture for 11 years, was left high and dry after its last race this past spring when the private property it had been using became slated for development.

Frey said he hoped to move the event to the nearby Trustland Trails.

Consultants told South Whidbey school officials they couldn’t meet their fall 2012 construction deadline for closing Langley Middle School and moving students to a combined campus with South Whidbey High School on Maxwelton Road, and said they should give up on asking voters right away for more money to pay for the idea.

The advice followed the failure of a $25 million bond measure in November 2010 that would have helped pay for the consolidation effort.

Trillium Woods was given a new name, chosen from among 95 community suggestions received by the Whidbey Camano Land Trust.

Officials announced the protected property would be called the Trillium Community Forest.

“I think it’s a great name,” Elizabeth Guss, land trust director of outreach and development.

“It’s reflective and a beautiful tribute to the scope of interest in the forest.”

The land trust solicited names for the 652 acres on forest land acquired in late 2010 with $4 million in donations and loans.

The name was an amalgam of individual suggestions favored by the majority of submissions. “Trillium” comes from the owners in the mid-1980s, when Trillium Corporation of Bellingham owned the land and started logging it, leading to the protests that spawned the Whidbey Environmental Action Network.

Suggested names included Native American terms, labels that mentioned the Lorax, a mythical, tree-hugging sage from a Dr. Seuss book, and other, more playful proposals, such as Sassy Butt Forest.

FEBRUARY

The founder of Whidbey’s first medical marijuana co-op followed through on his pledge to destroy his supply of medical marijuana.

Following perceived threats to his wife and himself, Captn Blynd stacked 11 juvenile and mature plants and a kilogram jar full of a half-pound of dried marijuana bud on top of a burn pile outside his Freeland home, poured a fifth of Monarch 151 rum tincture on it and drenched the pot with gasoline.

Then, he watched his former dream of a medical marijuana cooperative go up in flames.

“I’ve got nothing in the house anymore, guys,” Blynd said to reporters watching.

Blynd estimated the burning pile of plants to be worth $10,000 to $12,000.

He didn’t burn everything, however.

“My reserves are now kept under lock and key in a safe deposit box.”

Blynd said he planned to restructure his “utopian” co-op idea into a nonprofit, where all profit is given to a community food bank. He said he didn’t feel remorse or regret for burning the plants or proposing the co-op.

“It’s just a plant,” Blynd said.

Island County authorities said a human skull from a likely murder victim was found on the sand at Maxwelton Beach about three months earlier, and specially trained “cadaver dogs” would be brought in to search for other remains.

Detective Ed Wallace of the Island County Sheriff’s Office said  forensic evidence shows the cranium portion of a skull to be that of a male 35 years or younger.

Two marks on the skull indicate the victim might have been hit with a sharp instrument such as an axe, hatchet or machete, and that death could have occurred as long as a decade ago or more.

The skull was found at the waterline on Maxwelton Beach, between Dave Mackie Park and Mill Beach Lane to the north, by visitors who found it rolling in the surf.

The pair kept the skull in a garage at home until Feb. 2, when it was turned over to the Mercer Island Police Department.

MARCH

Langley Police Chief Bob Herzberg retired after more than 32 years with the department.

Randy Heston was named acting chief, and the city council made the job permanent before year’s end.

South Whidbey pharmacies fielded a frenzy of frantic telephone calls from residents searching for potassium iodide pills to protect themselves from radioactive fallout from Japan’s crippled nuclear-power plants.

Island Drug in Clinton reported roughly 20 calls for the tablets, and Linds in Freeland received about a half-dozen calls on the Monday after the disaster.

Neither pharmacy had potassium iodide tablets in stock, and a worker at Island Drug said all of their wholesalers were also out of the drug.

Health officials at the local and national level said U.S. residents were not at risk of harm from the release of radioactive materials from nuclear facilities in Japan, four of which were severely damaged during a devastating 9.0 earthquake and tsunami.

