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Though La Conner rests along the well-traveled Swinomish Channel, its town government is entering uncharted waters in terms of mapping a financial game plan for 2021. The reason is COVID-19. Despite prospects of a much-anticipated vaccine being available next year, the coronavirus pandemic has cast its shadow on municipal budgeting, Mayor Ramon Hayes noted in a year-end message to the Town Council last week. Hayes shared his thoughts prior to the Dec. 8 adoption by Council members of a 2021 budget leaner than what was approved a year ago....
Since 2009, half a million kilowatt hours of electricity have been produced on Beaver Marsh Road. The source of that power? Cows. While the plant just north of Summers Drive still produces up to 750 kilowatt hours a day – enough to power 550 homes – seismic shifts in energy policy and dairy farming are affecting its business plan. Co-founders Kevin and Daryl Maas of Mount Vernon started Farm Power Northwest with federal and state grants plus startup funds from local investors, including this reporter’s family. Once online, Farm P...
The Swinomish Tribal Community has gone the extra mile to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Make that 259 miles. Swinomish has joined together administrative office units transported from the Salem, Oregon area that will provide safer and more socially distanced work spaces for tribal employees. A local contractor, Colacurcio Brothers, began installing the units on site at Pioneer Parkway and Moorage Way, just north of the Rainbow Bridge, in November. Project manager Robert Pell has overseen the...
As spring dawned, the coronavirus pandemic exploded on the scene. This paper’s first COVID-19 editorial, “Taking flattening the curve seriously,” was dated March 25. Additional editorials on the pandemic have followed. Early on, some saw the massive change wrought in society and postulated the possibility of “a new normal,” a paradigm shift directing us toward a more just and sustainable future. Alas, the resulting disruption to the old normal, the everyday routine of work, school and socializing threw our society in general, and many of u...
This is my first column here since September. I reserve this space for considerations that are reflective and personal. The first person “I” is rarely in an editorial. Musings, by both their title and nature, are personal. I am the person wondering about the night sky, the turn of the seasons, the rain – or lack of it, being a child of a Depression era mother and our unprecedented president, Donald Trump. Here I have shared both my perspective on the press and the experiences of publishing this newspaper. Here is another chapter. You are...
In the flood of disinformation filling the internet this election season, it was easy to miss another rapidly spreading phenomenon: partisan profit-driven websites putting out propaganda masquerading as local news. Across the country, more than 1,000 websites with the look of local journalism are publishing articles, ordered up by political operatives to cast a favorable or unfavorable light on candidates and issues. These websites, like weeds thriving in vacant lots, have grown to fill the void left by the collapse of local newspapers....
Dear Editor, I read a recent letter to the editor requesting responsibility in submitted opinions, reminding us that students, especially, should read civil dialogue. Granted. Yet remaining civil in a time of gross incivility tests the restraint of opinion writers. I feel deep anger toward a president who has shirked all responsibility to curb the rampant catastrophe of illness and deaths due to Covid-19, ignored safety protocols to limit its spread over the past 10 months, relying instead on his Warp-speed vaccine. This president should be...
In his letter of December 9, Dennis Sather speculates what will happen ‘when Joe Biden and his anti-gun cohorts start knocking on doors to confiscate firearms from legal gun owners.’ The last time we heard this hysterical rhetoric was after the elections of 2008 and 2012, only then it was Obama and his cohorts taking the guns away. That hyperventilation amounted to a windfall for the NRA in donations and for sporting goods stores in gun and ammo sales. But: no guns were taken from lawful gun-owners under the Obama administration, and none wil...
Maurice D. Veatch, 81, of La Conner, died Dec. 7 at La Conner Retirement Inn. He retired to the La Conner-Mount Vernon area in 2001, a location he loved after a long career as a hydrogeologist, working in Lincoln, Nebraska, Seattle, and Hanford, among many other locations. Full obituary at www.kernfuneralhome.com where you may leave condolences and share memories of Maurice with his family online. Burial will take place on Monday, Dec. 21, 2020 at Pleasant Ridge Cemetery, La Conner.... Full story
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congress has included funding extending real-time noise monitoring at two West Coast Navy installations and making the data publicly available in 2021 as part of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The provision extends the program, first created after Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Everett) secured its passage in last year’s NDAA, for an additional 12 months. “Real-time noise monitoring of Growler activity over Whidbey Island and Olympic National Park is crucial to ensure loc...
