Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper
Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper
Sorted by date Results 230 - 254 of 1404
The median price of the 137 homes that closed in Skagit County in June was $560,000, almost unchanged over the four months since March. Fewer homes closed in most of the county’s nine markets than a year ago but the number was about the same as sold in May. The 27 homes sold in Anacortes was six less than in May and seven fewer than in 2022. The median sold home price there dipped to $765,000 after two months of being above $800,000. Data are from the Kirkland-based Northwest Multiple Listing Service. A La Conner area broker shared a report t...
By Ken Stern Two outstanding performances of two fantastical characters are sound reasons for blowing into the Rexville Blackrock Amphitheater to see Shakespeare Northwest’s production of “The Tempest.” It is not an island but the outdoor theater is the natural setting for this play. Nate Wheeler’s Caliban scurrying out of the woods, snorting and babbling and Ariel (Maia Newell-Large), flitting and swooning as she darts on and off the stage and up and down the aisle, are way worth the price of admission. This is almost a fairy tale and starts...
The drought conditions for Skagit County? Not good. The U.S. Drought Monitor’s website’s weekly report lists almost the entire county in drought by area, 97.5%. Greater La Conner is in a small coastal slice of moderate drought, as is the Cascades region. Together, 11.4% of the county is in moderate drought. The rest of the county is in severe drought, 86.1%, except for the northeasternmost corner, 2.5%, measured as abnormally dry. Skagit River streamflow at the Mount Vernon bridge was measured as record low. The definition: “Estimated strea...
The quickest way to step out of your everyday world this summer? Get tickets, bring your lawn chair, blanket and jacket and get thee to “The Taming of the Shrew” at the Rexville Blackrock Amphitheatre. It opened Friday, half of Shakespeare Northwest’s season’s theme of “Fathers and Daughters,’ in repertoire with “The Tempest.” No father, here Baptista (a mild, patient Devin Knowles), ever had a daughter like Katherine (Haylie Conchelos, properly strong and stubborn), though every parent wants a daughter like Bianca (demure, mild Ashleigh N...
By Ken Stern This corrects the July 19 story headlined: “Solarize Skagit will power 129 homes.” That headline is incorrect. As the cooperative’s Vice President Mary Wohleb states in her letter on page 2 today: “A sign up’ means the homeowner filled out an on-line form. … A sign up is not a commitment to go solar.” Wohleb also clarifies she did not provide information about the 30% federal tax or that it is applied to the $2.81/wt negotiated rate, in paragraph four. This is the complete story, as corrected: The Skagit Valley Clean Energy Cooper...
Summer is well underway. It is hot, but not as hot as others have it around the country. It is not as hot – yet – as we experienced in 2021. We are fortunate that Skagit summers come with little humidity and cool evenings. For those of us who can afford it – and that might mean having the time – the calendar is full of entertainment to see, listen to and create from Stanwood and Snohomish counties up to the Canadian border and across it and east into the Cascades. For the adventuresome and patient, there is the hope ferries will arrive in Frid...
This corrects the July 19 story headlined: “Solarize Skagit will power 129 homes.” The headline is incorrect. As the cooperative’s Vice President Mary Wohleb states in her letter below this article: “A 'sign up’ means the homeowner filled out an on-line form. … A sign up is not a commitment to go solar.” Wohleb also clarifies she did not provide information about the 30% federal tax or that it is applied to the $2.81/wt negotiated rate, in paragraph four. Her letter will be on page 2 of the...
Finally, five new homes are complete and ready for move in at Channel Cove, at the south end of Park Street in south La Conner. Construction started last December on the one duplex and four single homes, but it has been four years since Home Trust of Skagit Executive Director Jodi Dean announced that funding had been assembled for the project. The two story homes, pre-sold to buyers qualified by Home Trust, are priced at $260,000, but appraised at $500,000, Dean wrote in an email. They are...
Good but not a record may become the new normal for 2023 Town of La Conner tourist tax revenues. The June sales tax revenues of $53,130 reported to town council by the state’s Department of Revenue are the third highest total for the month, but again below the record amounts of 2022 and 2021. The Special Use Fire Tax revenues drop tracked the sales tax pattern. At $5,297 it was well below 2022’s total but only $272 below 2021. Sales and fire tax monthly totals are over double 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, and 10% above 201...
Buying a house in Western Washington seems out of reach for many wage workers. Affording rent is a struggle for many as well. The state minimum wage is $15.74, but in Skagit County a two-bedroom apartment may cost $1,407, requiring an hourly wage of $27.06 to comfortably make that payment. That is the analysis in the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual report, which finds Washington is the fifth most expensive state in the nation for renters. A one-bedroom Skagit County apartment can be $1,111, requiring a “housing wage” of $21.3...
The Town of La Conner’ s emergency management commission will start meeting monthly after half a year of bi-weekly sessions. It has made some progress and is settling into a routine. The town council and mayor moved quickly to form the commission after December’s Swinomish Channel flooding got their attention. Maybe emergencies are required to form commissions and plan solutions to past problems. Will it take a flood of homeless people floating into taking up residency in Pioneer Park to engage town leaders to move toward significant developmen...
