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The first in a series of eight “consultations” to be held by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on rules regarding business enterprises on reservation land will be held next Thursday at the Swinomish Casino and Lodge. While the agency is seeking comment from tribes on a variety of elements as it ponders revisions to the “Traders With Indians” rule, the issue garnering the most attention among tribes and local governments involves taxes. Essentially, some tribal officials hold that it is unfair for state and local governments to tax non-tri...
A fire on the Swinomish Reservation destroyed a family’s home on Saturday. Firefighters from Fire District’s 13 and 11 and the City of Anacortes responded at about 1:15 p.m. to a house burning on Reservation Lane. The resident, Amanda Johnston, was not at home at the time, and there were no injuries. On Monday Johnston was assessing the damage, and said her cat, “Fuzzy Pickles,” and dog, “Bentley,” were confused about being displaced, too. Aly Sehlin, a language arts teacher at La Conner Middle School has set up a Go Fund Me page for Johnsto...
Fire District 13 Chief Roy Horn announced last week that he would submit his resignation on July 1, because his contract expires on Dec. 31. Horn told the board at the Thursday, Jan. 26 meeting that he would put in a letter of resignation only because his contract requires him to give six months notice, and he wants the board to do “succession planning.” When pressed later on whether he intends to retire, Horn said, “It depends on the board.” He said, “I want to put it in the board’s mind to have these things addressed.” When Horn made his...
The La Conner Town Council voted unanimously to cancel the town’s agreement with Fire District 13 and buy out its interest in the fire station on Chilberg Road near the roundabout. This move comes after Fire 13 in December announced plans to staff the station round-the-clock to provide better service to its taxpayers on the east side of the Swinomish Channel. Meanwhile, La Conner Volunteer Fire Department, which already has firefighters spending the night at the station, has grown too big to share space with Fire 13, the council decided at a s...
The 3,691 voters in the La Conner School District are being asked again to approve a school levy — this time to raise $2.5 million over two years starting in 2018. At the same time, the state Legislature, which is under court-order to fully fund basic education, is working to find a fix this year to Washington school districts’ dependency on local levies. The Skagit County Auditor’s Office Election Department is mailing special levy election ballots today, Wednesday. Voters will also receive a flier from La Conner Schools with voter inf...
Snee-oosh Beach offers a beautiful waterside view, but also carries a lingering threat of occasional flooding. In March 2016, a section of Chilberg Avenue on the Swinomish Reservation was overtaken by Skagit Bay’s tidal waters. The water flowed onto several homeowners’ yards on McGlinn Drive, damaging the properties. Five homeowners decided to build a 250- to 300-foot-long “garden wall,” spanning across their yards in hopes of preventing a repeat occurrence. However, the project has not gone sm...
As the La Conner School District prepares to again ask voters to approve a new two-year $2.5 million property tax levy, it commissioned a study to answer a question that keeps popping up: Why does La Conner spend more per student than many other districts in the state and $4,607 per student more than other districts in the county? The answer is mostly because it has the money to spend. At its meeting on Monday, the school board heard a more in-depth explanation. Bottom line: “The money is spent on students in the classroom,” said Andy Wolf, ass...
With 2016 in the past, new calendars pinned to kitchen walls, and a few business days into 2017, we’re looking back at a few of La Conner’s big stories of 2016, some of which will be impacting the new year as well. School funding woes In February, for the first time in local history, voters rejected the La Conner School District’s bid for renewed levies to replace expiring funds: one was for maintenance and operations, and another for technology. The levies would have included $1.5 million of funding for the schools for 2017 and 2018. The s...
The three-man Fire District 13 board of commissioners wants to staff the La Conner Fire Station near the roundabout on Chilberg Road. Meanwhile, the La Conner Volunteer Fire Department already has plans to man the station 24-hours a day with two firefighters of its own. La Conner’s Mayor Ramon Hayes, Administrator John Doyle and Fire Chief Josh Morrison met with Fire District 13’s Chief Roy Horn and Commissioners Arne Fohn, Chuck Hedlund and Larry Kibbee on Friday, Dec. 16. The outcome of that meeting led to setting another meeting at the La...
The La Conner School Board on Monday approved a resolution to ask voters to levy $2.5 million in new taxes on the district’s property owners. If approved in a special election in February, the money would be collected over two years, in increments of $1.25 million in 2018 and in 2019. The district anticipates its new “replacement educational programs and operations levy” would amount to about $2.50 per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. An existing voter-approved construction bond for the new middle school is also on the tax bills. The lev...
