Powerful state legislators on a hostile mission to take over the Island ferry system. Moneyed mainland developers on a singular mission to convert the last pieces of open space into huge profits. A vise-grip of housing problems for middle-income workers. Wobbly leadership. A voter-driven mandate for change on the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. Baffling tick-borne disease. Cold winter. Rainy summer.

These are the benchmarks of the year 2000, a year when outside forces pressed hard on the Vineyard, and the cold truth settled over the Island like thick ocean fog: Rapid growth and creeping suburban values had made their mark.

But the news was not all bad, and as the curtain fell on another year, there were many hopeful signs that the Island community was poised to grapple with hard issues and find solutions to the difficult problems of affordable housing, growth management and transportation planning.

“Maintaining sustainable growth and livable communities. It’s not a hot-button issue, because it’s more like all of a sudden you wake up one day and it will take a half an hour to drive from Edgartown to West Tisbury,” declared Cong. Bill Delahunt during a visit to the Vineyard last summer.

The year began on a distinctive note, as clocks chimed for the change of the century and the people of the Vineyard echoed a worldwide celebration of peace and hope for the new millennium.

“This land in the sea called Martha’s Vineyard will become a different resort in the twenty-first century,” predicted Vineyard Gazette editor Richard Reston in a special essay on the occasion of the millennium.

“The Great Ponds, the harbors, transportation, affordable housing — these are going to be the issues of the day,” said Martha’s Vineyard Commission executive director Charles Clifford in an interview.

Winter ushered in the quiet season and in January the Island also went into a deep freeze. In Edgartown harbor ice forced the shutdown of the Chappaquiddick ferry for several days. In Chilmark skaters were seen gliding across Squibnocket Pond for the first time in recent memory.

But if temperatures were cold, politics were hot, as powerful legislators pursued a high-speed chase on Beacon Hill to take over the 40-year-old Steamship Authority and reopen ferry service between New Bedford and the Vineyard.

The dispute over New Bedford ferry service began in 1999 and by early 2000 it had grown savage.

“They want to change the way we travel, they want to change what it costs us to live, they want to change the way we live — and they will change the way we live if we don’t take back control of this ship,” declared Tisbury selectman Edmond G. Coogan during a special public forum on the Vineyard. A citizen group called the Lifeline Coalition formed to fight the proposed legislative changes to the public boat line.

From state legislators to local politicians, it seemed that just about everyone got into the act.

Cape and Islands Sen. Henri Rauschenbach called on the state commissioner of environmental management to step in and curb the unruly behavior of New Bedford city officials.

“The city of New Bedford cannot be permitted to manage the Steamship Authority’s business by threat and fiat. It’s time for the bullying to stop,” Mr. Rauschenbach wrote in a letter to environmental commissioner Peter Webber in January. Later in the year the senator vacated his seat to take a high post in the state executive branch.

The co-chairman of the state legislative committee on transportation traveled to the Vineyard to host a forum and hear an earful of opinion from Vineyard people about the essential need to maintain Island control of their boat line.

Former Cong. Gerry E. Studds was recruited to lead a peacemaking effort, but Mr. Studds quickly dropped out after it became apparent that the issue was too divisive and politically explosive to allow any solution based on facts.

The showdown went on through the winter.

In early February some 200 people from both Islands traveled to Boston for a rally at the state house.

In mid-February the state senate approved mandatory year-round freight service from New Bedford for two years and added a nonvoting seat for New Bedford to the SSA board of governors.

But the drama was far from over. The bill approved by the state senate bogged down in the joint conference committee for months before it was finally approved in early August. Islanders launched a massive letter-writing campaign urging Gov. Paul Cellucci to veto the bill.

In the end the governor did not veto the bill, but he did in effect kill it by sending one section of the bill back to the legislature for amendment. But at that point the legislature was no longer in formal session, which meant that the bill was in limbo.

“After two years the score is still zero to zero,” said Cape and Islands Rep. Eric T. Turkington late last summer.

Meanwhile, a pilot summer freight service between New Bedford and the Vineyard that had been approved by the SSA board of governors began in May and ran through October. The program, operated by a private carrier, stirred only moderate interest among truckers and wound up costing the boat line $1.3 million.

The program will run again next summer as SSA governors test the market for the freight service over an eight-month period.

Late in the year the city of New Bedford filed a federal lawsuit against the SSA challenging its status as a monopoly.

The Steamship Authority was not the only lightening rod for heated debate. Golf course development plans dominated the agenda at the Martha’s Vineyard Commission throughout the year, much of it centered around a proposal by the Down Island Golf Club to build an upscale private golf club in the last unbroken stretch of woodland in Oak Bluffs. The developer was Corey Kupersmith, a businessman from Greenwich, Conn.

It was the third golf course development plan to come under review by the MVC in two years, but this plan more than any other created bitter and lasting divisions in the Vineyard community, from the Oak Bluffs selectmen to the regional planning commission itself.

After three long public hearings and dozens of hours of deliberation, the commission voted to reject the plan in two separate votes. Mr. Kupersmith, a battery of lawyers and a team of paid resident Island advisors went after the commission with a vengeance, filing two lawsuits and fueling even more division by raising charges of conflict of interest.

