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About 30 people, including several who are not school employees, were poring over the La Conner School District budget again last Wednesday. It was the second in a series of seven workshops for the public put together by school Finance Director Bonnie Haley, Superintendent Tim Bruce and senior administrator Peg Seeling, who will take the helm as interim superintendent in July. At the workshop, people on both the “yes” and “no” sides of the levy peacefully sat side by side, working to familiarize themselves with the school funding process...
Never has the payment kiosk at the La Conner town parking lot been so popular. Every afternoon this week, there have been visitors standing in line to use the new parking pay station that runs on debit and credit cards. “For some reason, people are just more than happy to slide their cards,” said Town Administrator John Doyle. For the first time in 13 years, the town increased the parking fee to $4 per day this year, but business has picked up. Last year, the fussy, old clunker of a meter that took cash yielded $3,548 during the three mon...
Hand-lettered plywood signs set up by voters who are against the property tax levy proposed by La Conner Schools disappeared the day after they appeared. Somebody stole all six “Vote No” signs that were set out last Monday. Meanwhile, professionally created “Vote Yes La Conner Schools” signs and banners, mostly funded by the La Conner PTSA, have been on display and unmolested — though some were missing after the crazy March 13 windstorm. In Washington, stealing political signs is against...
A group of residents working to withdraw their neighborhood from Fire District 13 so they can annex to Fire District 2 hit a snag. The petition they submitted to the county bearing signatures from more than 90 registered voters to set their plan in motion had some technical problems in the way it was worded, so it’s back to the drawing board. Dave Buchan, one of the people spearheading the effort, said they’ll fix the wording and go back out and get more signatures. “We’re into this thing,” he said. “It’s going to happen. We will not let it re...
La Conner Schools Superin-tendent Dr. Tim Bruce said his heart is not into leaving, but a once-in-a-really-long-time opportunity presented itself, and his head told him he’d better take it. Bruce, who holds a Ph.D., will be a professor in the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University after his contract with La Conner expires on June 30. He’ll be working with graduate students developing school principals and superintendents. Bruce, who has been the superintendent in La Con...
More than 90 voters on the northeast end of Fire District 13 on Friday submitted a petition to the county auditor seeking to withdraw from that district and join neighboring Fire District 2. David Cunningham, county elections supervisor with the auditor’s office, said the county has 10 days — until March 14 — to determine whether the petition meets legal requirements set out by state law and validate the signatures. Voters in the Channel Drive neighborhood, as well as voters on Downey Road and along McLean Road to the border of Fire...
La Conner Schools officials plan to schedule public workshops on the upcoming school budget before voters decide the fate of a pared-down, second-try levy request. School Finance Director Bonnie Haley said voters will be asked to approve a one-year levy of $995,000. Ballots will be mailed to registered voters on April 8 and counted on April 26. The new levy vote comes before the budget is set in July for the upcoming 2016-2017 school year, but the district wants community participation in the budget process before the election. Public budget...
After a miserable year marked by fallout from a federal appellate court’s Great Wolf Lodge decision and failed levies, La Conner School District Superintendent Tim Bruce and district board President Rick Thompson announced their resignations on Monday. Supt. Bruce, who will continue to serve until his contract expires on June 30, said he has accepted another position, though he said he is not ready to announce which district recruited him. Bruce, who holds a Ph.D., is in a field where there i...
With two levies totaling close to $1.5 million rejected by voters this month, La Conner School District has shaved a half million and half the time off its request and will put it up for election again, the school board decided on Monday. In a special election set for April 26, voters in the La Conner School District will decide on a proposed one-year levy of $995,000, which is estimated to account for $2.08 per $1,000 of assessed valuation on property tax bills. Should this proposed levy pass, taxpayers in the La Conner district would be...
Something that’s apparently never happened before has prompted the La Conner School Board to call an emergency meeting tomorrow, Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Middle School gym. According to the unofficial results of last week’s special school election, La Conner voters soundly rejected two proposed levies totaling nearly $1.5 million. The levies failed, even though more than 52 percent of the registered voters live on land immune from school district taxes. The majority of the “yes” votes came from precincts on the Swinomish Indian Reserva...
A pair of replacement school levies in La Conner appeared headed for failure on Tuesday when preliminary election results were released. La Conner School district proposed a maintenance and operations levy and a technology levy to replace two levies that expire this year. Had they passed, they would have provided a total of nearly $1.5 million per year in school funding for 2017 and 2018. According to early vote counts released by the Skagit County Auditor’s office, the maintenance and operations levy was failing 58.5 “No” to 41.5 perce...
With the assessed value of properties going up, the tax rates per $1,000 of assessed valuation are dipping slightly for La Conner area home owners still paying property tax to the Skagit County Treasurer. At Monday night’s La Conner School Board meeting, district finance director Bonnie Haley distributed the latest assessment figures from the county Assessor’s Office. It shows that for school taxes, the rate will drop about 15 cents, from about $6.61 per $1,000 to $6.46. Skagit County Assessor Dave Thomas said the new rates were certified on...
La Conner School District is in a historic situation — school officials are campaigning furi-ously to convince people to vote in two levies totaling nearly $1.5 million. For decades, La Conner residents have passed school bonds and levies in a landslide, with little more than a ballot question. Things are different this time, as ballots are mailed this week to some 3,500 voters. This time most of the voters are being asked to tax their neighbors, not themselves. After the locally infamous Great Wolf Lodge federal court decision, more...
