Developers looking to build housing facilities as tall as 30 stories on a desolate peninsula might be giving their prospective tenants a gateway to the rest of the city.

A proposal to develop 1,701 apartments and condos at the barren seven-acre Hallets Point waterfront site in Astoria might include private shuttle service for residents to and from the 30th Avenue N and Q line station, according to lobbyist Sean Crowley, brother of Rep. Joe Crowley (D-Queens, Bronx).

The reviews are in, and critics of Mayor Bloomberg’s final executive budget are saying they have seen this show before.

And, as per usual, there is likely to be a rousing closing dance number when City Council members restore funding for the same fire companies, after-school programs, senior centers and libraries that have been proposed for cuts by the mayor for years.

The Department of Transportation and Community Board 5 may have reached an agreement on the controversial Cooper Avenue underpass construction.

The project that encompasses Cooper Avenue between 74th and 79th streets, where Middle Village meets Glendale, began in January 2012.

Now it’s back to regularly scheduled programming.

Late Monday afternoon Chancellor Dennis Walcott agreed to withdraw the Department of Education’s proposal to downsize the highly ranked middle school Gifted and Talented program at Astoria’s PS 122.

The new headquarters for New York Families for Autistic Children made the news long before its ribbon cutting on Sunday.

The sparkling new building, complete with giant jigsaw puzzle pieces — the symbol of autism advocacy — played a big role in a video shot by a news crew filmed from a motel across the street during Hurricane Sandy.

The office of Congressman Joe Crowley (D-Queens, Bronx) is accepting submissions of artwork from high school students in the 14th District for consideration in the annual Congressional Art Competition.

The competition is a national contest to encourage and recognize the talents of high school-age artists. The winning entries will go on display in the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC for a year.

A month from now Roosevelt Avenue from 82nd to 114th Street will be “brighter, safer, cleaner,” Commissioner Robert Walsh of the Department of Small Business Services said.

Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-Corona) announced a plan, called the New Deal, at a meeting on Tuesday morning to increase sanitation services, brighten the area with lights and paint, create a business improvement district, install more police cameras, update zoning, continue programming at Corona Plaza and create a task force for the bustling thoroughfare.

A key question has arisen as the United State Tennis Association’s plan has come before six different community boards: How much is a fraction of an acre of parkland worth?

Two boards tried to answer the question last week, with one slapping a $15 million price tag on .68 acre of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, along with numerous other stipulations.

Members of the community and local elected officials gathered on Monday to celebrate the inaugural year of the new Maspeth High School building.

“I feel a wonderful spirit in this building,” Queens Borough President Helen Marshall said. “This school will teach many minds how to work and how to plan for the future.”

Call it the story of a local boy trying to do well for his hometown.

A familiar face to the corridors of power, Bayside native Austin Shafran kicked off his run for the City Council’s 19th District on Feb. 19, touting years spent working within the bounds of the political system, at the local, state and federal levels.

A Long Island woman survived a fall from the Queens side of the Whitestone Bridge on the morning of Feb. 7.

The 57-year-old woman, whose name is being withheld by the Queens Chronicle, was rescued at about 8:20 a.m. by two Port Authority police officers who were on routine patrol in their boat a short distance away, off of LaGuardia Airport.

Tributes poured in last Friday for Ed Koch, the three-term mayor who personified New York City from 1978 through 1989, and who died early that morning at age 88.

They came unsolicited from elected officials across the city, and were echoed on the street by the people of Queens.

Martha Taylor, a member of Community Board 8 and a longtime fixture in Democratic politics in eastern Queens, has launched her second bid for the City Council seat being vacated at the end of the year by Councilman James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows).

Taylor lists herself as an attorney on filings with the city’s Campaign Finance Board, and is listed as undeclared for any specific office. Former Assemblyman Rory Lancman also has announced, as has Briarwood community activist Andrea Veras. Gennaro is being forced out by term limits.

