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The La Conner Town Council voted unanimously to cancel the town’s agreement with Fire District 13 and buy out its interest in the fire station on Chilberg Road near the roundabout. This move comes after Fire 13 in December announced plans to staff the station round-the-clock to provide better service to its taxpayers on the east side of the Swinomish Channel. Meanwhile, La Conner Volunteer Fire Department, which already has firefighters spending the night at the station, has grown too big to share space with Fire 13, the council decided at a s...
The 3,691 voters in the La Conner School District are being asked again to approve a school levy — this time to raise $2.5 million over two years starting in 2018. At the same time, the state Legislature, which is under court-order to fully fund basic education, is working to find a fix this year to Washington school districts’ dependency on local levies. The Skagit County Auditor’s Office Election Department is mailing special levy election ballots today, Wednesday. Voters will also receive a flier from La Conner Schools with voter inf...
As the La Conner School District prepares to again ask voters to approve a new two-year $2.5 million property tax levy, it commissioned a study to answer a question that keeps popping up: Why does La Conner spend more per student than many other districts in the state and $4,607 per student more than other districts in the county? The answer is mostly because it has the money to spend. At its meeting on Monday, the school board heard a more in-depth explanation. Bottom line: “The money is spent on students in the classroom,” said Andy Wolf, ass...
For most La Conner property owners, flood insurance is a big deal – and it’s about to become an even bigger one. On Tuesday, after spending thousands of town dollars in staff time to comply with Federal Management Agency’s Community Rating Service requirements over the years, the Town Council voted unanimously to cut bait and drop out of the program because it is costing too much in bureaucratic paperwork. Despite months of town work, the FEMA program downgraded the town’s flood rating this year. That means homeowners’ flood insuran...
The headhunting firm hired by La Conner School District to find a permanent superintendent had sent out 52 applications to people interested in the job as of Monday. Mark Venn and Wayne Robertson of Northwest Lead-ership Associates told the school board that four candidates have already completed applications for a job opening that doesn’t close for another two weeks. Venn said that the firm expects to have a panel of about 30 by the Jan. 23 application deadline. Typically, he said, there will be a flurry of applicants at the last minute. T...
With 2016 in the past, new calendars pinned to kitchen walls, and a few business days into 2017, we’re looking back at a few of La Conner’s big stories of 2016, some of which will be impacting the new year as well. School funding woes In February, for the first time in local history, voters rejected the La Conner School District’s bid for renewed levies to replace expiring funds: one was for maintenance and operations, and another for technology. The levies would have included $1.5 million of funding for the schools for 2017 and 2018. The s...
La Conner town representatives met Tuesday morning with representatives of Fire District 13, which has plans to staff the La Conner Fire Station with its own crew. The upshot of the conversation is that Fire 13 will spend about 30 minutes making a presentation to the La Conner Town Council at its Jan. 10 meeting, said Mayor Ramon Hayes. Fire 13 wants to staff the fire station near the roundabout with two firefighters 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Meanwhile, the La Conner Volunteer Fire Department, which Fire Chief Josh Morrison said has...
At the recent Fire District 13 Commissioners meeting, Fire Chief Roy Horn quipped to his board that he needs $5 million to replace all the districts fire trucks. While that was a joke, there really is an issue that all local agencies need to come up to speed on. A law enacted by the state Legislature nearly 10 years ago states that starting June 1, 2018 all local governments must shift 100 percent of their vehicles from gasoline to biodiesel or electricity. According to the legislation, every fire truck, police car, school bus and public works...
The three-man Fire District 13 board of commissioners wants to staff the La Conner Fire Station near the roundabout on Chilberg Road. Meanwhile, the La Conner Volunteer Fire Department already has plans to man the station 24-hours a day with two firefighters of its own. La Conner’s Mayor Ramon Hayes, Administrator John Doyle and Fire Chief Josh Morrison met with Fire District 13’s Chief Roy Horn and Commissioners Arne Fohn, Chuck Hedlund and Larry Kibbee on Friday, Dec. 16. The outcome of that meeting led to setting another meeting at the La...
The La Conner School Board on Monday approved a resolution to ask voters to levy $2.5 million in new taxes on the district’s property owners. If approved in a special election in February, the money would be collected over two years, in increments of $1.25 million in 2018 and in 2019. The district anticipates its new “replacement educational programs and operations levy” would amount to about $2.50 per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. An existing voter-approved construction bond for the new middle school is also on the tax bills. The lev...
Hearing examiner Bill Nielsen delivered his findings to La Conner Town Hall at about 4 p.m. yesterday – he recommended approval of the state shoreline permits and approved the historic design review for Michael Girdner’s “Galleria” project. At the same time, he denied a variance that would have allowed the “lighthouse” feature to stick up a couple of feet higher than the 30 feet from the sidewalk permitted by town code. Girdner purchased the old Lighthouse Inn property on First Street last year after it had been sitting mostly vacant si...
Skagit County has objected to a request by the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community to turn an Anacortes gas station into reservation land. Swinomish purchased the Shell gas station on Christianson Road in Anacortes for $1 million in May, according to county records. It is located across the street from the tribe’s Swinomish Links golf course and is more than a mile west of the Swinomish Reservation. Late last month the county was notified that Swinomish had applied to the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs to put th...
