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After two more ballot tallies, totals indicate La Conner School District Director John Agen is likely to continue on the board, moving over from his District 1 seat to taking the District 2 position. Voters are giving Agen 53% of the vote against former District 2 Director Janie Beasley after counts on Nov. 14 and 15, after the Weekly News went to press. Beasley has gained 29 votes, to 675, reducing Agen’s lead to 95 votes. His total is 770. Another 144 school district votes were counted Monday and Tuesday. Elections office staff estimate 5...
What is more American than the post office? The post office is older than the United States, established the year before the Declaration of Independence, in 1775 by perhaps the wisest and most practical of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin. He understood that to knit not only each community – say a town like La Conner – together but to forge a new nation, we had to be in communication – connected – with each other, from Rhode Island to Georgia. What leads this week’s page one news? The terrorist attack on the Skagit County Elections...
Up again. Not a record, but the $65,603 in October sales tax revenue reported to the La Conner Town Council by the state Department of Revenue is the highest monthly collection in 2023 and topped only by four record setting months last year. This is the third month in a row that sales tax revenues are above $60,000, with totals increasing monthly The $528,778 collected to date is 86.8% of the total forecast for the year when the budget was set. It seems likely that the revenue target of $609,191 will be met if tourists continue coming. The...
The one contested election for greater La Conner voters in 2023, between John Agen and Janie Beasley for La Conner School District Director Position 2 has Agen with 453 votes, 53.7% after the first vote tally Nov. 7, ahead by 68 votes. Beasley received 385 votes, 45.7%. All Town of La Conner candidates did not have opposition and won: Marna Hanneman for mayor, has 170 votes; Annie Taylor, appointed in 2021, for council position 1, has 162; and Mary Wohleb, an incumbent, 169. They take their...
At the public hearing Nov. 14 on the Town of La Conner’s proposed 2024 budget be prepared to discuss the record $6.98 million in revenues and the $8 million in expendituresa, a deficit budget of just over $1 million. It is balanced by tapping the reserve fund balance of $5.5 million. As in recent years, the bulk of the projected revenue, $3.7 million comes from the four wastewater funds. These programs account for over half the costs, $4.2 million. The street fund is projected to take in $1.2 million and spend $1.3 million. The current e...
It is a week after the school children of La Conner and many of their parents, families and friends swarmed up First Street in the town’s annual Halloween parade. Last weekend kids of all ages were on stage at the Lincoln Theatre, performing as Munchkins, crows, poppies, snowflakes and many more imaginative characters in wonderful performances of “The Wizard of Oz.” These are exactly the activities every child everywhere needs to be engaged in. How fortunate and privileged these Skagit Valley families are to enjoy these opportunities. And,...
Collaboration was the buzz word of the day when scientists, Skagit County politicians and a Puget Sound Energy staff person shared a panel titled “government and resiliency” at the Museum of Northwest Art Saturday, as part of the exhibition “Surge: Mapping Transition, Displacement, and Agency in Times of Climate Change.” Skagit County Commissioner Peter Browning at the start named the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, the Upper Skagit and the Sauk-Suiattle Indian tribes, pledging listening and working collaboratively and in cooperation on a ho...
As in 2022, precipitation returned in October. The 2.4 inches was the most monthly rainfall since February. Over two inches fell in the Oct. 9-25 period. Another 1.2 inches came down Nov. 1-4. Still, the year’s rain deficit is nine inches. October rainfall was 1.1 inches, 31.3%, below the century average of 3.5 inches. October is typically wet: 10 years this century have had over four inches of rain, six have had five-plus inches and 6.1 inches fell in 2014. More than three inches of rain has fallen 14 years since 2000. Eight of those years h...
La Conner school board member John Agen increased his lead over former District 2 Director Jeanie Beasley to 120 votes. He now has 54.4% to Beasley's 45.1% after this second vote report Thursday from the Skagit County Elections Office staff. Agen led by 68 votes Tuesday. While county staff estimate 9,000 votes remain to be tallied countywide, it is not known how many La Conner school district ballots remain to be counted. Twelve hundred and ninety three residents have voted in this election. In 2019, Marlys Baker's win over Beasley brought out...
The application for the three-story condominiums and first floor rentals at 306 Center Street needs to be revised to meet the town’s code height requirement, Town of La Conner Planning Director Michael Davolio wrote property owner Bandon Atkinson at 10:50 p.m. Oct. 24. “[Y]our design plans appears to show an elevator shaft that exceeds the town’s 30’ height limit. This drawing will not be approved.” Davolio’s communication might have been prompted by questions at the town council meeting earlier that evening. Residents Linda Talman and Leslie...
October was National Co-op Month, the annual celebration of this alternative way to engage with each other in our business dealings and thus as people in relationship with each other. National Co-op Month offers the time to reflect on and promote a more humane and sustainable way of living. The 2023 theme, “Owning Our Identity,” is, its champions write, “a chance to lift up what makes cooperative businesses unique in the marketplace. Guided by a set of shared principles and values – among them democracy, equity and solidarity – co-ops ar...
Listening to and watching the devastated residents of Mariupol after the Russians began bombardment of the city in February 2022 in the film “20 Days in Mariupol,” the pain and incomprehension – the entire scene – could have been labeled Gaza, October 2023. The Israeli war on Gaza is the start of the 2022 Russian invasion all over again – the complete destruction and total terror on an entire population, making almost no distinction between the military and civilians. The language is the same, from the term “siege” to Russian President Put...