Congress passed at least part of the $60 billion requested for aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy on Friday morning.

The House of Representatives passed part of the supplemental bill, which included $9.7 billion in flood insurance claim reimbursements for hurricane victims, by a vote of 354-67, with every Democrat and 161 Republicans voting in favor. Every member of Congress from Queens voted yes.

The borough’s congressional delegation added three new faces to its roster on Jan. 3 with the swearing in of Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn), Grace Meng (D-Flushing) and Steve Israel (D-Long Island)

Queens’ new legislators entered the 113th Congress at a time of deep partisan division and mounting fiscal headaches. All three promised to ignore the Democrat-Republican divide in the House of Representatives so as to put their constituents first.

Congress passed at least part of the $60 billion requested for aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy on Friday morning.

The country did go off the fiscal cliff this week, but it was more like a bungee jump than a fall.

Less than 24 hours after billions of dollars in tax hikes and spending cuts went into effect, the House of Representatives agreed to a deal struck by the White House and Senate leaders and passed by the upper body of Congress on New Year’s Eve, before the year-end deadline that had been termed the “fiscal cliff.”

Hurricane Sandy victims waiting for money from the federal government will have to wait a little longer.

A $60 billion relief package for Sandy victims was scheduled to come to a vote in the House of Representatives on Tuesday after the fiscal cliff bill, but House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) pulled the bill in a surprise move that led to shock and outrage from local members of Congress.

Politics dominated much of the news in South Queens in 2012. With local and national elections looming, the communities were the epicenter of a hard-fought state legislative race with statewide implications.

But much like T.S. Eliot’s explanation of the apocalypse in “The Hollow Men,” the campaign ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, shoved from the top of people’s minds by the most devastating natural disaster to strike South Queens in a lifetime.

Queens politics in 2012 brought new districts, a historic election in the 6th Congressional District and enough cloak-and-dagger intrigue to fill a Robert Ludlum novel.

But when Hurricane Sandy struck in October, killing 12 people in Queens and more than 40 in the city, devastating the Rockaways, Howard Beach, lower Manhattan and Staten Island, the people of central Queens, who were largely spared the storm’s wrath, rallied to the cause of those worst hit.

Politics in middle and southwestern Queens was the favorite sport outside of Citi Field in 2012, and the worst storm to hit the region in 74 years devastated some while causing others just a few flickers of their lights.

JANUARY

As the year began, the city filed an appeal of a ruling by federal Judge Nicholas Garaufus that found discrimination on the part of the FDNY against African-American firefighters in the testing and hiring process.

Piano music filled the sanctuary last Saturday during a Toys for Tots charity event, held at All Soul’s Chapel on the St. Michael’s Cemetery grounds in East Elmhurst.

“Whatever fits the mood of the room,” said Hank Johnson, a jazz pianist from Brooklyn, after his performance.

Congressman Joe Crowley (D-Queens, Bronx) has been voted to a leadership position in the U.S. House of Representatives, being elected on Nov. 29 as vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Crowley, 50, has served in the House for 14 years. The vote makes him the fifth-ranking Democrat in the house, behind Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland), Assistant Leader James Clyburn (D-SC) and Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.).

The Italian-American Cancer Foundation is teaming up with state Sen. Joe Addabbo Jr. (D-Howard Beach) and Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Middle Village) to provide no-cost digital mammograms and clinical breast exams to women over 40.

The Addabbo-sponsored event will feature the mobile mammography van of Multi-Diagnostic Services from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 1 in front of the Woodhaven Richmond Hill Volunteer Ambulance Corps, located at 78-15 Jamaica Ave. in Woodhaven.

Bills introduced last week by U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) and Congressman Joe Crowley (D-Queens, Bronx) would ensure a greater supply of kosher food for needy families under the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program.

The bills would require the U.S. Department of Agriculture to increase the amount of kosher food provided and establish a system to better label, direct and track the food to make sure it gets to people who can only eat kosher diets because of religious beliefs.