About 50 people gathered at Maple Hall last week to hear La Conner Schools officials make the case for passing two levies totaling nearly $1.5 million in next month’s election. School officials have scheduled another meeting for today at 7 p.m. at the Shelter Bay clubhouse. Most of the voters in Shelter Bay live on land that cannot be taxed by the school district. But on the La Conner side of the Swinomish Channel, where voters still pay school taxes, several people stood up at last week’s mee...
On Tuesday La Conner’s Public Works crew was putting the finishing touches on the new pay station at the town’s public parking lot below Town Hall. The town has replaced the old, obsolete yellow clunker that had been sucking in currency and spitting out dollar coins and parking permits since 2003. A vandal beat the old one to death in November during an apparent attempt to break in and steal cash from its innards. The new model, which Public Works Director Brian Lease said will be ope...
La Conner School District officials have scheduled meetings with voters to answer questions about two proposed school levies that will appear on ballots to be mailed soon. The first meeting is today, Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Maple Hall in La Conner. Another meeting is scheduled at the Shelter Bay Clubhouse at 7 p.m. next Wednesday, Jan. 13. The school district is hoping that voters will approve the levies totaling nearly $1.5 million to replace voter-approved funding that expires at the end of this year. A proposed maintenance and operations...
Dick Dorsten walked out into his front yard on Saturday morning and made a startling discovery. A pair of sheep were standing in front of his Morris Street home in La Conner. They apparently made their way inside his garden fence sometime over Christmas with no clue indicating where they’d come from. On closer inspection, it appears that Santa is an anonymous woodworker who crafted the whimsical sheep in a pose that La Conner residents will recognize as distinctly Dorsten-esque. The painted wood...
The La Conner School Board on Monday embraced an idea put forth by Heather Henricksen and her sister Nicole. Students at La Conner High School will be allowed to wear hats at school on a trial basis when they return from their winter break next month. Hats will be allowed on campus through February 15. After that, depending on the results of research Henricksen will conduct during the trial period, the board will decide whether to permanently repeal the schools’ 30-year hat ban. “Very well presented,” School Board President Rick Thompson told...
In a special election on Feb. 9, La Conner Schools will ask voters to approve more than $1 million per year in taxes to be collected in 2017 and 2018. Two new levies will replace a maintenance and operations and a technology levy that were approved by voters in 2012 and expire at the end of 2016. The maintenance and opera-tions levy helps pay for school programs like foreign language instruction, music, drama, athletic coach salaries and other benefits for children that state funding does not cover. The tech levy, first approved by voters in...
The La Conner School Board met Monday and is expected to call for a special election in February to ask voters to approve more than $1 million in taxes to take effect in 2017. Although the board appeared to reach a consensus to ask voters to approve a maintenance and operations levy of $1,195,000 and a technology levy of $295,000, the board adjourned and continued its meeting to Thursday evening to vote. The main question left on the table on Monday was whether to seek one-year levies for 2017 or two-year levies that would expire at the end of...
Chief Rick Balam, who came out of retirement last year to lead the Swinomish Police Department through a turbulent period as the former police chief was prosecuted for theft, has put away his badge again. Former chief Thomas Schlicker pleaded guilty to stealing tribal funds and was sentenced to 16 months in prison on Nov. 10. Balam, who was the police chief decades ago, came back to work for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community last September after Schlicker was fired to lead the department and to investigate the allegations against Schlicker...
Heather Henricksen and members of the leadership class at La Conner High School recently made a presentation to the La Conner School Board seeking permission to wear hats on campus. Henricksen, her twin sister Nicole and their friends, researched the rules in 10 other high schools, polled teachers and proposed that the 30-year ban on hats at school be relaxed. Aside from being fashion statements, in cold weather, hats and hoods are often necessary. Pulling them off, creates “hat hair. It’s nas...
The La Conner School Board on Monday signed the latest version of a school funding agreement with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. The tribe has promised to contribute $400,000 to the schools to help ease a $789,000 shortfall created when 931 parcels were removed from the property tax rolls that feed schools and other public entities this year. For about a year, the terms of the tribal funding have been under negotiation. Last month the school board signed a version of the agreement and forwarded it to the tribe. What came back was a vers...
Now that a vandal has delivered the death blow to the pay station at La Conner’s public parking lot, the Town Council voted unanimously to replace it on Tuesday. Before the old obsolete yellow box gave up the ghost earlier this month, it had taken in nearly $19,000 in $3-per-day-fees so far this year. Council member Bill Stokes noted that it might have brought in even more had it not been broken during the recent Art’s Alive! festival. The council authorized the purchase of a snazzy new pay station from Northwest Parking Equipment Company, whi...
La Conner School officials say the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community has signed the agreement to provide $400,000 in funding to the schools. But it wasn’t exactly the same as the one the school board signed last month. The tribe added a clause similar to one the school board had previously taken out; the tribe wants the school district to recognize its right to levy property taxes on homes built on leased land. Meanwhile, the school district is angling for more open communication between the board and Tribal Senate. On Monday the school distric...
