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La Conner has been hounding state and federal officials, and now the governmental gears seem to be starting to budge. Last week, State Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, met with Gov. Jay Inslee to explain how a federal ruling caused La Conner area taxpayers to take a huge financial hit. It appears that a lobbying effort spurred by La Conner Mayor Ramon Hayes, with added muscle from the La Conner School District, could eventually prod the federal government into bringing relief to the folks who saw their property tax bills jump by up to 25 percent...
The candidate filing period for the Nov. 3 general election closed on Friday and left La Conner area voters with a few contested races to decide. Town of La Conner For the Town of La Conner, Mayor Ramon Hayes is running for his third four-year term unopposed. La Conner Councilman Jacques Brunisholz, who retired after teaching generations of La Conner High School students and who has served on the council since 2008, is being challenged by Charity Starkenburg for his position 1 seat. Starkenburg is the popular owner of Bamboo Coffee, formerly...
Candidates trying to file for November’s General Election hit a major snag on Tuesday morning. The state Secretary of State’s election website experienced a major outage, possibly due to “utilization spikes.” Gabrielle Clay with the elections division of the Skagit County Auditors Office said her department couldn’t even access local information on the administrative end. The problem was resolved early in the afternoon, and candidate filing week resumed. In La Conner, Mayor Ramon Hayes announced last week that he will seek another term, and...
Otto “LeRoy” Karlstrom of Shelter Bay died at age 93 on Thursday, April 30, after a long illness. He was born in Seattle June 16, 1921, to the Rev. Otto and Alva Karlstrom. He grew up in the Fauntleroy neighborhood with a sister Hildur and brothers Reinhold, Paul, Thor and Ernest. LeRoy graduated with honors from West Seattle High School in 1938, then joined his brothers at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois. In 1943 he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history. He served as a naval officer in the Pacific with an amphibious fleet...
The Swinomish Senate has provided Shelter Bay Community with what the community calls the tribe’s “best and final proposal” for its terms to extend the land lease. Shelter Bay is a gated neighborhood of about 900 homes developed mostly on reservation land leased from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. The original lease signed in 1968 is set to expire in 2044, which according to a tribal attorney would cause the land that people built their homes on to revert back to the original owners. For the past two years Swinomish and Shelter Bay repr...
La Conner town and school officials continued hounding state and federal officials this week as some residents prepare to shell out up to 25 percent more in property taxes by the April 30 deadline. On Tuesday, the town-school lobbying consortium met with representatives of U.S. Senator Patty Murray and U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell. “We’re reaching out where we can and trying to do what we can,” said La Conner School Board President Rick Thompson, whose own property tax bill went up by more than $1,000 this year following a federal decis...
Elisabeth Roald of LaConner died at her home on Wednesday, April 8, at age 86. She was a vibrant and amazing woman, who will be sorely missed. Betty, as she was known to all of her friends and family, was born on October 16, 1928. Her parents were James and Elisabeth Johnston. Betty was born and raised in Seattle, graduating from Roosevelt High School before attending the University of Washington. She graduated with a teaching degree and spent her career teaching in Seattle Public Schools. She w...
La Conner School District and town officials are scheduled to meet today with a representative from the office of U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, to lay the tax disparity caused by a 2013 federal court decision at the federal government’s feet. The offices of U.S. senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have also been contacted, and their staff members have promised to schedule meetings with local officials soon. Mayor Ramon Hayes, with other partners including the school district, launched the lobbying campaign last month. This came a...
Shelter Bay resident Ingrid Maria Pierce died at the age of 80 on Saturday, March 21. Born Ingrid Johanson in Stockholm, Sweden on July 29, 1934, Ingrid worked for the Royal Academy of Sweden and attended the Nobel Prize Ceremony 1955 before she came to the United States. In 1956, Ingrid, who was fluent in four languages includ-ing English and German, immigrated to the United States with her mother, Olga, who had relatives on the New Jersey south shore. Shortly after, a friend introduced her to...
Edward “Ed” Good, 73, formerly of La Conner, died peacefully on Friday, March 27, at Skagit Valley Hospital after a long battle with congestive heart failure. Ed was known around La Conner for his good humor, his social skills and his community involvement. He was a leader in the La Conner Sea Scouts, a member of La Conner Kiwanis and of the Shelter Bay Chorus. He was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 13, 1942. He grew up in Pennsylvania, where he enjoyed hunting, trapping, fishing and hik...
A delegation of school and town officials traveled to Olympia on Tuesday to let state Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn know La Conner needs help right now. The meeting was set up by State Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, who said “kids are at risk” because La Conner School District suffered a huge funding cut this year. What amounts to about 50 percent of the district’s property tax revenue was eliminated when 931 parcels were removed from the county’s tax rolls in January. As a re...
La Conner Mayor Ramon Hayes has launched a town lobbying effort to address a situation that has left a fraction of the taxpayers shouldering the lion’s share of the local taxes. In January 931 parcels were removed from the La Conner area property tax rolls following a federal court ruling that structures on Indian reservation land are tax exempt regardless of who owns the structures. That means homeowners in Shelter Bay and in the Pull and Be Damned Road area who built their homes on land l...
The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community expects to send out tax bills to homeowners on the 931 parcels removed from the county’s property tax rolls by the end of this month. As with the county taxes homeowners are accustomed to paying, the Swinomish tribal tax can be paid in two halves on April 30 and October 31. For the 2015 taxes, the tribe intends to use the same assessment values Skagit County has set and will use the same tax rate – $14.28 per $1,000 of assessed value – as parcels on privately owned, or fee simple, land within t...
