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At Saturday’s Meet the Mayor session at the La Conner Swinomish Library, Mayor Marna Hanneman ended the hour upbeat, telling the seven assembled they were awesome and that she was encouraged. “I keep saying it takes a village,” she said, suggesting, “let’s take it on the road,” to Shelter Bay and other communities, in a collaborative effort to tackle greater La Conner’s problems. And while she noted, “It’s all of us, farmers, merchants, the Tribe, Shelter Bay,” everyone at the table had faithfully attended most of these near monthly meetin...
Just like last year. The $60,800 in August sales tax revenue reported to the Town of La Conner by the state’s Department of Revenue is $20 below 2023’s collection. The eight month total is 67% of the budget’s projections, on target, with the next two months the highest grossing every year. The $6,070 collected for the special use fire tax tops 2023 by six dollars. It will exceed its revenue estimate, standing at 81% with four months remaining. More visitors are staying over. The $22,440 hotel motel tax total is an August record, 13% above...
It's only the first full week of school and district officials are already looking ahead to February. The five-month countdown has begun for the next La Conner Schools Educational Programs and Operations replacement levy. School district voters in 2021 approved a four-year levy that will collect $1.02 million for 2024 and $1.05 million in 2025. Those funds are generated by a $1.11 per $1,000 assessed property valuation across the district. That rate is the second lowest among Skagit County...
HEADS UP IMPORTANT! Wednesday, Oct. 9, S. First Street traffic shifts to ONE-WAY SOUTHBOUND. Commercial Street will become ONE-WAY EASTBOUND. Info: Call 360-466-3125. NOT TO BE MISSED Free docent-led tours at Museum of Northwest Art. Join a docent for a public tour of exhibitions at MoNA, 11-11:45 a.m. second Saturdays, 121 S. First St. RSVP at monamuseum.org/docent-led-tours. Sept. 23-27 is Fall Prevention Week at the Anacortes Senior Center. Daily presentations include Safe Walking; Core Strength; Life Events and the Risk of Falls; Safe...
Skagit County communities are joining forces and Facing Fentanyl Together by hosting a free event to educate on prevention, harm reduction, treatment, recovery and community supports so people are prepared to respond to the opioid/fentanyl crisis for themselves or their loved ones. Join us from 1-5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20, at Skagit Valley College Cardinal Center, 2405 E College Way, Mt Vernon, for one of 26 Facing Fentanyl Together events take place across Washington at the same time. The Department of Social and Health Services is working in...
There will not be a recall election against three Skagit County officials. The Washington state Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Cody Hart Aug. 29, finding the charges in his petitions against Prosecuting Attorney Richard Weyrich, Auditor Sandra Perkins and Sheriff Donald McDermott to be legally and factually insufficient. The nine judges concluded Hart’s petition failed “to specify substantial conduct clearly amounting to misfeasance, malfeasance or violation of the oath of office” as he alleged. Hart had lost in Snohomish County Super...
Cruising over from Shelter Bay for scoops of ice cream at O'Neil's Confectionery and Soda Fountain seems the perfect way to end a Labor Day afternoon in La Conner. And what better way to putter over, literally, than in a bright red mini tugboat complete with to-scale tire fenders? That is what Keri and Michael Palasz did about 5 p.m. Monday. Rum raisin was her first choice while he was planning on mint chocolate chip. Keri was piloting their recently acquired boat, bringing it into La Conner's...
She has owned a downtown bookstore, helped found the town's senior center and written accounts of La Conner history and her memoir. Janna Gage, who hails from a pioneer Skagit County family, is now ready for her next chapter. Seaport Books, which she and Marion Melville launched in 2017, is listed for sale. "We're not retired," quipped Gage, a 1958 La Conner High School graduate and class valedictorian. "We're just tired." But not so weary that Gage can't imagine taking on a new project or...
The U.S. Navy has until May 1 to present a new environmental impact statement on effects of noise from the EA-18G Growler jets based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones set the deadline in his Aug. 16 ruling and termed the Navy's failings serious violations of the National Environmental Policy Act requiring a new EIS. He noted, "[T]his Court found that the Navy 'selected methods of evaluating data that supported its goal of increasing Growler operations'...
The countdown is on for 10-9-1 – as in Oct. 9, First Street shifts to one-way southbound traffic. The official deadline for changing the downtown traffic pattern, which includes the block of Commercial Street in front of Maple Hall, was announced at the Aug. 27 La Conner Town Council meeting. "We don't want this date to be a surprise," Town Assistant Planner Ajah Eills said. "We're going to do a big information campaign in September, getting the word out on kiosks, at the library, and h...
The 2 inches of rain on Aug. 23-24 was the most precipitation during an 11-day period that totaled 2.6 inches, the month's entire rainfall. Only 2016's 2.9 inches and the 6.3 inches in 2004 were higher for August this century. The rain was 113% above, 1.4 inches over, the century's average of 1.2 inches. There has been an inch or more of rain 10 years since 2000 but only three Augusts since 2015. Of the eight years with less than half an inch of rain, four have been since 2017, including 0.5...
Thousands of cloudspotters around the world will look up on Friday, Sept. 13, so they can submit photos online for the third annual Cloud Appreciation Day. Anyone, anywhere, can take part for free by photographing their sky and submitting an image for the 2024 Memory Cloud Atlas website. Cloud Appreciation Day and the Memory Cloud Atlas are initiatives of the Cloud Appreciation Society, which has more than 64,000 members in 120 countries. People around the world can submit an image in real time...