The Langley City Council did an about-face earlier and unanimously reversed its four-month-old decision to reject the controversial Langley Passage housing project.

Council members noted correspondence from the developer’s attorney that came after the council rejected the 20-home subdivision in early November, which said the council had violated its own municipal code when it allowed too many appeals to be filed and reviewed by the city on the proposed project in the city’s Edgecliff neighborhood.

A boat fire led to the diversion of the Clinton ferry as the crew diverted the ship to respond to a distress call from the burning boat.

Smoke on the water could be seen from both shores, but residents on Whidbey got the front-porch view.

“I just glanced up from my desk and all of a sudden I saw flames and the ferry heading toward it,” said Elliott Menashe, who lives near Zimmerman Road, north of Randall Point. “I looked up and just couldn’t believe it.”

The Coast Guard said the operator of the 31-foot recreational vessel escaped the burning boat in a life raft and wasn’t hurt.

Crews working to upgrade the Mukilteo Ferry Terminal completed the bulk of their work, eliminating the need for a third weekend closure.

Normal ferry service between Clinton and Mukilteo was restored and the 50-minute cruise to Edmonds became history.

It was good news for commuters and other travelers on the route, as the Mukilteo terminal had been closed consecutive Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays over 10 days for terminal work.

South Whidbey was cursed by too much rain.

Mudslides continued in the dirty gray wake of a large landslide that blocked East Point Drive, hit two houses and damaged two vehicles in the Whidbey Shores waterfront neighborhood north of Langley.

“It kept sliding all last night,” said Dale Strickland, a South End excavator who has worked to clear the road.

The first, and largest, landslide came from a rain-saturated 300-foot-high steep bluff that sent mud, sand and vegetation, including trees, into the road in a pile of material 100 feet wide and 10 feet tall in places.

Maxwelton Valley was soaked by heavy rains, and homes were left flooded along Maxwelton Beach.

One of the wettest months of March on record later claimed another muddy coup — a 100-foot-wide landslide on a bluff overlooking Admiralty Inlet that wiped out part of a county road.

It was one of several slides caused by rain-saturated earth.

The largest of the slides occurred during the week of March 21, when a chunk of earth, trees and other vegetation along Susana Drive on the hill above Bush Point gradually broke free and took part of the roadway with it.

APRIL

After four hours of what seemed like constant corralling by the city’s attorney, the Langley City Council approved the preliminary plan for Langley Passage.

The unanimous thumbs-up was a marked turnaround from the council’s last look at the 20-home project. Council members voted 5-0 in November to shoot down the new subdivision of two- and three-bedroom single-family homes amid complaints from neighbors and environmentalists, who were worried the development would damage a wetland in the Edgecliff neighborhood and cause further erosion of the nearby bluff.

The vote followed the council’s earlier vote in March that authorized a reconsideration of the project.

A plan to form a local improvement district to finance a $40 million sewer system for Freeland was submerged by its own financial weight, officials said.

“It’s on hold indefinitely,” said Freeland Water and Sewer District Commissioner Jim Short.

The announcement was made at a community meeting in the Trinity Lutheran Church gym attended by nearly 200 people, many of whom applauded when Sewer Commissioner Eric Hansen broke the news.

“It doesn’t mean the project is dead,” Hansen told the crowd. “But we’re not in a position to proceed with an LID at this time.”

Officials said the decision was made to suspend the LID for two major reasons: A preliminary assessment done by the district’s consultant showed that the project would cost more than it’s worth under the current proposed financial structure, and that a groundswell of opposition among the owners of the 471 parcels involved was growing rapidly.

A preliminary assessment done by consultants Macaulay & Associates of Everett determined that, given the latest assessed value of the parcels, the area could support an LID of about $22 million. The current plan sought about $34 million from property owners.

The price of gas on South Whidbey rapidly passed the $4-per-gallon mark, the highest level in nearly four years.