The eleventh annual Friday Harbor Film Festival showed 25 feature and 14 short documentary films last week, Oct. 27-29. The volunteer staff and festival volunteers once again offered a well organized and smooth running experience, with screenings at three venues throughout the weekend. A journalist attending a film festival has an obligation to report on films that interest the community and a responsibility to cover films that interest him. For that I viewed “20 Days in Mariupol,” an AP – FRONTLINE/PBS film of journalists providing video repor...
No. No more military aid to Israel, not $14 billion, not 14 cents. Write President Joe Biden, Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Rep. Rick Larsen and tell them more weapons will neither stop the killing nor end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Biden is wrong in his easy rhetoric. Sure Hamas is a terrorist organization. Yes their actions are absolutely despicable. Rightfully call the kidnapping and murder of innocent evil. But wars on terrorism are efforts to kill ideas, pain, anger and memories brought about by decades...
Like La Conner, Langley is a tourist town on the Salish Sea, on the southeast coast of Whidbey Island. La Conner's planning commissioners, staff and Councilmember Marylee Chamberlain, along with a couple of citizens, met with architect and "pocket neighborhood" designer Ross Chapin Oct. 19 to hear his views on "strong towns: resliant small towns(with) great design (and) compact" based on his 40 year career, Planning Director Michael Davolio's goal was "to provide the Planning Commission with...
Voters living in the La Conner School District have one choice on their ballot in the school board race for the District 2 director. John Agen, elected to the District 1 position in 2019, has moved into the district. Janie Beasley, defeated in her 2019 reelection for that seat, is running again. No other local race is contested. Residents have to decide to vote their approval or not mark their ballots in these local elections: La Conner School District Alana Quintasket, District 1 Kim Pedroza, District 4 Town of La Conner Marna Hanneman, mayor...
Ballots will be arriving in the mail soon. We have very few choices in this year of municipal elections. There is only one contested seat: the La Conner school district Director 2 position. The rest of the positions in greater La Conner, for school director positions 1 and 4, Port of Skagit commissioner position 2 and Town of La Conner mayor and council positions 1 and 5 are all decided when the candidates cast their ballots. That is our bad, residents and constituents of those jurisdictions. It may be that school board member Kim Pedroza and...
Staff at the La Conner Weekly News continue to be recognized for their excellent work. They received 29 WNPA best newspaper awards at the annual Better Newspaper Contest of Washington’s community newspapers in Kennewick Oct. 7. News editor Bill Reynolds led with 10, including first for his “Rehabbed bald eagle released near McGlinn Island” in the animal features story category. Reynolds added five seconds and four thirds across categories ranging from an arts feature story on Maggie Wilder leading the repainting of the mural under the Rainbow B...
Up. The Town of La Conner’s sales tax revenue is $63,276 for September, reported by the state Department of Revenue for July sales. It is the highest report for the month, the highest 2023 monthly total and the third highest monthly total ever, behind two 2022 summer months. It brings the year-to-date revenue to 76% of budget projections. This is the first 2023 month to top a 2022 same month total. As always, the special use fire tax tracks sales tax. The $6,284 matches in most ways: it is the highest 2023 monthly total, and a record for the c...
All of a sudden there are a slew of opportunities to be active civically – democratically – in the community. You do not have to live in La Conner to involve yourself. And the October activities end, appropriately, with our school children – indeed anyone with a costume, with or without a child – parading up First Street for the Halloween parade. Come on out for that, for sure. Activities extend into Nov. 7 election day. Because only one area resident chose to contest only one of the La Conner school board or Town of La Conner council seats,...
The La Conner Town Council almost doubled its hotel-motel allocation in the 2024 budget, voting to spend $342,111 at its Sept. 26 meeting. Almost 64%, $217,461 are internal expenditures, mostly for Maple Hall improvements, $132,866, up from $6,000 for security cameras for 2023. The Morris and First street restrooms and landscaping will get $63,995, a $10,139 increase. And the Town advertising budget jumped to $20,600 from $600. Grants to community organizations total $124,650. The La Conner...
Finally, a significant rainfall at autumn’s start, 0.9 inches Sept. 23. That led six days in a row of precipitation totaling 1.4 inches for 82.8% of the month’s 1.8 inch total. The other 0.3 inches fell Sept 3-4, with a quarter inch of rain the 4th. The 1.8 inches of rain is one of four years that has occurred since 2000, making it the tenth wettest September in the last 24 years and about average for this century. The September rainfall average for this century has been pushed down to 1.9 inches. This year’s rainfall is the closest to avera...
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy acted rightly as the mature adult in the room last weekend, taking responsibility for passing a spending bill to fund the United States government. When you read this, McCarthy has already been voted out of the speaker’s chair by a cabal of extremist right wing Republican representatives, their retribution for McCarthy committing the act of governing. The Constitution obligates the House of Representatives to initiate budget bills funding the federal government. Voters in 435 districts elect their r...
If my parents were alive, they would be stepping through their second century in America. My mom, born in 1920, would be 103. My dad would be 109. They were children of the Depression. I have long called myself a child of children of the Depression, typically recalling my mother’s insistence on buying on sale everything from clothes to Kleenex. She did not waste and collected cottage cheese container and egg cartons. The United Auto Workers on strike made me think of my dad. My family grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where Jeeps are made. Jeeps are r...
Over ominous music playing in a darkened theatre a scream shrieks out. When the curtains open onto an early 1950s English inn’s sitting room, the news on the radio is of a murder of a woman in London. But that is hardly background noise even after the headline in the day’s newspaper is read by an arriving guest, Mrs. Boyle (Beth Morgan-Cleland), one of an ensemble cast, each actor well defining his or her unique characters and thus standing out individually. Five guests will soon be greeted by Mollie (Amanda Wells) and Giles (Rob Hanson) Ral...