The Skagit Women's Alliance Network and its leadership award nominees gathered here Aug. 29 for a two-hour meet-and-greet at the La Conner Civic Garden Club. Nominees for annual SWAN awards were honored guests at the historic venue, which proved an ideal setting. That's because one of the honorees has lifelong ties to the community. La Conner High School alum and Swinomish Tribal Community elder Janie Beasley has been nominated for the 2024 SWAN Lifetime Achievement Award. Her nomination is...
The Skagit County Commissioners will host a hearing at 11 a.m. Monday, Sept. 9, on a moratorium on new permits for event venues on Skagit County agricultural land. The moratorium clarified that permissible tourism-related activity on Skagit farmland does not include permanent businesses that conduct large events, such as weddings and concerts. This hearing will take public comment only on the moratorium and existing business activities and enforcement. The board will consider a permanent ordinance later. The public can comment in person in the...
Gubernatorial candidates Bob Ferguson and Dave Reichert will face off in two, hour-long debates this month. Ferguson, the Democratic state attorney general and Reichert, a Republican former congressman, will meet Sept. 10 in Seattle and then eight days later in Spokane. These will be the first and possibly only, opportunities for the state’s nearly five million voters to see and hear the candidates discuss their policies side by side ahead of the Nov. 5 election. Ferguson, a former member of the King County Council, was first elected a...
HEADS UP The La Conner wastewater treatment plant will close at 11 a.m. Friday, Sept. 6 to septage hauling, yard waste dumping and compost pickup. The plant is expected to be closed most of the day. NOT TO BE MISSED Saturday with the Mayor, it’s open mic. Come and talk with Mayor Marna Hanneman at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 7 at the La Conner Swinomish Library. Join local poet Susan Rich for a short introduction to writing poetry about visual art, 4-5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 7, at the Museum of Northwest Art. Get inspired surrounded by art and o...
Nancy Llewellyn may not have known it at the time, but her years at La Conner High School in the late 1960s and early 1970s were a prescription for future success. A positive prognosis was quite apparent even then to fellow students and faculty members alike, all of whom admired her keen academic skills, especially gifts for solving tough math problems and writing bold pieces for the campus newspaper. The 1972 La Conner grad would go on to medical school at the University of Washington and a sub...
Samish River fishing is classified as "combat fishing" – it's so crowded fisher people jockey for a place to plunk their poles in the water. A mini-boatless Bristol Bay. Over 50 hopeful fisher people attired in hip waders, camouflage jackets, ball caps and sunglasses, holding nets and casting poles, crowded the Samish River Sunday morning at the Samish River bridge on Bayview-Edison Road west of Farm to Market Road. The bridge is across from those cool live-aboard boat moorings. At 9:30 a.m. f...
It's rare to be the recipient of a Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow Award, presented to those who have made significant contributions to the organization's wide range of public service programs. That being the case, local tulip grower Leo Roozen is doubly esteemed by area Rotarians. Roozen received his second Paul Harris honor during the La Conner Rotary Club's annual dinner and auction at Maple Hall Saturday night. The chapter will contribute $1,000 in his name to their international...
The couple planning to open a martial arts studio and fitness club on Maple Avenue at Washington Street didn’t face much of a fight when the project went before Town Hearing Examiner David Lowell last week. Tracy and April Emmanuelson-Barnett received overwhelming support during a well-attended one-hour public hearing on their application for a permit to revamp the former COA building on Maple Avenue. It has been vacant for two years after having been operated as restaurants since the 1970s, a non-conforming use in a residential zone. Lowell s...
The challenges of balancing preservation of farmland, forest areas and wetlands with development of affordable workforce housing in Skagit Valley are many and abundantly clear. Solutions, though, are less apparent and more elusive – but sorely needed, and now. The Skagit County League of Women Voters brought attention to the issue, organizing a 90-minute public forum in Sedro-Woolley Aug. 21, emphasizing the challenge that has priced working families out of the valley and shrunk the labor pool. Some 100 people attended and more watched on Y...
How much would you spend to win a seat in the Washington state Senate? To continue representing Legislative District 10, incumbent Sen. Ron Muzzall (R-Oak Harbor) spent $462,878 ahead of the Aug. 6 primary. That is $18.72 for each of the 24,724 votes he received. That won him 48.2% of the vote. He may spend that much more trying to win reelection in November. His opponent, Janet St. Clair, an Island County commissioner, came in second, both in votes and campaign spending. In gaining 23,391...
Dredging in the Swinomish Channel will begin Sept. 9 and continue until mid-February, says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Last dredged in 2018, the 11-mile long, 100-feet wide, 12-feet deep federal navigation channel is dredged every four to six years because “navigation through the channel is essential for commerce in the area,” said Sara Young, executive director of the Port of Skagit. Most of the work during the round-the-clock, six-days-a-week project will take place at the entrances of the channel. At the south end, the Skagit Rive...
July 5, 2017, was the first issue of the La Conner Weekly News published under Ken Stern’s ownership. The editor apologizes to the publisher for this typo appearing in last week’s edition, the 372nd he has edited, of the Weekly News. The Aug. 21 editorial on housing incorrectly stated that COA, the previous user at 214 Maple Ave., operated under a conditional-use permit. It operated as a pre-existing, non-conforming use. The ability to use the site as a restaurant again became invalid after six months. The property’s zoning has been resid...
HEADS UP The La Conner wastewater treatment plant will close at 11 a.m. Friday, Sept. 6, to septage hauling, yard waste dumping and compost pickup. The plant is expected to be closed most of the day. NOT TO BE MISSED Join local poet Susan Rich for a short introduction to writing poetry about visual art, 4-5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 7, at the Museum of Northwest Art. Get inspired by art in MoNA’s galleries and other poets writing around you. You will have the opportunity to have your work published on MoNA’s website and to read it at the Poetry Ope...