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Someone took what appears to be a sledge hammer to the pay parking machine at the Town of La Conner public parking lot on S. Third Street. Although the vandal was not successful in breaking in for the few dollars that might have been inside, they managed to totally break the machine. Public Works Director Brian Lease told the Town Council last week that the yellow box that had been taking paper currency and spiting out daily parking permits and dollar coins in change cannot be resurrected. The...
Thomas J. Schlicker, who was Swinomish Police Chief from 1997 until he was fired last September, was sentenced to federal prison on Tuesday. According to court documents, U.S. District Court Judge John C. Coughner in Seattle sentenced Schlicker to 16 months in prison followed by 2 years of supervised release for stealing money from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. In August Schlicker took a plea agreement and pleaded guilty to one of the 10 felony counts the U.S. Attorney’s office had filed against him. The rest of the charges were d...
Most of us pay our phone, electricity, gas, trash and cable bills without really looking at each of many taxes, fees and other governmental fund-raising charges included. This week a local resident, who lives just outside the La Conner town limits on property that is unincorporated Skagit County happened to examine her Frontier landline phone bill. Nestled in among the 10 federal, state, county and local taxes was one for the “Swinomish Indian Res Utility Use Tax,” even though her home is not within the reservation boundaries. She said Fro...
La Conner property owners packed Maple Hall Thursday to hear their local representatives give them the dire news: There is no quick cure for the tax disparity that has hit La Conner harder than any other community in the state following the so-called Great Wolf Lodge decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Some 100 people missed the second half of the Seahawks game against the 49ers to hear what their school, county and town officials had to say during the meeting arranged by Mayor Ramon Hayes. For more than a year, the...
The La Conner School Board on Monday signed a proposed agreement with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community outlining the details of the $400,000 funding contribution the tribe promised last December. For months, school and tribal officials have been negotiating the terms of the gift. School Board President Rick Thompson said he was hopeful this final deal, brokered between school and tribal attorneys, would be approved by the Swinomish Indian Senate, which is expected to consider it next month. Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby, in San Diego...
La Conner’s Boys & Girls Club, threatened with closing down at the end of the school year in June, has a new lease on life. Last Thursday 27 people gathered at the Waterfront Cafe in La Conner to figure out a plan to sustain the club. Over free breakfast donated by Waterfront Cafe owner Guy Vallee, the attendees heard some very good news: A local resident, who insists on remaining anonymous, has made a very generous donation spanning the next five years and challenges the rest of the community to pitch in. While there is still a need for the L...
Since 1999, La Conner’s working parents have depended on the Boys & Girls Club for a place to send their kids after school. Conveniently located on the La Conner schools campus, right behind the administration building, the club serves 50 to 60 local elementary and middle school kids every afternoon. That can all end in June. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Skagit County Board is scheduled to decide next Thursday whether to close the La Conner club for good at the end of this school year. Besides La Conner, there are Boys & Girls clubs in A...
La Conner residents will soon receive notices from the Skagit County Assessor’s Office, outlining the change in assessed value of their property. “We’ve certified the roll and expect the notices will be mailed Friday,” Assessor Dave Thomas said Tuesday. The new values have already been posted on the county’s website. A quick check of the website shows that some properties in La Conner that were not re-assessed last year have new values about 14 percent higher, and some homes that had big increases in their assessed value last year will go u...
La Conner Weekly News moved to its new office effective May 1. For some reason, Google just can’t accept the fact that sometimes businesses move. So their search engine has us down as “permanently closed.” We have emailed correction requests many times. We’ve also engaged in phone conversations with Google representatives, who claim they are trying to help. On Tuesday, I spent most of an hour talking with a woman named Gouri, who called to investigate the ruckus we and several of our readers...
Taxpayers at Monday’s La Conner School Board meeting took the trustees to task over the local tax disparity. After the so-called Great Wolf decision, the land that generates about two-thirds of the school enrollment in La Conner was taken off the property tax rolls this year. That left the remaining taxpayers shouldering the entire school levy burden — which is the biggest chunk of the local tax bills. The issue came up during a question-and-answer session after La Conner Schools Superintendent Tim Bruce gave his report to the board, w...
A Fish and Game Enforcement officer for the Swinomish Tribe was arrested and charged with theft and wire fraud in federal court this month. Robert Scott Miller, 44, was employed by the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community when he allegedly used a tribal Key Bank credit card to purchase boat parts, fuel, a chainsaw and rifle bags that were never delivered to or used by the tribe’s Fish and Game Department. Since Key Bank’s headquarters is Fargo, North Dakota, according to court documents, the U.S. Attorney’s Office alleges that transmitting the inf...
For generations La Conner’s volunteer firefighters had been called to action by an old 1950s civil defense “air raid” siren. In 2011, bending to the will of some lodging proprietors, the Town Council voted to eliminate the howling siren during weekdays, when the fire station was manned 24 hours per day. Several weeks ago, the last volunteer to man the station round-the-clock left, but the siren wasn’t turned back on. Maybe few have noticed the five-cycle warble has been missing for awhile, but come Oct. 1, people will notice its return....
