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The weather has not cooperated or coordinated itself with this year's Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, but sunny days are surely here again for Andrew Miller's new Tulip Valley Farms operation. His Bradshaw Road operation, in partnership with Larry Jensen and Shannon Perkes, continues to be open for business after an April 7 agreement between his lawyer and counsel for Spinach Bus Venture Group, owners of Tulip Town. Miller was sued on March 28 to halt his operations by Tulip Town's owners in Skagi...
Skagit County Superior Court judge Laura Riquelme sided with the five executive committee members of the Shelter Bay Community board of directors Friday, denying a request for an injunction that could have led to their removal from the board and would have prevented them from making financial decisions, including approving the community’s 2023 interim lease with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. In a near hour-long hearing attended by 15-20 Shelter Bay residents and watched over Zoom by another 45, attorneys for defendants Wendy P...
Last spring, Judy Kontos won election to the Shelter Bay Community’s board of directors on a platform of increasing transparency and ushering in reform as part of the nine-member governing panel. This time around, Kontos didn’t fare well when Shelter Bay residents marked their ballots. Kontos was recalled on a 343-149 vote last Wednesday when in-person and mail-in ballots were tallied. Kontos, whose career background is in finance with extensive experience as a mortgage broker, was sanctioned and suspended from the board in February pen...
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 goods has become. In the 1960s parents and grandparents returned pop bottles back to the grocery and redeemed the deposit, with the bottles going back for washing and getting refilled. Fewer new glass bottles needed to be made. Aluminum cans once did not exist. And when was the last time any of us took a r...
Very few of us are racist or know people who are racist. Few of us stay quiet when racist remarks are made. That is what polling and folks discussing race in America or in their community say. Yet I know that I very definitely crossed the street once when three Black men were coming my way. Was that caution race-based? So, a few of us are racist. Many argue that there is not systematic racism. So substitute power, control and fear as motivations driving individuals and individuals in charge of institutions to act. Statistically and...
Shakespeare does not have to be difficult. Here is a great way to make his work accessible: weave it with American musical comedy. Combine lavish costumes, a 13-piece band, an energetic, uniformly top-notch cast, great direction and producing and whisk it into the spring Skagit Valley College music department's theatre production and you have "Something Rotten," which is really a must see show at the Lincoln Theatre April 21-23. Whether you are smart or clever or funny or like singing or...
Friday was tulip-flowers-in-bloom day, a wonderfully sunny day, if still cool and with a bit of a breeze. It was as much officially the start of the tulip tourist season as the first pitch and Opening Day was for the Mariners two weeks earlier. It was the day La Conner's merchants have been waiting for since, well, Christmas. Morris and First street curbs were lined with cars and shoppers populated sidewalks in clumps in and around the business district. Up Third Street some went in returning...
The turmoil continues in Shelter Bay. Resident Judy Kontos filed five petitions, one against each executive committee member of the Shelter Bay Community board of directors, Thursday, April 13. The day before Kontos, elected to the board in May, was ousted from the board by a 55% yes vote of 492 of residents. This followed Kontos’ sanction and suspension from the board in February. “Collectively, I delivered over 1,000 signatures,” Kontos told the Weekly News Monday. Each petition had 220 signatures, she said. Community rules require 25% of th...
Will Judy Kontos be a Shelter Bay Community director tomorrow? Community leasehold members voted through 12:30 p.m. today “whether or not you approve the recall,” with “yes” a vote to remove her. Kontos was sanctioned and suspended Feb. 15 based on four code of conduct complaints filed against her in the fall. A special membership meeting was held April 12, starting at 11 a.m., recessing at 11:45 a.m. and reconvening at 5:30 p.m. The sole agenda item was Kontos recall for “four violations of rules and regulations of the associati...
Fewer homes sold in Skagit County in March, keeping the average median price high, $556,250 for the 105 homes that closed countywide. Anacortes remains the most expensive housing market in the county, by far: The 23 homes that closed had an average median price of $730,000. Sold home prices in the Burlington and Mount Vernon markets were also high, with $587,500 the average median price for the 20 homes that closed in the smaller city,. The 33 homes that closed in Mount Vernon had an average median price of $585,000. These three markets kept...
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 tragedy destroying two societies. The horrific loss of soldiers on both sides continues. In Ukraine civilians are in danger in war zones and from targeted attacks throughout the country. Look to AP – Associated Press – or other analyses to learn of the probably over 70,000 Russian-side combat deaths and...
A Skagit County Superior Court judge will rule Friday on a motion to continue Shelter Bay leaseholder and resident Jan Henrie’s civil complaint accusing five Shelter Bay Community board of directors of violating their statutory fiduciary duty and malfeasance. The lawsuit, filed March 15, Jan Henrie vs. Wendy Poulton, Elaine Dixon Monte Hicks, Joseph Hurley and Louise Kari, is on the April 14 civil motions docket. The case number is 23-2-00221-29. To participate remotely: zoom.us/my/skagitsuperior2; 253-215-8782; Meeting ID: 667 929 1013; P...
The $40,187 reported in sales tax revenues to the La Conner Town Council for March by the state’s Department of Revenue is the second highest ever, only behind 2022’s record $44,210. It exceeds $40,000 for only the second time and is 20% above 2021, the third highest March report. The Special Use Fire Tax Revenues also dipped from 2022, by $314, 7.4%, below $4,000, barely, to $3,924, but still the second highest ever March total. Tourists still stayed overnight, creating record revenues for the Town’s hotel/motel tax, $8,083, the highest March...
