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On March 23 I requested information from the Town regarding any rezone discussion of the property proposed for the Center Street development. On March 28 I received an answer from the town administrator saying that he had the right to take five days to answer me. And he was legally correct. On March 28 he also informed me that he would need another 10 days to get it and review it. Again he was legally correct. But being legally right and doing the right thing are not always the same, are they? I received the documents two days after the record...
The La Conner Town Council heard criticism on the Center Street condominium project and La Conner’s upcoming plans for pride month at its May 10 meeting. It ran 75 minutes. La Conner resident Jim Matthews lamented that the Center Street project was decided by a hearing examiner and not council. “This is a democracy,” said Matthews, “and our duly elected officials didn’t have any say in that.” Mayor Ramon Hayes said the hearing examiner format allows decisions to be rendered by a third-party professional from outside town. “The process was b...
Friday Mayor Ramon Hayes notified the La Conner Town Council of a 6:30 p.m. May 17 special meeting with the planning commission at Maple Hall and via Zoom. The Port of Skagit will present its vision for redeveloping the La Conner Marina “to make better use of the property and create more economic opportunities for the marina and community,” a Port press release states. A redevelopment goal is identifying upland uses that will allow the Port to generate capital funding for the replacement of the marina in-water infrastructure. Port staff and...
Good news is building around the Skagit Valley for commitments to construct apartments. In Anacortes, the Arts Festival organization will build apartments above the O Avenue Anacortes Cinemas it has purchased and will develop into a performing arts center. That must have been made possible in part from the City of Anacortes owning the property. In Burlington the American Legion and Volunteers of America Western Washington have teamed up, agreeing to demolish the Legion’s Post and replace it with apartments catering to various income levels w...
CORRECTION / CORRECTED: May 17 is the meeting date: The conversation starts at 6 p.m. May 17 at Maple Hall. The Port of Skagit will present its vision for what Director Sarah Young calls “very big concepts” for developing 10 acres of its “uplands” at the La Conner Marina at a May 17 visioning session with the Town of La Conner’s council and planning commission. Greater La Conner residents attending the 6 p.m. hearing at Maple Hall will get in on the ground floor of what might be the biggest e...
Citizens of greater La Conner are invited by the Town of La Conner to participate in hearings the next two weeks. The town council first holds an obligatory public hearing May 10 before applying for a $30,000 economic development planning grant. This Community Development Block Grant will support revitalizing the area around the former Moore Clark building and between Maple Hall and Pioneer Park and South Third Street and the Swinomish Channel. This is the same proposal from 2021. The goal is decent wage job development for lower income...
Parts of historic downtown La Conner are sporting a 21st century look these days. Four new solar-powered credit card pay stations have been installed to collect boat moorage and launch fees along the waterfront, replacing the old cash boxes that were vandalized. The town council opted earlier this year to invest in the digital payment collection system rather than spending about $1,500 for repairs when cash boxes were robbed. Cost of the credit card pay units was just over $38,000. “The other o...
La Conner officials last week inched closer to their goal of developing park space on the town’s portion of the former Hedlin’s Maple Avenue ballfield. Council members during their April 26 hybrid meeting at Maple Hall approved Town Administrator Scott Thomas submitting a grant application to the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office to develop the park on just over a half-acre on the Maple and East Talbott site. Funds would be for “direct eligible and allowable costs that are r...
Greater La Conner residents, particularly “lower income persons” are invited to the May 10 La Conner Town Council meeting to voice their interests in community development and housing needs ahead of the Town submitting a proposal for state Community Development Block Grant funds. The hearing is required as part of the application process to the state Department of Commerce. Funds of up to $1 million are available to develop, but not construct, affordable housing, with a $500,000 ceiling for housing rehabilitation. The hearing’s purpose is pr...
Cindy Vest was in the truest sense born with ink in her veins, to an Everett family long established in the printing business. Her own legacy would be that of serving as the lifeblood of La Conner newspapering through parts of six decades, from the 1970s until her retirement last year. The remarkable impact made in local journalism by Vest, who died April 10 after a brief illness, is best summed up by her friend and former business partner Sandy Stokes. They founded the Weekly News in 2006 with the late Wayne Everton. “There would not be a p...
I am opposed to the same-ification of this place with placing still another selfie spot in a world full of them. Our rich foundational history is being lost. I would spend that money on engaging signs that inform our visitors, new residents, and our Town Staff of what used to be: • Tillinghast – the seed company. Located where the restaurant Seeds was. (I think even the seed bins are gone now with the newest iteration.) • Dunlap Towing – The log rafts are gone. The tugs are gone and soon the office will be gone. After...
They say first impressions are lasting. In the case of designer Curt Miller’s preliminary drawings for the new Maple Avenue public park, that is a good thing. The La Conner parks commissioners were pleased with the draft design for the proposed park at their April 13 meeting. Commission chairman Ollie Iversen noted afterward that the next step is for Miller to develop a final rendering. “We enjoyed what he presented,” Iversen said. “We, too, are waiting for the final.” He said commissioners found that the Miller design fits nicely with surv...
It is not every day that an action by town officials is greeted with applause. Last Tuesday was one of those days. That’s when in-person audience members attending the April 12 town council hybrid meeting at Maple Hall put their hands together to support the panel’s decision to hire Aaron Reinstra for a new paid dual fire chief-code enforcement officer position. The post will pay $56,160 annually. “This is one of the best moves for the community we’ve seen in a long time,” Mayor Ramon Hayes said following the unanimous 4-0 council vote to c...
