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A local drive to preserve the historic Pleasant Ridge School near La Conner is gearing up for the long haul. “We realize the project will take many years to complete,” says Lori Buher, secretary-treasurer of the Pleasant Ridge Cemetery District, which has purchased the school building and adjoining property, with designs of seeing it restored for public use. Buher helped to organize a meeting attended by some 25 people at the La Conner Middle School Library the evening of February 7. Joyce Johnson was among the cross-section of people com...
Thirty hardy souls gathered at Conner Waterfront Park on a cold Saturday morning, February 10th, to recognize, again, the three stone sculptures made to honor La Conner’s history and its people’s relationship with the Swinomish people. The tugboat, racing canoe and drum wheel have a new permanent home. It is accompanied by a sign engraved in stone that tells the sculptures’ story, as well as part of LaConner’s. Mayor Ramon Hayes welcomed the group and summed up the history of the gifts. Origina...
IT LOOKS BAD, BUT EVERYONE’S OK – No one was hurt from this accident at the intersection of Best, Chilberg and Calhoun Roads February 7. Staff from Fire District 13 were on the scene and cleaned up. – Photo by Don Coyote...
There weren’t 76 trombones, and the band didn’t march, but the 48-member Skagit Community Band concert band offered a feast of musical offerings to a full house at Maple Hall February 9th. Conductor Vince Fejeran offered “‘Bon Appétit:’ A multi-course concert featuring selections for appetizers, first course, second course, main course and dessert” to the 100 or so souls filling the hall’s first floor and over half the balcony. The band dressed, appropriately, in tuxedoes – the m...
Nothing is more local then my getting sick in La Conner and going to Skagit Reginal Clinic urgent care in Mount Vernon. And nothing was more immediate then than my signing up for Apple Health on January 15 and getting sick on February 2. All this is true as is the fact that I paid nothing at the urgent care facility and paid the same amount for my prescription of antibiotics. What is going on here? The simple and complete answer is that this is nothing less than socialism for the poor. I will re-write that with no negatives: The Affordable...
Yearly growth of three percent in wages is significant if you are a parsimonious boss – an Ebenezer Scrooge of a fellow – hording your gold. Any worker with any pride – human beings with backbones – scoff at this year’s average three percent annual increase. Yet, the big news a full week ago was of the “significant increase” in hourly wages, actually 2.9 percent. That’s below three percent. At $15 per hour, a three percent raise is forty-five cents, or $18 a week, before taxes. Delete two dollars of payroll taxes a...
Homeowners in La Conner School District could be in for sticker shock when property tax bills come in the mail this month. Increased state school tax coupled with a local tax disparity created by unelected state bureaucrats and tribal lawyers four years ago will hit some people hard again. The school district, which includes the Swinomish Reservation, draws about two thirds of its students from tribal land that the district and state do not tax. The majority of registered voters in the district pay no school tax, but last February they helped...
As I was admiring the town’s “Maple” Hall one day, I couldn’t but ask how the town came to name it after a tree, or a street, rather than the name of a quasi famous family of poets and architects and such? We have a square named after the family Gilkey, am I crazy to suggest that the Hall, designed by family Hupy, be renamed … Hupy Hall? No, the Hupys have paid their due, it’s the least we can do. I, in my own willful way, sometimes think about such obscure things. We’re trying to showcase artists like Clayton James, with a bronzing of...
The Ocean Guardian tested eastern Pacific, Puget Sound waters this past week, down the Swinomish Channel and into Skagit Bay, but it will soon be plying the mid-ocean waters off Maui. Built by Mavrik Marine in La Conner, it went into the water the week of February 5. It is going to Seattle this week, where it will be loaded on a barge for delivery in Maui. Friday, February 9, U.S. Coast Guard staff were on board at the Port of Skagit Marina inspecting and certifying the ferry. Company owner...
