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Really, Allan? “The Ghost of Sandy Stokes” as a subhead in your lengthy essay in last week’s paper? While lamenting the Swinomish government’s inability to tax more people you didn’t mention that the tribe’s government budget is around $50 million per year. The tribe already imposes taxes on the non-tribal members who are also paying to lease the reservation land under their homes. According to the 2016 annual report that Swinomish published, money allocated to the tribe’s government totaled $49,871,072 – millions of it funded by tax...
A friend sent me your article on Skagit Plastics and its association with Guy Lombardo. I have personally been associated with Skagit Plastics boats since my childhood. My dad, brother and I got a tour through the plant in the summer of 1957. That tour and trip to la Conner was the first time I saw the plug for what Skagit Plastics called the largest all fiberglass production cruiser in the world. I saw the completed Skagit 31 Saratogan at the 1958 model year boat show in Seattle in October of 1957. I was eleven years old and thought it was the...
The long, slow climb out of darkness has begun. Since the Dec. 21 winter solstice, we have gained seven minutes of day length. Light, which had been disappearing steadily since November, is slowly pushing into earlier sunrises and later sunsets, if just perceptibly. It will be late January before the increased length of daily light marches noticeably back into our lives. Our first post 5 p.m. sunset is the 25th. But sunlight’s presence a minute and four seconds longer daily, on average, adds up: January ends with a day 46 minutes longer than t...
Our La Conner area colleagues and neighbors have accomplished amazing successes and made invaluable contributions while quietly doing their work, paid, unpaid or under paid this past year. Mayor Hayes Ramon Hayes recognized Ollie Iversen at December’s Council meeting. Hayes has provided strong, quiet leadership himself. Heather Carter started 2018 with a grand slam home run, creating the Birds of Winter event, packing Maple Hall with residents and tourists. Susan Macek has spent 2018 raising funds to gain La Conner a new library. Library D...
Here are highlights of Gover-nor Jay Inslee’s 2019 budget supported in the Weekly News Dec. 19 editorial. The two-year budget proposes $54.6 billion in general fund spending and almost $4 billion in new revenues – taxes. This budget is about 20 percent higher than the current one. These five program areas would get additional funds if the legislature enacts Inslee’s proposal: Education, K-12, $4.6 billion; college, $103 million for college financial aid expansion. $4.1 billion, McCleary $214 million, local levy authority $173 million, com...
Did you pay attention to the trail of 19 bright copper pennies on Morris Street between Fourth and Sixth streets last week before Thursday morning, when they were collected? Did you place them, not quite in a line, not far from the south side curb? Who did? Was there a pattern? A rhyme? A reason? How long were they there? Long enough for them to get roughed up by car and truck traffic. There is not a one of them that is not both bright and thoroughly scratched. If they are yours and you want...
COUPEVILLE – Whidbey Island residents did their best to show the U.S. Navy that it had neither right nor might on its side when 350 people filled the Coupeville High School Performing Arts Center Dec. 19 for a public meeting before the federal agency Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Almost all attendees were in opposition to the Navy’s plan to bring 36 Growler jets to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. The plans the Navy has filed lists 24,100 takeoffs and landings annually at the airfield near Coupeville. The Navy is one of n...
His work often goes unseen but never unnoticed. Or unappreciated. At least by those who occupy offices at Town Hall. After two decades on the job, Town Public Works Director Brian Lease knows every inch of La Conner’s underworld yet has also played an integral role in development of key high-profile landmark projects here as well. “Every infrastructure and capital improvement project – seen or unseen – has his stamp on it,” La Conner Mayor Ramon Hayes said of Lease as 2018 prepared to give way to a new year. Hayes spoke from his d...
Curt McCauley lives the adage, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” The 75-year-old seventh degree black belt and teacher is once again on the mend: He is recently back home in Shelter Bay following 12 days at the University of Washington hospital in Seattle for pneumonia. In his 34 years of practicing and teaching the Korean martial arts Soo Bahk Do Moo Duk Kwan, he has probably voiced that sentiment in class. Reflecting on his avocation last September, McCauley quoted his mentor: “we do...
A NEW NOTE DELIVERED AN OLD WAY – That is clear packing tape over the slot for local mail at the La Conner post office. Some folks have been told that La Conner addressed mail first went to Wenatchee. The evidence is clear: In 2019 it doesn’t stay in La Conner. – Photo by Ken Stern...
Water stands in farm fields around La Conner at the start of the new year. Almost half of December’s rain, 1.85 inches, came the last weekend, Dec. 28-30. The month’s 3.79 inches was about 10 percent above the 3.35 average rainfall for the 17 years of data this century. The first eight days were dry, as was half the month, 15 days, total. Under one-tenth inch fell seven days. Rainfall was primarily on Dec. 9-14 and 28-30. There wasn’t an apparent pattern to the month’s precipitation. While s...
The problem with Swinomish taxation lies with the Washington State Department of Revenue. Now that Shelter Bay and Pull & Be Damned are withdrawn from the tax base, the $154,161,500 assessed valuation, and the $13.0988 levy rate, and the $2,019,333 in taxes (2018 figures) are shifted to the remaining taxpayers. This affects the following taxing districts: the state levy, county roads, county general, conservation, La Conner library, the Port of Anacortes, Medic 1, Fire District 13, and the La Conner school district. It should have been that...