Then the commission agreed for the first time in its history to try legal mediation with the golf course developers, amid more controversy and divided opinion. The mediation ended after one session.

The lawsuits are still pending and the Down Island Golf Club is expected to return to the commission with new development plans after the first of the year.

All developers will face a new commission in the coming year. In the November election the Vineyard voters signaled a clear mandate for change, among other things electing two Vineyard farmers and advocates for conservation to the 25-year-old commission.

Top vote-getters in the commission election were James Athearn, who owns Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown, and Andrew Woodruff, who owns Whippoorwill Farm in West Tisbury.

The mandate was unmistakable.

“I think the commission is going to change a little bit in its direction,” said Mr. Clifford, the MVC executive director.

Late in the year Mr. Clifford picked up the melody and took the lead in urging the commission to launch a new yearlong regional transportation planning effort.

The commission agreed, and in early December it voted to designate a special highways and harbors district of critical planning concern (DCPC).

“There are a multitude of things we haven’t dealt with. I would like to be ahead of everybody else. Let’s take the lead here and let everybody else catch up with us,” said Mr. Clifford.

It was a message of strength in a year that had seen halting moves toward regional planning.

Early in the year a movement began to adopt building caps in every Vineyard town. The clear leader in the movement was the town of Aquinnah and it made history when it asked the Martha’s Vineyard Commission to declare the entire town a district of critical planning concern (DCPC).

“I think what we’re trying to protect isn’t a look or a building; I think what we’re trying to protect is the people who live there. It would help to maintain the character of the town by helping to keep its people there,” said Aquinnah resident and MVC member James Vercruysse during a public hearing on the townwide DCPC.

“This is about preserving a modesty of scale and a lifestyle,” said MVC member Marcia Cini.

The statements had application for every Vineyard town.

The growing crisis over affordable housing hit a break point and also a breakthrough of sorts this year, as Island residents came together in new ways to try and solve the problem. Chilmark resident John Abrams helped to spearhead an initiative among business owners that saw astonishing results. In just a few short months a wide range of Vineyard merchants and business owners pledged more than $80,000 to get the program started. The goal of the program is to raise $300,000 annually over the next five years. The money will be used to staff the regional housing authority and a recently created affordable housing fund.

The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital and the Windemere Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center continued to bump along the road to financial recovery this year in the wake of two bankruptcies from three years ago. The hospital showed improvement on its balance sheet, and Windemere began the year on an auspicious note. But six months later the news took a dramatic turn for the worse when leaders at the Island’s only nursing home announced the facility was losing money at an alarming rate.

Default on a $2.5 million bond was likely, if not imminent, and the nursing home faced possible closure. Just before Thanksgiving hospital and nursing home leaders struck a deal with Massachusetts Financial Services (MFS) to buy back the bond for $1.5 million, using hospital cash reserves. Windemere residents and workers were relieved and hospital leaders appeared elated. This week the hospital announced that it would mortgage the entire campus and borrow $2.5 million to replace the cash reserves and consolidate hospital debt. Long-term prospects for both institutions remained uncertain.

It was a year for loss. City planner Edward Logue, lobsterman Franklin Benson, renaissance man Michael Wild, Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Milton Jeffers, food pantry stalwart Pamela Perry, artist Tom Maley and gourmet cook Louise Tate King were among the distinguished Vineyard residents who died.

It was a year for celebration.

The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School hockey team won the Division III state championship, making hockey history on the Island. The girls field hockey team was also the dream team this year, capturing the Eastern Massachusetts State Championship for the first time in the history of the school.

It was a year for endings and also beginnings.

Ronald H. Rappaport, the respected Vineyard Steamship Authority governor, stepped down after representing the Island for seven and a half years. Citing personal fatigue, Mr. Rappaport said it was time to hand the baton to a new governor.

In November the Dukes County Commission selected J.B. Riggs Parker, a retired corporate attorney and longtime Chilmark resident, to be the new boat line governor.

Mr. Parker jumped into the job with alacrity, attending local meetings and emphasizing the importance of decision-making based on facts.

It was a year for illness. In early winter Island residents were hit hard by a flu epidemic, and then in mid-summer a mysterious outbreak of tularemia made headlines both here and around the country. The outbreak baffled scientists and was confined to the Vineyard, where 14 cases were confirmed, including one death.

It was a year for counting heads. Census takers fanned out across the Island last fall to collect data for the 10-year federal census. The results, due out beginning this week, are expected to document population growth and other demographic changes in Dukes County over the last decade.

It was a year for examination. The behavior of Island teenagers came under the spotlight after surveys revealed a startlingly high level of drug and alcohol abuse among members of the high school population. The information sparked a series of candid discussions among both parents and teens about social issues.

Teen behavior, growth management, affordable housing, transportation planning — throughout the year there was a kind of dawning realization that the Vineyard was no longer so isolated from the mainland and its attendant ills. And beneath it all a single question glowed: Can the Island community take ownership of its problems and solve them?

The answers will come with the arrival of 2001 and the years beyond.