Officers from the Swinomish Police Department led a multi-agency team that took down a large illegal drug operation at a home on Second Street in Swinomish Village. Police Chief Rick Balam said that because serving the search warrant on that house was considered a “high risk entry,” agents from the FBI, U.S. Marshal’s Office, federal and state corrections departments, Skagit County Sheriff’s and the U.S. Border Patrol drug canine all assisted. Officers found very large amounts of heroin as well as methamphetamine, prescription narcoti...
For many years, there has been talk of building a “ring dike” around La Conner to protect the low-lying areas of the town from potential Skagit River flooding. Now, the proposal to build an earthen dike across the northern edge of town from the channel on the west, and connecting to existing farmland dikes on the east, is something that is moving forward quickly. Earlier this year, there was hope that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would kick in the first $100,000 to fund the dike studies, but that turned out to be something too costly for...
A federal court ruling that exempted more than a third of the parcels in Fire District 13 from property tax has some taxpayers on the east side of Swinomish Channel wanting to switch fire districts. The so-called “Great Wolf Lodge” ruling, which determined that homes on leased reservation land in Shelter Bay and in the Pull & Be Damned road neighborhoods are immune from county and state property tax, did not impact the budget for Fire District 13. That’s because the agency simply shifted its entire tax burden to the remaining taxpayers. Based...
Thomas J. Schlicker, who was Swinomish Police Chief from 1997 until he was fired last September, entered a guilty plea in federal court on Wednesday for stealing tribal funds. According to a press release from the office of U.S. Attorney Annette L. Hayes, Schlicker, 57, took a plea agreement in which he admitted he stole more than $30,000 that belonged to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community by depositing police department money into a secret account and making withdrawals in cash. He also admitted that he used the tribe’s gasoline credit c...
More than two-thirds of the homeowners who cast ballots in Shelter Bay last Wednesday approved negotiating a new 75-year lease with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. The count was 436 in favor of crafting a new lease, with 197 against. Voter turnout was pegged at 83 percent, with 633 votes cast out of 767 eligible voters. In order to be eligible to vote, a homeowner had to be a member “in good standing” meaning that all homeowner association fees are up to date. Shelter Bay is a gated com-munity developed on Indian reservation land leased...
A week from today, ballots of Shelter Bay homeowners will be tallied to determine whether the community should go ahead with a proposal to negotiate a new 75-year lease with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. If 50 percent plus one vote “yes” in the non-binding advisory vote – the work to craft a new lease under the terms the tribe has set will move ahead. If the majority vote is “no,” the process might be slowed down. The lobbying on both sides, “yes” and “no,” has been intense. Besides the higher land lease cost, which everyone...
The La Conner School District is scheduled to receive another $775,000 from the state Capital budget, Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, said on Monday. Still, La Conner area taxpayers, some of whom saw their property tax bills jump by 25 percent this year, probably won’t see immediate relief from the higher school taxes shifted to them when homes in Shelter Bay and on Pull-&-Be-Damned Road were taken off the county tax rolls. Last year, the 931 now tax-exempt parcels, mostly homes built on leased Indian reservation land, generated about $1.8 m...
Wednesday was going to be such a good day for a Mount Vernon family. Mike Tucker’s wife, Barb, and their family members were kayaking out to Hole in the Wall on the Swinomish Channel. Tucker was going to follow along in his little fishing boat, just in case someone wanted a tow back. The kayaks launched without a hitch — and as his wife paddled by, Tucker waved her on. She didn’t know their truck was under water, and her husband’s arms and legs were all skinned up. While the kayaks were...
The question on whether to approve the terms for a new lease for the land under the Shelter Bay development has divided the community between “Yes” and “No.” Both sides share something in common: Fear. Residents who favor the lease say it is the “best and final” offer by the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and fear that if it is not approved, they could lose their homes in 2044, when the present lease expires and fear their homes would lose value in the meantime. The people opposed to the new lease terms say they fear that if it is approved...
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...
Due to low enrollment for the summer program, the La Conner Boys & Girls Club will close on Friday. According to Ron McHenry, executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Skagit County, the clubs in Anacortes and Mount Vernon are seeing record summer enrollment, but in La Conner only about 15 kids signed up. “Some days there were only 9,” McHenry said. The cost of the summer program is $100 per week, but “we’re lowering the price to $75 for La Conner parents to help pick up the cost of gas and time to get to another club,” he said. Ken...
People who gather every week at Maple Hall for lunch with the La Conner Senior Center were making “last supper” and “last meal” jokes on Tuesday. After eight years, the Senior Nutrition Program of the Skagit County Department of Public Health and Community Services has stopped delivering meals for the La Conner seniors. Tuesday’s “last meal” consisted of meatball subs with spinach salad, a fruit cup, a cookie and a choice of chocolate or 1 percent milk for a suggested price of $5, which nearly e...
A La Conner area dog was mauled Sunday morning by a pack of three coyotes at the stretch of waterfront where locals take their dogs to play north of Pearle Jensen Way. Yodi, a 9-year-old, 40-pound pit bull-beagle mix survived but suffered puncture wounds to her legs as two coyotes tried to pull her down. The dog’s owners are Annie Jensen and Jerry Helsel. Jensen, who works at Pioneer Market, said Helsel was walking the dogs, Yodi and Jewel, a German shorthair, along the beach when the pair w...
