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Ryan Booth will soon have the rare opportunity to both study and make history at the same time. This after the La Conner High alum, now a doctoral candidate at Washington State University, was selected earlier this month for a prestigious J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Award. Booth has been approved by the Fulbright Board to research comparisons between U.S. Native American soldiers and Indian auxiliaries of the British Raj from the mid-19th century to the onset of World War II. Booth,...
The three points raised in Bruce Elliott’s letter are incomplete to say the least. Please allow the La Conner School District (LCSD) and the Swinomish Tribe to jointly set the record straight. State funding does not fully support LCSD’s budgetary obligations With regard to the “McCleary Fix,” the state has made significant progress toward meeting its legal duty to fully fund basic education. Paying teachers a living wage is unquestionably a part of funding basic education. In addition, school districts are required to provide – and pay...
Laural Ballew studied history while a student at La Conner High. These days she’s making history. Ballew, an enrolled member of the Swinomish Tribal Community, created and chaired the Department of Tribal Governance and Business Management at Northwest Indian College. And now she’s blazing new trails. The 1974 La Conner High grad is Western Washington University’s first Executive Director of American Indian/Alaska Native and First Nations Relations and Tribal Liaison to the President. In that role, she represents the WWU president and board...
It is levy “season” again for some Skagit County public schools, including La Conner. Some unique circumstances affecting the La Conner school district need to be examined before the proposed levy deserves community endorsement: First, the “McCleary Fix” was supposed to reduce/eliminate local school tax levies by “fully funding basic education.” To pay for McCleary, the state’s share of local property taxes was increased. The LCSD committed the majority of new state monies to raise teacher salaries – the highest in the county, as I...
Ballots went into the mail Tuesday to La Conner school district residents for replacing the school levy. The proposed rate for this educational and operational programs levy is $1.50 per thousand, a reduction of almost one dollar of assessed valuation. It is not a new tax. The two-year levy will provide $1,741,210, with $870,605 collected in each 2020 and 2021. The total school tax rate is $4.25 per thousand with the current bond. Funds are targeted for safety, extra-curricular activities, food services, highly capable program, special...
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...
Fall roared out of the Salish Sea region with winds of up to 60 mph last Thursday, darkening all or parts of Island, Kitsap, Skagit and Whatcom counties served by Puget Sound Energy. In La Conner, the windstorm came without rain. About 1,600 greater La Conner residents were among the 120,000 people in Skagit County without electricity for up to 18 hours. La Conner lost power at 11:05 a.m. The lights returned in Town at 6:49 p.m. It was 2:22 a.m. before power was restored in Shelter Bay and south...
It’s true that there is a “tax problem” on the Swinomish Indian Reservation, but it is much larger than the Great Wolf Lodge tax case that everyone has been hearing or reading about lately. For decades, the Swinomish Tribe has faced at least four separate but related tax problems that went largely unnoticed in the Town of La Conner until the impact of the Great Wolf Lodge decision that invalidated a state tax on the permanent improvements of lessees on federal trust land was felt by property owners of fee lands both here in town and on the r...
The next chapter in Swinomish carver Kevin Paul’s often cutting-edge career will be written by himself. And it’s quite a story to tell. Paul, whose carving has been featured on the Discovery Channel and a wide range of publications, is among those artists invited to contribute to “The Barn Shows: In Their Own Words,” a much-anticipated book project being compiled by Dick and LaVonne Reim of Fir Island. After being the subject of numerous scripts and articles, Paul now has the opportu...
Many La Conner School District voters and most of its students live in homes on land that the district does not tax. We were told the so-called Great Wolf Lodge decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in 2013 is why more than 930 homes, mostly in Shelter Bay, were removed from the county tax rolls in 2015. That decision applied to Confederated Tribes of Chehalis Reservation vs. Thurston County. In that case, the tribe is the majority owner of the Great Wolf Lodge buildings that sit on its land. In 2008 Chehalis sued Thurston...
Naval Air Station Whidbey came into existence during World War II, and in the seventy years since, local communities have partnered with the U.S. Navy to protect our national security. Naval personnel, active and retired, have always been welcomed here for their contributions to the region’s civic and economic life. The Navy’s role as a good neighbor has come to an end, however, as more and more people become, in military terms, “collateral damage.” Since the Navy’s introduction of the F-18 Growler, these jets roar overhead day and night, ma...
Without discussion, the La Conner School District Board of Directors unanimously approved placing a two-year levy totaling $1,749,210 before its voters at its monthly meeting Monday. The resolution states the funds will “pay part of the cost of educational programs and operations support of the District.” Draft language the Board discussed at its Nov. 5 study session stated monies are for “programs and operations which are not funded or not fully funded by the State:” Later in the meeting, when Channel Drive resident David Buchan asked an unre...
