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Congressman Rick Larsen visited La Conner and Fir Island on Friday, touring Hedlin Farms and the Fir Island Estuary Restoration Project. “I always tell people you can meet in my office for 15 minutes, or I can come take a field trip and meet you for an hour,” said Larsen. Larsen, D-Everett, who represents Washington’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes La Conner, will head to Washington D.C. next week, when Congress will reconvene after summer recess. At the Fir Island Estuary Resto...
Charity Starkenburg, the owner of Bamboo Coffee, arrived at her La Conner business shortly after 6 a.m. Tuesday morning to find the door hanging slightly open. At first, she thought the damage was caused by the wind. But when she saw that a chalkboard inside the building had been thrown to the ground, she knew it was more than that. Skagit County Sheriff’s Sgt., Jenny Sheahan-Lee, commander of the La Conner sheriff’s station, said the business at Morris and Sixth streets had been burglarized overnight Monday or early Tuesday morning. The doo...
A powerful windstorm wreaked havoc across the northwestern part of the state on Saturday, leaving downed trees, damaged homes and utility interruptions throughout the La Conner area. “I think it caught everyone by surprise,” said Fire District 13 Chief Roy Horn. Wind speed in La Conner averaged around 13 miles per hour on Saturday, with gusts reaching at least 50 miles per hour, unusual speeds for any storm in August. The wind gusts came from the southeast. Fidalgo Island and the Swinomish Res...
A large, mostly empty building on downtown La Conner’s waterfront boardwalk could get a facelift this winter, if plans to enlarge and renovate the landmark “Lighthouse” building on First Street move forward. Construction that will significantly alter the building that used to house Palmer’s Restaurant is planned to begin next month, with completion anticipated by next spring. According to project manager David Elling, the building, which had been bank-owned and mostly vacant since 2010, was pur...
She comes from a small town in rural Alaska and has worked at a school with only around 125 students. She worked in Coolidge, Arizona, another town with a Native American reservation right on its border. She even quilts. Cheryl Sullivan is the new principal for the high school and middle school in La Conner, which has seen many big changes at the school district following the so-called Great Wolf Lodge tax decision and the ambitious construction of a new middle school. “I’ve been walking around,...
Three arrests have been made so far in the swarm of burglaries that have kept residents in neighborhoods on the Swinomish reservation on edge for the past several weeks Swinomish Police Chief Rick Balam said the men arrested are all adults, and two are from the La Conner area, while the third is from Sedro-Woolley. The burglaries apparently were not all related; police suspect that there were three different, unrelated groups of thieves. Police are still investigating and believe there are more suspects at large, though no new burglaries have...
A presentation by Steve Sakuma, the recently retired CEO of Sakuma Brothers Farms, was overshadowed on Sunday by around three dozen protestors and union representatives, who marched through La Conner to the Skagit County Histor-ical Museum, demanding that Sakuma negotiate with farm workers. The protests, which lasted the length of the lecture, ended without incident but provided some tense moments as some protestors entered to watch the lecture and Skagit County Sheriff’s deputies were called i...
A suspect has been arrested in connection with a series of burglaries that have occurred throughout the past several weeks across the Swinomish Reservation. Swinomish Police Chief Rick Balam said a man in his 20s was arrested Friday and will face prosecution for burglary. Police served a Swinomish Tribal Court search warrant on Friday at an address in Swinomish Village and recovered some of the stolen property. In all, about a dozen homes were burglarized in the neighborhoods around Snee-Oosh and Pull-&-Be Damned roads and the Hope Island...
Neighborhoods on the Swinomish Reservation are on edge this week, as seven burglaries occurred over night Tuesday and during the day on Wednesday and another was reported Thursday afternoon. While each case varies, the Swinomish Police Department believes all seven, as well as four prior burglaries, are related. The break-ins took place in the neighborhoods around Snee-Oosh and Pull & Be Damned roads and theHopeIslandarea. Most of the items stolen were electronics. And many of the homes targeted have absentee owners. The burglar may test to see...
Lunch and afternoon shopping was halted in La Conner on Sunday when a squirrel chewed through an electrical line and knocked out the town’s power. Akiko Oda with Puget Sound Energy said the four-hour outage was caused by a small animal inside the undrground equipment. The outage started at noon, and continued until Puget Sound Energy workers could replace an underground high voltage electrical vault just before 4 p.m.. The damaged power box, which is located near the La Conner Regional Library,...
Local farmers can rest a little easier this summer, as the city of Anacortes will release a portion of its share of Skagit River water to save crops impacted by this year’s drought. The deal, made last week with the assistance of the state Department of Ecology, frees 4.8 million gallons of river water per day that is allocated to Anacortes to irrigate crops. The farms are in Irrigation and Drainage districts 15 and 22, an area encompassing Fir Island and the southern La Conner flats. The c...
In Saturday’s parade, La Conner’s fire department will show off the newest addition to its arsenal — a gleaming new engine loaded with modern firefighting equipment and flaunting a decal featuring the sports logo of the high school. The engine, which has the capability to deliver 750 gallons of flame-retardant foam, with extremely high power, will give the department more than one engine and allow it to perform maintenance on its older engine. Until now, the older engine has been the sol...
The library was captured in a web last week. A perplexing sight greeted residents on Friday afternoon, as a string of art pieces, landmarks and stair railings around town were found covered by colorful knitted and crocheted bits of yarn. This wasn’t the work of any normal vandal, however, as the Quilt and Textile Museum was quick to take credit for the “yarn-bombing.” Known in some circles as knitfitti, yarn bombing is a global phenomenon occurring as far away as Eastern Europe. In La Conne...
The historic low water level in the Skagit River threatens to damage the valley’s farms this summer. With stream flows the lowest they’ve ever been in the 74 years records have been kept, the state authorized emergency water to be transferred from a utility to irrigate the most at-risk crops on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Skagit County Board of Commissioners has scheduled a meeting Monday to hear from farmers concerned about their irrigation water supply. Monday’s meeting is 11:30 a.m. at the commissioners chambers in Mount Vernon. “We’r...