Analysts blamed the shaky political state of the Middle East, especially Libya, rampant speculation on the international commodities market, the changeover from winter- to summer-grade fuel at the refineries and increased demand in emerging nations such as China and India.

“It’s not going to stop going up until we pay what everybody else in the world does,” David Lee Gordon of Freeland predicted as he prepared to pay $8.98 for little more than two gallons of regular gasoline for his lawn mower at the Freeland Shell station.

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Gordon added. “People have to wake up. The electric car is the only thing that will save us.”

MAY

For the first time in its history, the South Whidbey School District offered full-day kindergarten five days per week — at no cost to parents.

District officials said the change reflected trends in other school districts and is in keeping with a nationwide emphasis on early childhood education. Officials said it could help improve student achievement and attract more families into the district, perhaps reversing the recent trend of sustained enrollment decline.

Josephine Moccia already knew what Rich Parker, chairman of the South Whidbey School Board, was going to say when she picked up the phone.

She got the job.

Moccia, the chief of schools for an east-of-Albany, N.Y. school district with an enrollment of 3,333, got the unanimous nod of the school board to be South Whidbey’s next superintendent during a special meeting.

Moccia replaced retiring Superintendent Fred McCarthy.

The board’s selection followed three days of tours of the district by the trio of finalists for the superintendent’s post and meetings with staff, parents and the community.

The board’s selection came after a two-hour private session where members talked about the three finalists for the job — Moccia; Mellody Matthes, the assistant superintendent for the Tukwila School District; and Jeff Sweeney, superintendent of the Fillmore Unified School District in California — then reconvened in a public meeting and took a quick vote for their top choice.

Moccia said she knew she got the job because she was at her daughter’s house, watching the board meeting on the Internet.

A  citizen-led effort to change Langley’s form of government and do away with the position of an elected mayor gathered enough signatures to force a vote at the ballot box.

Island County election workers said they had validated enough signatures from registered voters to call for an election.

Island County Auditor Sheilah Crider said 58 signatures were needed from registered voters within Langley’s two precincts, and the nine petitions that were submitted more than met that mark.

“We have conducted our due diligence … and they have met the threshold,” Crider said.

The election on the proposed change of government was planned for the November General Election, but the Langley City Council called for a vote in the August primary.

JUNE

James “Jim” Huden was arrested in Guadalajara, Mexico — ending a flight from the law that stretched back to 2004.

Police say Huden is responsible for the Christmastime 2003 murder of Russel A. Douglas of Langley, and that Huden shot the 32-year-old father of two as he sat in the front seat of his yellow 2002 Geo Tracker in a Freeland driveway the day after Christmas, 2003, waiting to pick up a Christmas gift for his estranged wife from one of her friends.

Investigators were tipped off in July 2004 that Huden was the triggerman in the killing, and confronted him at his Florida home during the investigation, but Huden vanished when Hurricane Charley hit Punta Gorda in the summer of 2004.

In the years that followed, Huden couldn’t be found. The television show “America’s Most Wanted” joined the search in July 2008, airing a segment on the Douglas murder.

The trail went cold until earlier this spring.

Florida police learned that Huden was hiding out in Vera Cruz, Mexico, and giving guitar lessons under the name of “Maestro Jim.”

He made his first appearance in an Island County courtroom in late June after nearly eight years on the run.

Huden was arrested on June 9 in Mexico, and returned to Whidbey Island to face first-degree murder charges in the killing of Russel A. Douglas on Dec. 26, 2003 in Freeland.

Bail was set at $10 million.

Larry Kwarsick, who was hired as Langley’s planning director in January, announced he would run for mayor in the Village by the Sea.

He said he would run as a part-time mayor, for part-time pay.

Kwarsick also announced he was opposed to changing the city’s form of government from the council-mayor model to the council-manager setup, a proposition put before voters in the August election.