Much worse than metaphorical slings and arrows are being fired on Shelter Bay social media community platforms, including their Next Door community. A handful of residents who have criticized sanctioned Shelter Bay Community Director Judy Kontos for her postings have called on the Weekly News to investigate, alleging she continues to violate association rules and regulations of confidentiality as a board member. They criticize as not true, as she told residents attending the April 2 town hall meeting - and as the Weekly News summarized in its...
March was a cold month in a cold winter. Seven nights it frosted, with four overnight lows below 30 degrees the first two weeks and the 28.1 degree month's low March 17. Snow was not measured locally. By all calculations it was cold. The 35 degrees average morning low was 2.9 degrees below the century average of 37.9. The average daily high of 51.4 was 0.8 degrees below the 52.2 century average. Those combined to have the 42.9 degree daily average peg at 1.9 degrees below the 44.8 degrees for the century. The high topped 50 degrees 18 times,...
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 News has taken the standard journalistic approach to cover Shelter Bay: attending meetings; interviewing people; reading documents – including court filings; and tracking social media posts. Staff have spoken to people on and off the record, on background and for source material, including holding nam...
Embattled Shelter Bay Community Director Judy Kontos is on the offensive, petitioning since mid-March to have residents recall the five members of the board’s executive committee. The board sanctioned Kontos in February after an ethics committee investigation Kontos believed was patently unfair. The petitions against board President Wendy Poulton, Vice President Joseph Hurley, Treasurer Louise Kari, Secretary Monte Hicks and Secretary pro tem Elaine Dixon read the same: “In accordance with Shelter Bay Community, Inc. Article V, Section 2, we...
Five Shelter Bay Community board of directors will get their day in Skagit County Superior Court April 14, but until then are restrained from taking any action on the organization’s master lease with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community or destroying any financial records. In a hearing Friday, March 31, Judge Laura Riquelme found “good cause to grant some requests, essentially temporary restraints” against the board’s executive committee: Wendy Poulton, Elaine Dixon Monte Hicks, Joseph1 Hurley and Louise Kari. Leasehold resident Jan Henrie...
Shelter Bay residents face a weekend of board conflicts aired. Friday morning five Shelter Bay Community board of directors are in Skagit County Superior Court. Plaintiff’s Jan Henrie’s civil complaint accuses them of malfeasance and violating their statutory fiduciary duty. The lawsuit filed March 15, Jan Henrie vs. Wendy Poulton, Elaine Dixon Monte Hicks, Joseph1 Hurley and Louise Kari, has a March 31 hearing. Cases start at 9:30 a.m. The case number is 23-2-00221-29 The board filed a liability insurance claim and again has Seattle att...
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 La Conner tourist goodies. Everyone went home happy. Solving the problems the Shelter Bay Community faces will not be nearly so easy, may not end at a prescribed time and the outcome is not certain. This is a drama still playing out. It may be dramatic but it is certainly a mess. The five executive c...
The officers of the Shelter Bay Community board of directors are called back to Skagit County Superior Court March 31 on a civil complaint that accuses them of breach of fiduciary duty. It alleges malfeasance and failure in their actions and conduct as directors for passing the “invalid budget in violation of both the bylaws of SBC Inc. and the Revised Code of Washington” for 2023. It also alleges that the board "failed to mail the budget to its members as required," so it was never properly ratified and that the board’s following of this...
SWINOMISH RESERVATION -The "active cleanup of the diesel spill caused by the early Thursday morning derailment of two BNSF locomotives" was ending early Saturday afternoon, Bill Dunbar, U.S. EPA public affairs staff reported. He gave estimates that approximately 2,100 cubic yards of contaminated soil and 4,300 gallons of groundwater were removed from the site, with fewer than 50 gallons of diesel fuel in the groundwater. No diesel reached the shoreline, and no impacts to fish or wildlife have...
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 every agency. Train cars and locomotives jumping the tracks in East Palestine and Springfield, Ohio or nearby, behind the Swinomish Casino? Banks failing in California, New York and, now, Switzerland? The new normal is business as usual. Big companies are always failing. Big companies are always no...
As every husband and father knows, there are “Two Things,” no “Three Things” he must not do: “say no to his wife and no to his daughter, or tell the truth.” As life becomes more complex for Gomez Addams, he considers “Four Things” not to do. Welcome to the “The Addams Family, A New Musical” playing at the Lincoln Theatre through April 2. Addams, played with a confident panache by Luke Dooley, and his wife Morticia (Bailey Wend, with a great deadpan morbidity) open the show on the one evening every year the family gathers to contemplate love an...
Between gift giving generosity and tourists wanting to get out of their hometowns, La Conner registers jingled merrily in December. Town of La Conner sales tax revenue reported in February was a record $63,103, $ 6,556 and 11.6% above 2022’s previous record. Not till May did a month’s sales tax revenues top $63,000 last year. The $106,494 two-month total is one-sixth of this year’s projected budget. Shoppers flocked to La Conner for holiday shopping; data are reported on a two month time lag. These are November and December's revenues. The $...