The recent article about the Swinomish totem poles was of great interest to me, as I was there when the original poles were dedicated in 1938. I was eight years old and with my parents and sisters had driven up from our home in California to visit my grandfather, Andrew “Carpenter” Johnson, at the family farm on Beaver Marsh Road. One Saturday during our visit the party line telephone in the kitchen rang, and the caller told us that Eleanor Roosevelt would be in La Conner that very afternoon. My mother dressed my little sisters and me in our...
Kevin Paul is helping history repeat itself a second time. Nearly 30 years ago, before he became a nationally renowned carver featured on the Discovery Channel, Paul joined family members in creating a replica of the famed Swinomish totem pole unveiled as part of a major Washington State Centennial celebration on the local reservation. These days Paul is serving as lead craftsman and mentor to two of his former La Conner High carving students charged with refurbishing the weathered pole, whose...
For the first time in almost forty years, the Swinomish Tribe lowered a well-known landmark on Friday: the 1989 Centennial Totem Pole. The carving, created with Washington State Centennial funds, replicated the original totem carved in 1938 by Swinomish Tribal member Charlie Edwards and assistants. The Tribe permanently lowered that first pole, which stood on the corner of Snee-oosh and Reservation roads for 45 years, in 1983 due to rot and insect damage to its base. They then removed the...
Last week art, ceremony and truth telling were ongoing in our little town. Significant voices spoke on both sides of the Swinomish Channel. On the Reservation Thursday the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community welcomed everyone to a luncheon feast and then their Canoe Family, elders and four chosen youth led the gathering down to the water for the Blessing of the Fleet and the First Salmon Ceremony. In Maple Hall, students and audiences gathered Thursday through Saturday as poets seeped into La Conner’s reality. Friday it was students in w...
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...
Swinomish Indian Tribal Community staff were at the U.S. Supreme Court April 18 to hear oral arguments that will decide whether the state of Washington’s treaty obligations require removing state-owned barrier culverts to preserve fish runs and habitats. Swinomish joined with 20 other Washington tribes and the United States against the state of Washington in litigation that started in 2001. The Court will decide if a district court injunction ordering the state to remove and replace 2,030 state-owned barrier culverts must be followed. S...
Greg Robinson, a former director of the Museum of Northwest Art, offered a different kind of homecoming last Saturday: He opened MoNA’s “Robert McCauley: American Fiction” with a 45-minute slide lecture to an appreciative audience of about 50 people, most of them getting a different view of MoNA: they had just attended the annual membership meeting. McCauley, the son of generations of Mount Vernon loggers, accompanied his dad into the woods. Born in 1946, he “grew up watching forests fall. T...
Close to 100 people from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community gathered with handmade signs at the SITC’s gym March 27. Holle Edwards, march coordinator said, “this is the fourth (annual) March (on Drugs) …. it was really empowering … the youth center made signs with the kids the day before the March that said things like ‘Say No to Drugs’ and ‘Do Drugs and Your Brain Turns into Slugs.’” The tragic loss of family members and friends due to opioid deaths has reached frightening a...
On an unusually sunny Saturday March 10 at the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Swinomish Police Department’s Community Service Officer Brian Geer was spreading some sunshine of his own. Officer Geer stationed himself and waited alongside a locking strong box, at the SITC’s outdoor basketball court on the corner of First Street and Snee Oosh Road. He was there to kick off a new SPD “Prescription Drug Take Back Program” designed to collect and store unwanted or expired prescription medicat...
Patricia Paul was appointed to the Grand Ronde Court of Appeals by the Tribal Council of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Oregon in January. Paul, a La Conner lawyer and member of the Inupiaq Tribe, was reappointed to the three-member panel along with Robert Miller. Patricia Davis Gibson, the third judge, is a new appointee. Their two-year term started February. 1. Paul is a business and estate-planning lawyer specializing in land use law and federal Indian law. She lives on the Swinomish...
Folks from all walks of life taking the walk of their lives had a chance to put their feet up awhile on Swinomish Reservation last week. About 20 people walking across America to call attention to the ravages of substance abuse and domestic violence made Swinomish an early stop on their nearly 3,000-mile, five-month trek between Lummi and Washington, D.C. The group was greeted Tuesday night by Swinomish Tribal Senate chair Brian Cladoosby, Tribal Senator Barb James, and members of the Swinomish...
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...
World War II veteran John K. Bob was honored by his Swinomish tribe with a retirement ceremony for a special American flag and his war medals at a dedication at the Swinomish Social services building Dec. 7. Veterans from all over the region were asked to participate at the request of John K. Bob’s family. This ceremony marked the seventieth anniversary of Bob’s return home and paid tribute of this fallen WWII war hero and was attended by over 200 people. Bob enlisted in 1942 while still a sen...