In Seattle in June I had an opportunity rarely considered, much less repeatedly realized: I went up in more elevators, stepped onto more escalators and craned my head up at more buildings in two days than I have in two years – indeed – ever, in La Conner. Wow. As Dorothy might have exclaimed, it certainly isn’t Kansas. I was staying on the 34th floor of the downtown Sheraton. Up and down I went. I took my friend Dick to the Smith Tower, for decades the tallest building in the country west of New York City and we went to the 35th floor obser...
Mayor Ramon Hayes called a special meeting of the La Conner Town Council Thursday, July 13 at 10:45 a.m. The purpose of this meeting is to approve the Talmon infrastructure improvement (DE) agreement. This is the Brandon and Katie Atkinson three-story condominium project at 306 Center Street. Council will meet in the Maple Hall Fireside Room. The meeting will not be streamed....
June was another dry month in an increasingly dry year, with a total of 0.7 inches of rain. The half inch of rain June 9-10 was two-thirds of the month’s total. The other 0.24 inches of rain came June 18-20. Rainfall has been below average every month in 2023. Precipitation measured at Washington State University’s Memorial Highway Mount Vernon station is 9.3 inches for the year. That is 7.1 inches, 43.4%, below the January-June century average of 16.4 inches. This was the fourth driest June this century and one of seven times less than an inc...
Yesterday was July 4th, the 247th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, the colonies splitting from the most powerful country on the planet. Read again the Declaration of Independence. Start at the beginning. What did the colonies declare? First, it was a “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America.” Second, it was a statement from “one people.” Third, they held “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain u...
The La Conner Town Council will hold a special meeting 5 p.m. July 11 to prepare for a six hour retreat July 24. That starts the creation of a preliminary SWOT analysis BERK Consulting will use to shape the retreat, Town Administrator Scott Thomas said Monday. The goal of council and staff will be to develop a five-year strategic plan by the end of the year. BERK staff will take the discussion summary and combine it with the surveys residents have submitted all spring and with summaries from the meetings council’s ad hoc communications c...
Looking through Gilkey Square at 3:20 p.m. Saturday, it seemed a boat was on fire. Tourists and locals gathering at the boardwalk railing saw a brush – more properly, a grass – fire just west of the west side Swinomish Channel shoreline. Fire District 13 duty officers submitted this summary: “Battalion 13 and Brush 1314 (were) dispatched to a 30 foot by 30 foot brush fire on Front Street. Batt 13 arrived on scene to find Swinomish PD and civilians trying to contain the fire. B13 gave short...
May was a good month to sell a home in Skagit County, especially in the Anacortes and La Conner markets. In Anacortes $845,000 was the median price for the 32 homes that closed. In the La Conner area, $759,000 was the median price for the nine homes that closed. County wide, 131 homes closed at a median price of $605,500. A 2,900 square foot home on Sunset Drive, on Skagit Bay, sold for $1.6 million, while a marina frontage Swinomish Drive home sold for just over $1 million. On the low end, one sale was below $400,000, at $304,900 for a 1,024...
Construction of the first two homes on La Conner Heights began at the start of June. The structures are visible on the property residents long called Snapdragon Hill east of Whatcom Street and south of Hill Street, near Sacred Heart Catholic Church. BYK Construction of Sedro Woolley, as Snapdragon Hills Estate, LLC, owns the property, platted as seven lots on the newly constructed High Street. The two houses under construction are each over 2,600 square feet. "I know the size seems large but a...
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 my ownership, completing my sixth year editing and managing the Weekly News. Year seven, with issue 313, starts next week. News editor Bill Reynolds has quoted me, “I own it but it is the community's newspaper.” I do own it but my hope for and ask of readers has always been for engagement and parti...
Saturday's second annual Anacortes pride parade was a rainbow-plus of colors, June 16. Thousands of cheering, clapping, dancing, rainbow flag waving supporters shouted their approval from the sidewalks and curbs along the downtown Commercial Street parade route. Hundreds of happy, proud paraders ranging in age from babes in arms and strollers, to children pulling stuffed animal filled wagons to church contingents to Democrats, PFLAG representatives, motorcycle mamas, queens in drag and more, mar...
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 toe-in-the-water dip into a June gloom. It has been too sunny and too warm the first half of the month and many have turned off their office natural gas heating systems. Once it is gloomy though, it seems to linger. This week's and this month's weather is just that, clouds passing by, not even minutes in the...
Way down. The Town of La Conner May sales tax revenues of $48,073 reported to town council by the state’s Department of Revenue are the third highest May report ever, but down $21,7923, 31%, from last year and $10,214 below 2021’s total. The Special Use Fire Tax revenues drop was a twin, the $4,797 also 31%, $2,188 below 2022, though again the third highest report for the month. Only the motel/hotel tax revenues set a record, the $12,701 $67 above 2022 total. The revenues are from March transactions, the DOR reporting on a two month lag. The...
There was sharing aplenty at the Museum of Northwest Art Saturday night as MoNA raised $370,000 through purchases and donations at its 31st annual auction. The First Street museum was humming as people gathered for the second year in a row, with nary an N95 mask in sight. The theme, "Share the Magic of Northwest Art," was visible throughout, with over 300 pieces of art hung and displayed on every gallery wall on the first and second floor, with sculpture and jewelry displayed on stands and...
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 not at all with your neighbors, families and friends. About the ossified leadership: Our accepting presidential candidates on either side of 80-years-old is a failure on Joe Biden and Donald Trump's parts, the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties – and financers – politically involved citiz...