John Leaver's name has been in the news a lot recently. In fact, he has been in the news consistently for more than two years. The former La Conner town council member took the initiative the first year of the pandemic, in the summer of 2020, organizing First on First as a volunteer promotion to bring La Conner residents to dine and shop on First Street Friday evenings when out of towners were mandated to stay home to stay healthy. That campaign morphed into a 2021 hotel/motel tax funds proposal for a $21,000-plus Love La Conner marketing icon...
Dear Editor, I found the statement by Marna Hanneman, chair of the planning commission, that she found it a “difficult thing to go against the staff report” (Weekly News, April 6) absolutely stunning. The planning commission, as well as town council members, need to reset their thinking to realize they are called “staff” for a reason – they work for you! Just because Scott Thomas, town administrator, and Michael Davolio, town planner, feel they need to preserve their own jobs by carrying out Mayor Hayes’ pro-development agenda, doesn’t m...
On February 8 the Town of La Conner paid the City of Anacortes $6,940 for reconciliation of the water bill from 2020. The real amount owing was $3,068. Anacortes owes La Conner $3,872. The problem was that the city’s finance director failed to recognize that the former mayor committed the city to follow the Gray & Osborne study of 2005, which allocated customer records based on the number of accounts, instead of number of gallons of water usage. With 8,295 accounts in the water system, mostly in the city, it makes a big difference. Secondly, he...
For Fire District 13 commissioners, it was numbers that told the story of how 2022 is shaping up. The biggest one is $300,000 in funding support from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. Commissioners approved an interlocal agreement during their hybrid meeting Friday, April 8. Other numbers shared by District Fire Chief Wood Weiss tracked falling COVID-19 cases in the district, while calls for service – including those for patient transports – rising. Positive COVID-19 cases on Swinomish Reservation were under three dozen over...
Town of La Conner park commissioners met last Thursday with landscape architect Curt Miller to discuss his preliminary design for developing the new Maple Avenue park at Talbott Avenue. Commissioners and Miller are on a fast track to meet a May 3 application deadline for funding from the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program through its Recreation and Conservation Office. The April 7 meeting at the Civic Garden Club brought the five commissioners, Town Administrator Scott Thomas, planner Mi...
Called a “re-do” by advocate John Leaver, the draft design of the above 16-foot-wide by 26-inch-tall by 5-inch-thick centerpiece is proposed for the southwest corner of Gilkey Square. Ken Barnes is the designer and Katie’s Inn owner John Durgin is co-champion. This 2.0 iteration replaces the Peter Whited designed 11-foot-tall structure budgeted by the La Conner Town Council last fall with hotel-motel tax funds for promoting the town to out-of-region tourists. Leaver, a former council membe...
It has taken a lot of energy from multiple sources to advance from the drawing board to construction phase plans for the new La Conner-Swinomish Regional Library. That kind of energy promises to be renewable on several levels going forward. Plans to solarize the library were shared in detail during a 45-minute Zoom session last Wednesday sponsored by the La Conner Library Foundation, La Conner Weekly News, and Western Solar, the Bellingham firm tabbed to install the library’s solar energy system. La Conner Library Foundation Director Susan M...
La Conner’s charm is reflected not only in the town’s scenic geography, but also in town codes and zoning standards. These standards are drafted to strike the delicate balance between supporting local economic vitality and preserving residential quality of life. The conditional use permit (CUP) process determines whether proposed land uses are compatible with specific zoning areas. Town planner Michael Davolio notes that conditional use applications seem more frequent in La Conner. There is a reason for that, he said. “From my persp...
John Leaver may has not left public service for long. The former town councilor, defeated for re-election by Ivan Carlson, III last fall, is Mayor Ramon Hayes’ choice to fill a three-month vacancy on the planning commission. Ironically, the open seat on the planning panel was created when commissioner Rick Dole was elected to the council last November. Dole was sworn in January. The council is expected to act on a resolution approving the appointment April 12. Hayes announced his decision to tab Leaver for the commission post during the M...
La Conner residents are invited to a public forum addressing “Growing Pains” in town March 31 at 6 p.m. in the school district’s Bruce Auditorium. The forum is the first effort of the town council’s communication committee to both provide information to residents on pressing issues and to engage the community in discussion. Councilmember MaryLee Chamberlain started championing getting information on town plans and projects to residents last fall. With fellow Councilmember Rick Dole, a committee started discussing ways residents can get accurat...
Congratulations to the planning commission for recognizing when a staff report is inadequate and should be ignored. Your vote to reject the Center Street project as too large and too impactful on the neighbors was the right thing to do. Thank you. I know how hard that was for you. The PC has been running short - three members (still a quorum) instead of five at this meeting. (One member was unable to attend). The vacancy which has existed since fall has still not been filled. Two good people from town offered to fill the role on the...
Late U.S. House speaker Tip O’Neill famously said that all politics is local. La Conner town officials have taken that adage a step farther with the council unanimously adopting an impassioned resolution drafted by Town Administrator Scott Thomas supporting Ukrainians in their spirited defense against the deadly Russian military campaign terrorizing their nation of 40 million people. Dan O’Donnell, a retired U.S. Navy captain and past mayor, first suggested the town issue a resolution in sup...