Langley Mayor Paul Samuelson announced he would not run for a second term.

“After much soul searching and with enormous sadness, I have come to the decision not to run for a second term as mayor,” he said.

Thousands of dollars in bills for expensive dinners, hotel rooms and other expenses racked up by officials involved in Freeland’s $40 million sewer expansion project provoked harsh criticism from residents.

Critics of the sewer project said taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bills for $200-a-night hotel rooms, lobster dinners and Johnnie Walker whiskey, margaritas and beer for elected officials.

Residents were most concerned about a lobbying trip that officials made to Washington, D.C. in March that totaled roughly $5,000 in taxpayer dollars.

Sewer District Commissioner Rocky Knickerbocker, Island County Commissioner Helen Price Johnson, and Chet Ross, the president of the Freeland chamber and a consultant to the sewer district on the expansion project, traveled to Washington, D.C. in March to meet with Washington state lawmakers and federal officials about funding for the sewer project.

Officials said the trip had a worthy goal, and said that they mistakenly submitted invoices that included items that should not have been funded with taxpayer dollars, including tourist activities and alcoholic beverages. They also noted that the county refused to reimburse the sewer district for some of the bills, including charges for alcohol and other expenditures.

In a surprising political face slap, the city council voted to strip Councilman Robert Gilman of his post as mayor pro tem for Langley.

Council members said Gilman’s support of the move to change Langley’s system of government and get rid of its elected mayor, and his earlier comments that current Mayor Paul Samuelson wasn’t up to the job, meant it was time for someone else to work with the administration.

“Our trust has been eroded,” said Councilwoman Fran Abel.

The rare reprimand was followed by another rebuke: Council members said they wanted to change the city’s comprehensive plan to remove a series of policies long-championed by Gilman that dictate growth and zoning in Langley.

The public dressing-down was remarkable for a council long criticized for its chumminess and like-mindedness, but it came quickly and without hesitation. In one motion, council members removed Gilman from the position he’s held for two administrations, and gave the deputy mayor job to Councilman Bob Waterman, a short-timer who leaves the council at the end of his term in December.

JULY

South Whidbey High School and Langley Middle School welcomed new principals.

John Patton, the athletic director and assistant principal at SWHS, took over as principal of the school in July.

Eric Nerison, the career and technical education director for the high school, took the helm at LMS.

Nichols Brothers Boat Builders looked at expanding its operations into Oak Harbor.

Hoping to land a larger role in building ferries for Washington state, the Freeland shipyard was seeking a second location, and Nichols Brothers officials suggested using portions of the Navy’s Seaplane Base for a new shipbuilding yard on the shore of Crescent Harbor.

A frantic police search across South Whidbey ended with the arrest of a Clinton woman wanted in the killing a Bellingham woman.

Police said Kara Jo Buchanan helped her boyfriend Keayn Dunya murder his estranged wife.

Kriston Dunya, 32, was discovered shot dead in her Bellingham apartment July 5 by a co-worker who went to check on her after she didn’t show up for work for two days.

Officials said they recovered “significant evidence” at Buchanan’s home on South Whidbey, including a shotgun that may have been used in the murder.

Buchanan pled not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder. Her trial is planned for Jan. 23.

Peggy Sue Thomas was arrested July 9 by the San Juan County, New Mexico fugitive task force after they tracked her down and found her aboard a half-million dollar houseboat she owned called “Off the Hook” at Navajo Lake, N.M.

Thomas was the second suspect in the murder of Russel Douglas, a Langley man killed just after Christmas in 2003.

Authorities have said that Thomas lured Douglas to a remote property near Wahl Road in Freeland with the claim that the couple had a Christmas gift for Douglas’ wife, and that James “Jim” Huden shot Douglas in the head after he showed up to retrieve the present.

AUGUST

Amid continued criticism of his support of Proposition 1, Langley City Councilman Robert Gilman abruptly resigned.

