It took only a few days of covering Manchester City Hall to realize it is one of the best beats in New Hampshire. As I hand it off to another reporter two years later, I still feel that way.

Covering City Hall was not easy. There are 14 aldermen, 14 school board members, a mayor and a long list of department heads whose trust a reporter must earn. There are late nights covering meetings and mind-numbing budget numbers to review. The city charter, meeting procedures and unwritten traditions dictate how policy is created and meetings are run. The reporter must have the eye to quickly see alliances and bitter grudges city officials have forged throughout their years in government. Then there are the readers and online commenters to consider, some all too eager to point out an error or even the perceived whiff of bias.

Covering Manchester, I saw up-close the complexities of major issues, such as immigration and education reform, and the on-the-ground impact of state and federal policies. When the newly elected 2010 Congress wanted to trim fat in Washington, the result was Manchester losing money for road repairs and public health initiatives. When Mayor Ted Gatsas and the Board of School Committee put a collective foot down on the unfair practice of requiring standardized testing of refugees and immigrants who don't speak English, the city faced the consequences of losing $9.7 million in federal education funding if it didn't toe the line.

Manchester may have big-city problems, but its politics have a small-town feel. Want to talk to the mayor? His door is open to whoever wants to come in. Have a question for an alderman? Stop by Theo's or Grand Slam Pizza, try the Shaskeen around happy hour, or look for an official's number in the phone book. Most of them are listed there.

More than in any other community I've covered, elected officials in Manchester understand how the media work and the access we require. They want to help get important news out to the public and understand the meaning of “deadline.''

City department heads and school officials are accommodating, too, even if it means their department might be portrayed in a negative light. They work long hours, answer to many bosses and spend late nights at City Hall meetings, during which they can find themselves getting a public grilling on even the most basic decisions.

The unusual schedule, the personalities and the policy debates, they made me work hard, but they're also part of what I'll miss when I hand off the job and prepare for my new role as a mother.

- - - - - - - -

THOUGH THERE WILL BE vast differences — time commitment and cuteness level are two that immediately come to mind — I expect my experience covering City Hall will be helpful as a parent.

I learned the important lesson of taking naps. Those afternoons I grabbed a few Zs before heading into an epic end-of-the-fiscal-year aldermanic meeting were just practice for when I'll have to find moments of rest in the midst of late-night feeding exhaustion.

I also learned it is key to be consistent and fair. I tried hard not to play favorites, to show both sides of the story and give people a shot to make their case. I learned quickly that inconsistency — such as publishing a brief about one alderman's fundraiser and not another's — can lead to temper tantrums.

Finally, accepting that at times there will be tears is important for any reporter or parent.

No matter how loud the crying got, I learned to stay calm, soothe when I could and wait for the howls to pass when I couldn't.

- - - - - - - -

AS I WRAP UP my time in Manchester, the city is still wondering what developer Richard Danais plans to do with the land he bought on Hackett Hill. The school district, down 100 teachers, is spending its summer trying to figure out where to put students when school starts next fall, and city residents are just beginning to think about not only who will represent them in Concord next year, but also what the atmosphere will be like there in the post-Gov. John Lynch era.

If I were to make some predictions — and why not, I have nothing to lose — I'd put my money on the following.

-- The COPS grants Gatsas suggested the city turn down will get accepted, as well as another grant to hire nine firefighters and whatever grant money comes along to hire teachers, too. The city boards are in no mood to turn down “free'' money these days.

-- Parents and students will cry foul at the large class sizes and cuts to special programs. When the board starts talking about making more cuts next school year, the school unions will make a concessions deal that looks a lot like the deal they turned down a few months ago.

-- Gatsas will run for mayor again and fend off a challenge from an up-and-coming Democrat for a third term. The Board of Aldermen will keep its overwhelming Democratic majority.

-- School advocates and city Democrats will combine their grassroots organizing forces in an effort to get the tax cap taken out of the charter. Their efforts will fail by a 1,000-vote margin.

-- Similar efforts to change charter rules on the way the schools are funded will make it onto the ballot, as well. They, too, will fail, dooming this column to forever devote precious inches to the annual budget battle between the aldermen and the school board.

-- The City Hall column readers will throw a few barbs at my replacement, still to be determined.He or she will handle them with grace and continue to do good work and earn the respect I enjoyed from public officials and readers alike. And my successor will learn, as I did, that covering City Hall is one of the best beats in New Hampshire.