Longtime La Conner resident Bert Butterworth died at age 92 on Wednesday, March 11, in Palm Springs, California. Bert was born on December 31, 1922 in Seattle to Carol “Cal” E. and Marion Ellerbeck Butterworth. He attended Seattle public schools, John Hay Grade School and Queen Anne High School. He joined the Washington National Guard in 1939 and was called to active duty on Sept. 16, 1940. He completed pilot training, on March 10, 1942 and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Res...
This week government investigators were still trying to figure out what happened on Friday when an invisible cloud of noxious fumes descended on La Conner and Swinomish, causing some people to suffer respiratory problems. Apparently a maintenance operation went stinky at the Shell Puget Sound Refinery at March’s Point northwest of La Conner. On Monday the refinery had a recording on its phone line stating that it had “experienced a problem while doing maintenance work on the east flare which resulted in an odor issue.” The recording also has a...
The La Conner School Board and Swinomish Indian Senate will hold a joint meeting this Thursday to discuss tribal sovereignty curriculum. By law, since a quorum of school board members will be present, the meeting will be open to the public. It will be held at 5 p.m. in the Swinomish Senate Chambers, on Moorage Way across the street from the Village Chevron station on the reservation. Tribal sovereignty curriculum is a state recommended program, approved by Washington state tribes, to provide instruction in Native American history and culture...
Each year Skagit County Treasurer Katie Jungquist’s office mails out property tax bills to land right around Valentine’s Day. The goal is not so much to put a damper on the day, it’s just that the schedule calls for the bills to be delivered in mid-February. But this year, the county’s “Valentines” were still at the printer on Tuesday, and Jungquist said she expects they’ll be in the mail early next week. Even so, anyone anxious to know what they’ll be paying in property taxes this year can look it up on the county’s website, www.skagitcounty.n...
Staff at the Skagit County Assessor’s Office worked through the holiday weekend to come up with the new levy rates for property taxes in the La Conner area. Under the state’s property tax calendar schedule, the levies were to be finished and provided to the County Treasurer by last Thursday, Jan. 15. But they weren’t. Removing 931 parcels from the tax rolls in the La Conner School District threw a big wrench into the system, and the Assessor’s Office had to stretch the deadline. On Tuesday, “I think we’re real close,” said County Assessor Dave...
Under its new Trust Improvement Use and Occupancy Tax Code, the Swinomish Senate has decided to adopt a policy granting tax exemptions to low-income seniors and disabled people. Most of the homes in Shelter Bay and in the Pull & Be Damned Road neighborhood were removed from the county property tax rolls on Jan. 1, as a result of a federal court ruling that determined homes build on leased tribal trust land are immune from property taxes. However, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, the sovereign government of the Swinomish Reservation, will...
Here’s a lump of coal for the old Christmas stocking: The owners of at least 2,500 parcels in the La Conner area will see their property taxes take a leap in the new year. With 931 parcels worth around $138 million coming off the 2015 property tax rolls and state laws that allow the bills to automatically shift to the remaining taxpayers when property is made tax exempt, the average La Conner area homeowner will pay around $400 more for civilization next year. On Monday, the La Conner School D...
With the 931 parcels coming off the La Conner area county tax rolls, taxpayers for the remaining 2,500 parcels in the La Conner School District and Fire District 13 could be left holding the bill for about $480,000 more in property taxes. On Tuesday the Swinomish Indian Senate announced the amounts it will contribute to the La Conner School District, Fire District 13, Medic 1 ambulance service and La Conner Regional Library District. Last month the Senate, which is the governing body of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, decided that the...
The end of November, which is this Sunday, is the final day for taxing districts to submit their levy requests to the Skagit County Assessor. Each year, the Assessor determines the property values, and assigns a levy rate for every $1,000 of assessed valuation for each property, collects the property taxes and passes the money through to the various agencies. In the La Conner area, this year’s deadline is charging at county, agency and tribal officials at the speed of light. Swinomish Indian Tribal Senate, La Conner School District, Fire Distri...
The Elston family of La Conner is on an adventure of a lifetime, taking a sea voyage from Shelter Bay south along the Pacific Coast. The crew of “Adagio” includes the author of this story, 12-year-old Cindy, who is in the seventh grade, 10-year-old Kevin, a fourth-grader, and their parents Steve and Kathy. On Aug. 27 my family and I left on our boat to travel down to Mexico and the Sea of Cortez. Our boat, Adagio, which means slow and steady in Italian, has just traveled over 1,200 nautical mil...
To ease the minds of homeowners who live on tribal trust land in the La Conner area, the Swinomish Indian Senate on Tuesday announced that the property tax for 2015 will be equal to what Skagit County would assess if the property were to stay on the county tax rolls. “Taxpayers can rest assured and budget for their taxes in 2015 just as they have in the past,” Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby said in a prepared statement. Meanwhile the Tribal Senate, which is the governing body for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, continues to work on a...
Brian Westover, of Shelter Bay, died on Tuesday, October, 14, at his home, surrounded by family. Brian was born in Anchorage, Alaska on June 24, 1949, the son of Ralph and Beatrice Westover. Growing up, Brian chose a career in aviation as a helicopter mechanic and inspector. Some would say Brian could fix a rainy day! He was also an accomplished pilot; he flew airplanes as well as helicopters all over Alaska. He also enjoyed traveling and being with family. Brian is survived by two sons, Jeremy and Mitch Westover of Milpitas, California, and...