Gilman, the only one of five council members to support Prop. 1, said recent claims that he was seeking greater power were a main reason for his stepping down.

Gilman said he was leaving to devote time to other things in his life, and said his departure was not related to his relationship with Mayor Paul Samuelson, which has noticeably soured in the months prior. He also noted the impending changeover of the city council in the November election.

“The council is going to get reinvigorated with fresh energy and commitment. I’m very pleased to see this and confident that the torch can be well passed to a new generation of council members,” Gilman said.

In the August Primary Election, voters in Langley said “no” to Prop. 1 in a landslide.

In the initial vote, 76 percent of voters in the city voted against the proposal to change Langley’s form of government from the “strong mayor” model, where citizens vote to choose their own mayor, to the council-manager form, where a professional city manager oversees the day-to-day operations of city hall.

Prop. 1 made its way onto the ballot via a citizens’ petition drive that was launched just days after the city council approved the controversial Langley Passage project.

Many residents in the Edgecliff neighborhood were vehemently opposed to the project, and their signatures on petitions calling for an election to change Langley’s form of government were instrumental in getting Prop. 1 on the ballot.

Supporters of a shelter for homeless youth held a groundbreaking in Scatchet Head.

Lori Cavender plans to build a youth shelter on the five acres off Mortland Drive that were donated to her nonprofit organization, Ryan’s House For Youth, in earlier 2011.

SEPTEMBER

Opponents of the plan for a $40 million sewer system for Freeland expressed alarm after discovering that as many as half of the voters who live within the boundaries of the Freeland Water & Sewer District were not on the county’s roll of voters.

Members of the citizens’ group that’s been researching the sewer issue, FAIRS (Freeland Advocates for Informed Responsible Solutions), visited the county elections office in Coupeville and asked to see the map of the Freeland sewer district that was used to verify who was eligible to vote. They said they were then shown paperwork that was dated 1981.

The county later updated its voter information and added hundreds of residents to the list of eligible voters in the Freeland area.

Officials with the South Whidbey School District said student counts showed that enrollment in the district continues to drop.

A total of 1,459 students were reported in classrooms across the district.

The Langley City Council unanimously picked Doug Allderdice as the city’s newest councilman. Allderdice stepped in to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Robert Gilman.

For the 13th year in a row, South Whidbey High School students outperformed the state average on standardized exams. South Whidbey science scores improved the most.

State officials said Island County did a poor job of monitoring the spending of the Freeland Water and Sewer District on its $40 million sewer project.

The Washington State Auditor’s Office released its annual audit of the county, and state auditors faulted county officials for not keeping a closer eye on the sewer district’s compliance with a 2009 contract that funneled $2.5 million in grant funds from the county to the Freeland sewer project.

The state auditor’s office criticized the county for paying $24,654 in expenditures that were not allowable under the agreement — including $15,530 that was spent before the contract between the county and the sewer district was even signed — as well as for approving thousands of dollars in airline tickets and travel costs for local officials.

OCTOBER

Ferry riders dug deeper into their pockets as the state began collecting the first of three fare increases.

A 25-cent add-on to help pay for new ferries started Oct. 1, as well as a 2.5 percent increase in fares.

A 3-percent increase takes effect May 1, 2012.

South End teachers and the South Whidbey School Board reached agreement on a new two-year contract.

A Freeland man was arrested after stabbing his mother and father in their Bush Point Terrace-area home.

Sean Paul DeMerchant was charged with two counts of first-degree assault with a deadly weapon. Authorities said DeMerchant stabbed his mother and father in the back on the night of Oct. 9, and also cut his mother’s neck.

NOVEMBER

R. Bruce Allen and Jim Sundberg were elected to the Langley City Council.

Allen beat Thomas Gill in the race for Position 4 race, while Sundberg won the contest for Position 3 against Robin Adams.

