La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Every September the Weekly News focuses an editorial on Banned Books Week. The Week starts Sunday, Oct. 1 this year. Visit the La Conner Swinomish library next week. Heck, go to a library every single day through Oct. 7. We are fortunate to have...

La Conner staff and the planning commission are updating the Town’s short-term rental regulations. These rentals are only permitted in the commercial zone – in commercial buildings. What purpose will changing these regulations serve? Whom will...

Mikala Staples Hughes spoke for her own interests as an agricultural executive, passionate about the preservation of farm operations, at the Skagit County hearing on agritourism. She is not with Hughes Farms as the Sept. 6 correction in the Weekly...

La Conner continues to dodge the bullets that so much of small-town America is getting hit by: loss of employers, employees and families moving away, empty storefronts and boarded up homes, loss of hospitals and school closures. No, instead the...

Yesterday, Aug. 8, was the 49th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation as president is the United States. Why did Nixon resign? First for our youth, the ahistorical, those who forgot or cannot remember our 37th president, Nixon’s top White...

I love that phrase. It always makes me smile. It is what brought me to La Conner in March 2017 to look at buying the Weekly News. I will always associate my newspaper publishing career with my best friend, Dick Wittenberg, who loves to see his name...

Next Monday, July 31, the La Conner school board will approve the school district's 2023-2024 budget. The vote will almost certainly be unanimous but it will not be an easy decision. Board members and staff have known about and been grappling with...

Probably not even the most loyal reader of the Weekly News noticed that this issue is volume 10, issue 11. Every week the issue number advances one and on the paper’s birth-anniversary date the volume increases one. This is the 312th issue under...

The weather at the start of this week is cool and a bit rainy. Wet is certainly needed, as the year's precipitation deficit is a whooping 6.2 inches as we head into the heart of the Skagit's summer dry season. A damp and cool week is a...

The secondary heading for this editorial is "our ossified leadership." The political state – and status – of our country is our society-wide failure, whether you read many newspapers or none and whether you discuss vigorously, halfheartedly or no...

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -Albert Einstein Thursday La Conner High School seniors graduate, 47 of them. Local merchants and institutions recognize them by sponsoring the seniors’ photographs on today's back page. Take a look a...

Whatever your politics and values, this year to date may have seemed generally gloomy, at least. Inflation stays persistently high, the potential of recession seems to be forever looming, wages are lower than the ongoing rising costs of everything, t...

The march of madness and meanness continues. Last week Montana, Nebraska and Florida’s legislators joined the stampede in outlawing gender-affirming care to teens and youths in their states. These laws will punish doctors and healthcare...

It is a tough choice for the residents of our little town – the citizens of La Conner – to make. The community was given a gift, nearly, when Sybil and Tom Jenson sold the Town of La Conner a half-plus acre of property under Pioneer Park and...

As publisher of the Weekly News, I will be on a panel discussing “The Future of Local Journalism: Is It Important to Our Democracy?” Monday May 15 at the Mount Vernon high school. In the United States, where our Declaration of Independence holds...

Ramon Hayes, mayor of the Town of La Conner for 16 years, is retiring when his term ends after the November elections. Hayes deserves a huge thank you for his steadfastness. He deserves credit for the solid staff employed in support of the town's...

Saturday is the 53rd anniversary of Earth Day. In the giddy, heady days of the early 1970s – with or without pot – people celebrated recycling. Going farther meant reusing and reducing. Reflect on that, on how radical the concepts of reusing...

Peace will come to Ukraine, but how and when? Fourteen months after Russia's invasion and nine years after their occupation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, the largest European conflict since Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland is an intractable...

Is democracy dangerous to the health of Shelter Bay community board members? Or, is the board’s leadership allergic to free speech? Is it possible that the Weekly News is just plain wrong in its efforts to cover Shelter Bay governance? The Weekly...

Finding out who slew the Slough Swindler, the La Conner Chamber of Commerce’s participatory mystery theatre event last Saturday, was relatively easy. Several people figured it out and the winner was chosen by lot. He got a grand prize package of...

Seems like banks and railroads are failing all around us. No one is really surprised, from corporate CEOs to congressional committees and Congress, period, to front line workers driving engines and managing branches or federal and state regulators at...

What is the difference between last week and this week? Answer: Last week everyone was at the end of the third year of the coronavirus pandemic. This week we all step into, no not its fourth year but the first year of what the World Health...

Ouch. Ouch everywhere, for everybody. New La Conner Schools Deputy Superintendent of Finance Dave Cram's initial assessment is that 490 students will enroll in the school district next fall. That is down 35 kids from today and 100 from 2021. It is...

With March's arrival are a flurry of activities, not late winter snow but opportunities to join together in fun and games, literally, and, in one instance, to change, literally. There are also very real storm clouds hanging over Shelter Bay. The mont...

Dear fellow citizens. Help, please, by paying attention to your state government and taking a stand to keep public records public, available to you – and to the journalists and activists. Tell your legislators and Attorney General Bob Ferguson...