Avery Sloniker is the Soroptimist Honored Student for November. Avery is a senior at La Conner High School. This busy young woman is also a full time Running Start student at Skagit Valley College and enjoys sports and doing volunteer work. Avery is studying history, psychology and, her favorite class, political science at SVC. To stay connected with her friends at the high school Avery participates in the school band where she plays the trombone. She also is enrolled in Advisory at the high...
I find myself counting down the days at this time of year. Not in anticipation of the end of the pandemic, the New Year, or in the hopes of getting “the perfect gift” driven by consumerism. Though I have lived in this region for almost 20 years, it is not the gray or rain that overwhelms me, but the dark. That third week in December that augurs the Winter Solstice, and thus the darkest day of the year, marks the nadir of my energy, my focus and even my broader perspective on life and the world. I do not clinically suffer from SAD (Seasonal Aff...
New businesses are betting on tourists coming to La Conner next year, opening in the midst of a pandemic and as social restrictions tightened. On First Street, Winston’s General, owned by handmade la conner’s Robyn Bradley, opened Dec. 4. Yvonne Corbett’s Ladders Clothing & Co. Boutique expanded from its first Stanwood location at the end of October. Anne Callaghan’s Bunnies by the Bay hopped to 710 First Street, from Step Outside, moving across the street from its 2019 location. Kay Trelstad, owner of The Stall, modestly expanded into the Cot...
To the Editor: We were taken aback at the recent letter to the editor, Dec. 9, titled “Biden: seizing guns is dangerous.” The first sentence asks the question, regarding those who knock on doors to confiscate firearms: “...what percent of those doing the knocking will find themselves ducking for cover?” And this; “The Second Amendment ...was written with such door knockers in mind.” He finishes with the implication, based on imagined history, that those who advocate gun registration risk being executed. So much violence in such a short lette...
Monday, Dec. 7 3:20 p.m.: Cows in dispute – Deputies responded to a civil issue over livestock that were involved in a dissolving business relationship. Skagit City Rd., Conway. Tuesday, Dec. 8 7:28 a.m.: Stuck truck – Deputies responded to a traffic hazard. Deputies located a box truck partially blocking the roadway. Deputies stood by until the vehicle could be removed. La Conner Whitney /McLean Rds., Greater La Conner. 11:06 a.m.: Spitting, not in wind – Deputies contacted the caller who stated a male walking over the...
From staff reports La Conner Town officials have looked beyond Christmas lights for bright spots in a year shrouded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, they found some. The Town Council took note of the year’s successes at its Dec. 8 teleconferenced meeting.. Councilmember Mary Wohleb started, referencing a letter by Parks Commission Chair Ollie Iversen that highlighted major projects completed this year. Iversen’s letter thanked the Council, administration, public works department and park commission members for progress made and “ma...
This is a time saving recipe. Bake up a batch and freeze enough for several meals. This is made from simple ingredients that many have on hand. Baking on parchment paper helps with clean-up but is not necessary. Our first meal with these baked meatballs, I served with ravioli and a tomato-based sauce. It was delightful. My husband, Kevin, and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and safe holiday season! Ingredients Ground beef, 1 pound Eggs, 2 Milk, ½ cup Panko or bread crumbs, 1 cup Onion,...
Lighting Rainbow Bridge and brightening a local holiday season marred by the COVID-19 pandemic involved more than merely flipping a switch. Much more, in fact. “This story goes back quite a few years with a promise I made to Don Scott,” Mayor Ramon Hayes told the Weekly News last Saturday. Scott, a longtime La Conner business owner, had for years led a private effort to light the much photographed arched span, which is owned by Skagit County. It has helped define the community since its ded...