Joel Gerlach won a seat on the South Whidbey Parks & Recreation District board of commissioners against opponent Jean R. Streitler.

The Langley City Council unanimously approved a $125,000 settlement agreement to end a lawsuit filed against the city by a former employee who claimed he had been fired by the city because of his age.

Frank Sullivan worked in the city’s public works department before he was fired in December 2010. He had filed a damage claim against the city for $4.5 million in March, and three months later, a lawsuit in Island County Superior Court, that alleged age discrimination.

Three young men were killed Nov. 11 when a teenager lost control of her car and hit a tree on Wilkinson Road north of Clinton.

The Washington State Patrol said Kaylea Souza, 18, was behind the wheel of the 2003 Chevrolet Malibu that went off the road right near the entranceway of the Wilkinson Trace subdivision.

Souza was pulled from the wreck but her three passengers — Robert Bruce Knight, 22, Marcel “Mick” Poynter, 20, and Charles “Mack” Porter, 19 — died in the crash.

Souza was arrested and later charged with three counts of vehicular homicide. She pled not guilty, and her trial is scheduled for Jan. 24.

DECEMBER

Langley officials decided to broaden their search for legal help in light of new revelations over the work performance of City Attorney Grant Weed.

The city council had been poised to approve a one-year contract extension for Weed’s law firm, Weed, Graafstra & Benson, Inc., but quickly backtracked in the wake of a Record story that detailed how Weed’s law firm had failed to review more than a dozen ordinances that the city council had passed into law under the assumption the legislation had undergone prior legal review.

Documents obtained by the newspaper showed that Weed had failed to review at least 15 ordinances and other documents sent to him by city officials for review. Weed later signed off on the 15 ordinances in a batch, according to city billing records, and privately admitted to city officials that he hadn’t reviewed the legislation, some of which he said contained legal flaws.

Colton Harris-Moore, the “Barefoot Bandit,” returned to Island County to face justice for his two-year crime spree, and received a sentence that will put the infamous Camano Islander behind bars for seven years and three months.

Before the sentencing, Harris-Moore pleaded guilty to a total of 16 counts from Island County, including theft of firearm and residential burglary. He also pled guilty to 17 counts from San Juan County.

The South Whidbey School Board voted to reverse a three-year-old decision to close Langley Middle School.

The decision to close the historic school has been controversial since it was adopted in 2009 in response to declining enrollment and shrinking revenue. But with a new majority in place — thanks to the arrival of newly-elected members Damian Greene and Linda Racicot — the school board voted 4-1 to rescind its decision to close the iconic facility.

Shipbuilders in Freeland are anxious to get to work now that agreements are in place for Nichols Brothers Boat Builders to play a major role in constructing Washington state’s next ferry.

US Fab officials announced that final agreements had been reached with the subcontractors who will help build the new 144-car ferry, including Nichols Brothers Boat Builders in Freeland.

Nichols Brothers received a $17 million contract to build the ferry’s superstructure, which is the part of the vessel from the car-deck level up.

Nichols Brothers CEO John Collins said the project would involve at least 100 workers.

Island County prevailed, finally, in a long-running legal battle against Jay Wallace, a former candidate for Island County sheriff.

Wallace, a former deputy, filed a lawsuit against the county in May 2009 and claimed he had been targeted by former Sheriff Mike Hawley, who opposed his candidacy.

A federal court judge said Island County was justified in firing Wallace after he shirked his duty in responding to 911 calls in Freeland where a woman was being held hostage and assaulted in early 2006.

The Wallace 911 case became one of the biggest scandals in memory for the Island County Sheriff’s Office. The victim, Victoria Walker, told police she had been held against her will and assaulted at a cabin on Shoreview Drive. She called 911 twice, but Wallace, the deputy on duty who was sent to the scene, left without talking to anyone in the cabin and never came back when Walker called 911 for help a second time. The woman escaped from the home the next morning and called police from Freeland Park.