Skagit County Commissioners stepped into what appears to be a land dispute between two local Native American tribes and warned property owners that they could end up being annexed to the Swinomish Reservation. At the same time, the commissioners filed an objection with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs over the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s plans to amend its constitution — a move they claim could stretch its reservation boundaries across thousands of acres of privately owned land northwest of the current reservation. This n...
Bill Nielsen, La Conner’s Hearing Examiner, has a mountain of documents and hours of lawyer-speak and testimony to sift through. He has 10 working days – until the middle of December, to decide whether Michael Girdner’s plan to renovate and expand the old Lighthouse building on First Street can proceed. On Tuesday, about 30 people turned out for the hearing at Maple Hall. The audience started thinning in the first two hours, which consisted of a procedural inventory of all the exhibits – a stack of paperwork at least six inches thi...
After more than a year of contention and a lawsuit over the contractor’s workmanship in building the new La Conner Middle School, the issue has been settled. The school opened in September 2015, but the district did not accept the project as complete and withheld close to $700,000 of the $11.48 million contract amount, saying there were construction deficiencies. The contractor sued the school district in April. A settlement agreement signed by the school board on Monday requires the contractor, Steilacoom-based BNCC, to fix all the d...
The La Conner Planning Commission met on Tuesday to review the historic design components of Michael Girdner’s plans to renovate and expand the old Lighthouse Inn building on First Street. Several of the project’s detractors were there ... and so were some who want Girdner’s plan to proceed. The California businessman purchased the dilapidated building last year for $385,000 after it had been sitting mostly vacant since a bank took it over in 2010. Girdner initially planned to expand the building over the entire property two stories high,...
La Conner’s Town Council will be faced with an agonizing task in the near future: they must ask their constituents to pay more for utilities. Residents should brace themselves and perhaps start budgeting for a sticker shock that could hit with the April water bills. The town’s water mains and sewer lines are starting to fall apart, and the costs to maintain them have outpaced the yearly rise in utility bills. On top of that, the price charged by the town’s water supplier, the city of Anacortes, has been rising yearly. Presently, a La Conne...
The three Fire District 13 commissioners threw water on the hopes of residents who want to withdraw from the district. About 15 of the more than 100 residents of the north east corner of District 13 who want to join Fire District 2 instead attended the commission meeting last week, even though the meeting was held a day earlier than originally scheduled. The commissioners adopted a resolution not to take any action on the residents’ petition for withdrawal until the petition signers post a bond large enough to cover all expenses related to t...
It was pretty dangerous, probably even a little illegal, but the result of a clandestine effort was brilliant: La Conner’s Rainbow Bridge has lights again for the first time in a decade. Mayor Ramon Hayes and the Town Council have been trying to figure out a way to get the bridge lit up for more than a year. At the last meeting, Town Councilman Bill Bruch gave an update: A contractor could bring a boom truck and string lights on the bridge with special clamps for under $50,000. But two local m...
La Conner Weekly News photographer and retired truck driver Don Coyote was named a contest winner six times at the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association’s awards dinner in Wenatchee. After the announcer kept calling out “the winner is Don Coyote!” somebody walked past the table where I was cheering and quipped, “What’s with you guys? Can’t you leave any awards for someone else to win?” La Conner Weekly News didn’t have the biggest haul of honors Friday night, but we added 13 more Better...
The Fire District 2 board of commissioners agreed on Monday to draft a resolution to accept for annexation an area residents hope to detach from Fire District 13. Dave Buchan, Dennis Milliken and some of their neighbors on Channel Drive, which is north of La Conner on the east side of the Swinomish Channel, attended the Fire District 2 Board of Commissioners meeting at the McLean Road Fire Station to present a copy of their certified petition to withdraw from Fire District 13. District 2 commissioners, chairman Steve Snyder, Mike Madlung and La...
The Skagit County Auditor’s Office has certified the petition signed by more than 100 voters who want to withdraw from Fire District 13. That means the ball is in Fire District 13’s court — its three commissioners will be tasked with studying the proposal, holding a public hearing and then making a recommendation to the Skagit County Commissioners. Fire District 13 Chief Roy Horn said he can’t predict how fire commissioners Chuck Hedlund, Arne Fohn and Larry Kibbee will respond to the r...
Opponents of a developer’s proposed renovation and expansion of the old Lighthouse building on First Street scored a project delay with a lawyer’s challenge. La Conner Town Administrator John Doyle said the Planning Commission meeting that was to occur on Tuesday was cancelled, as was a public hearing before a hearing examiner scheduled for next week. Both sessions will be rescheduled after a new Proposed Mitigated Determination of Non-Significance is prepared and reviewed by Town Attorney Brad Furlong, Doyle said. Comments were due last Thu...
The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s leadership wants to amend the tribe’s constitution so that its actions will no longer be subject to approval by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. The tribe has not responded to this newspaper’s requests to elaborate on its plan. Stan Speaks, the regional director for the Pacific Northwest Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs said, “That situation has not been admitted or approved. We will be meeting with the tribe in the very near future to discuss the issue.” In the meantime, he would not say a...
The scribe of La Conner has left the planet. Jim Smith, once the unofficial Wonder of Woonsocket, South Dakota, and more recently the witty author of “Notes from Pull & Be Damned” is gone. He would like it if we told you he was abducted by aliens or took off hunting Sasquatch, but the sad truth is Jim died early Friday. Jim’s weekly columns and news stories delighted people for years. His historical knowledge of the town – he used to get introduced as “one of the original hippies” –...
