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Fire District 13 commissioners approved an agreement with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community for $250,000 for the district’s 2018 operating budget at their April 26 meeting. The Tribe had approved the request in November. The funds, from the Swinomish Trust Improvement Use and Occupancy Taxes, are collected from rents on reservation land “pursuant to assessments in 2018 of taxes owing under the Trust Improvement Tax,” the agreement states. The amount is double the 2017 agreement. Fire District 13 has been unable to assess property tax on re...
OVER JUST LIKE THAT – Monday was the last day of April and a busy work day for farm hands topping tulips at a RoozenGaarde field on the east side of Best road between McLean and Young roads. Signaling the beginning of the end of the tulip season, topping is done to redirect energy to the bulbs, which will be harvested later in the summer. – Photo courtesy of Jack Galbraith...
ONE MORE MONTH – Snee-Oosh will remain closed during the day till May 22 to accommodate sidewalk construction from Front Street to First Street. Concrete curbing will be poured starting May 2. The road will close during shoulder paving from Pioneer Parkway to First Street and for paving Snee-Oosh between Front to Pioneer Parkway. May 31 is the anticipated project completion date. Report from Robert McGaughey, Tribal Engineer. – Photo by Ken Stern...
As a teen, Craig Bartlett helped preserve La Conner’s past with his detailed drawings of local landmarks. Now, four decades and countless critical and commercial successes later, the famed animator is helping champion the town’s future. Bartlett, one of the enter-tainment industry’s most creative minds, returned home Saturday to present a film festival benefit for the new La Conner Braves sfter-school program. With a string of hit TV shows and feature films to his credit, and a still ascen...
Rhoda Hazel Claassen Lindstrom of Shelter Bay died Sunday, April 8th, 2018 at Island Hospital following a battle with heart failure. She was 95. Rhoda was born December 26, 1922, in Akron, Ohio to Arthur and Letha Claassen. In 1942 she married Edwin Eugene Lindstrom in Tacoma. She was married to Edwin Gene for 66 years. In 1985 Rhoda and Gene built their home in Shelter Bay where they enjoyed boating, fishing, RVing and camping. Most of Rhoda’s career was in Special Education. She worked at Renton Hospital, delivery and nursery, Lake City Fircr... Full story
April, weather wise, left the western Skagit Valley as it sometimes does: overcast, cool, rain overnight Sunday and dripping into Monday morning. Monday, was in fact perfectly average: the morning temperature started at 50 degrees F at WSU’s Mount Vernon weather station. My phone app says temperatures hit 60 degrees F around 5 p.m. This April it rained 20 days, including the last three. In 2017 it also rained about 20 days, though total rainfall was about three inches against the nearly five inches this year. This April was cooler, though h...
May 1st was May Day, International Workers Day. As with so many things, the United States is virtually alone in not celebrating it officially, nationwide, as a holiday. Did you see those images from around the world on TV, of people marching joyfully in the streets holding flags and banners high? Perhaps only our elders recall a robust labor movement here. Bill Reynolds provides a local retrospective in this issue. La Conner Schools Superintendent Whitney Meissner offers her perspective on the work being done by teachers in classrooms across...
This is a story about sewage. It all began in October 2013, when the meter that measures the flow of wastewater from the Tribe began to read below normal. This continued for three years until October 2016, when a new meter was installed, and calibrated. The Town Administrator recommended taking a full year of readings in 2017 in order to see what the norm is. This was agreed to by the Town’s representative and the Tribe’s representative at a meeting of the Wastewater Advisory Board on November 8, 2016. The monthly readings taken in 2017 establi...
A little musing concerning your most resent musings. Please don’t tell me that my adversary during my two tours in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division was a “rag tag army of peasants wearing funny hats and sandals.” For, you see, in 1967 when I was shipped off to Vietnam by our peace loving president, LBJ, I was introduced to an enemy that was hardcore, battle tested and flat out in your face. They were the NVA regulars. We stood toe to toe with our enemy in places like Dak To, Quang Tri, Hue/Phu Bai and a place called the A Shau Valley wh...
As in so many Town Council sessions, resident Dan O’Donnell led the way, using his three minutes of public comment time to raise questions on the City of Anacortes’ billing procedures for their fiber optics installations through the City’s water main, against which La Conner is charged. He asked the Council to consider why that City is charging costs to a capital account. In response, Brian Lease, director of public works, told Council that the billing practice was questionable. O’Donnell succeeded in getting council members and Mayor Ramon H...
That was a lovely article from Steve Dolmatz on poetry in La Conner’s schools last week. The students were and are the heart of this work; it was created for them. Knowing that they are being given an additional way to think about and use words makes me smile. Kudos to all of you tireless and inspired organizers for constantly keeping students at the center. Kathy Shoop...
My grandfather, a father of four, was a teacher at Mount Vernon High School. Grandpa was able to buy a house and provide for his family on a teacher’s salary not so many years ago. Simply put: teachers today deserve to make a better wage. When my grandfather started teaching, public education wasn’t really for “all kids.” Students with disabilities could be excluded. High school students who struggled could drop out and find a low-skills/high wage job. Students who happened to have a skin color other than white were sent to separate schools...
Meet Skagit River Poetry Festival artists Alfred Currie and Anne Schreivogl, who created the Festival poster and cover for this year’s student anthology, respectively. Lifelong artist Alfred Currier spent his formative years in southern Ohio. He received his formal education at Columbus College of Art and Design and the American Academy of Art in Chicago, where he earned his degree in fine art. He is an artist member of the prestigious Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Art in Chicago. C...
May 1st was May Day, International Workers Day. As with so many things, the United States is virtually alone in not celebrating it officially, nationwide, as a holiday. Did you see images from around the world on TV, people marching joyfully in the streets holding flags and banners high? Perhaps only our elders recall a robust labor movement here. Bill Reynolds provides a local retrospective in this issue. La Conner Schools Superintendent Whitney Meissner offers her perspective on the work being done by teachers in classrooms across the state a...