Skagit County has objected to a request by the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community to turn an Anacortes gas station into reservation land. Swinomish purchased the Shell gas station on Christianson Road in Anacortes for $1 million in May, according to county records. It is located across the street from the tribe’s Swinomish Links golf course and is more than a mile west of the Swinomish Reservation. Late last month the county was notified that Swinomish had applied to the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs to put th...
Skagit County Commissioners stepped into what appears to be a land dispute between two local Native American tribes and warned property owners that they could end up being annexed to the Swinomish Reservation. At the same time, the commissioners filed an objection with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs over the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s plans to amend its constitution — a move they claim could stretch its reservation boundaries across thousands of acres of privately owned land northwest of the current reservation. This n...
It was a homeowner’s nightmare — water creeping underneath the front door, furniture, books and electronics soaked as water levels slowly rise. Carefully tended gardens were washed away in a wave. In March residents along Snee-Oosh Beach suffered thousands of dollars in damages as an unexpected tidal surge washed across Chilberg Road near Hope Island and swamped their homes. In advance of “King Tide” season coming again in a few months, five neighbors on McGlinn road pooled their money...
The three Fire District 13 commissioners threw water on the hopes of residents who want to withdraw from the district. About 15 of the more than 100 residents of the north east corner of District 13 who want to join Fire District 2 instead attended the commission meeting last week, even though the meeting was held a day earlier than originally scheduled. The commissioners adopted a resolution not to take any action on the residents’ petition for withdrawal until the petition signers post a bond large enough to cover all expenses related to t...
The Fire District 2 board of commissioners agreed on Monday to draft a resolution to accept for annexation an area residents hope to detach from Fire District 13. Dave Buchan, Dennis Milliken and some of their neighbors on Channel Drive, which is north of La Conner on the east side of the Swinomish Channel, attended the Fire District 2 Board of Commissioners meeting at the McLean Road Fire Station to present a copy of their certified petition to withdraw from Fire District 13. District 2 commissioners, chairman Steve Snyder, Mike Madlung and La...
The Skagit County Auditor’s Office has certified the petition signed by more than 100 voters who want to withdraw from Fire District 13. That means the ball is in Fire District 13’s court — its three commissioners will be tasked with studying the proposal, holding a public hearing and then making a recommendation to the Skagit County Commissioners. Fire District 13 Chief Roy Horn said he can’t predict how fire commissioners Chuck Hedlund, Arne Fohn and Larry Kibbee will respond to the r...
The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s leadership wants to amend the tribe’s constitution so that its actions will no longer be subject to approval by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. The tribe has not responded to this newspaper’s requests to elaborate on its plan. Stan Speaks, the regional director for the Pacific Northwest Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs said, “That situation has not been admitted or approved. We will be meeting with the tribe in the very near future to discuss the issue.” In the meantime, he would not say a...
Residents of the Channel Drive neighborhood north of La Conner submitted a petition with more than 100 signatures of voters who want to withdraw from Fire District 13. Dave Buchan, Dennis Milliken and Martin Howard delivered the petition to Elections Supervisor Dave Cunningham in the Skagit County Auditors office on Monday. The Elections Department has 10 days to check the signatures and make sure the petition is in order. In March, the county rejected a petition with 90 signatures seeking the same result – detachment from Fire District...
Republican Bill Bryant, who hopes to unseat Democratic Governor Jay Inslee in the November 8 election, said the unfair tax situation in La Conner shows “either incompetence or disinterest,” by agencies working under the current governor. The Washington Department of Revenue crafted a property tax policy that hit La Conner hard when homes were taken off the county’s tax rolls and a $1.8 million tax burden was shifted to the remaining taxpayers. Some residents shouldered tax increases of thousands of dollars. It happened, Bryant claims, becau...
The Washington Department of Revenue says it asked the state’s 39 county assessors for comment as it crafted the property tax policy that hit La Conner residents so hard. When homes were taken off the county’s tax rolls, a $1.8 million tax burden was shifted to the remaining taxpayers, some of whom saw their property tax bills jump by thousands of dollars. The state’s documentation of the process as it developed its response to the so-called Great Wolf Lodge decision shows assessors were never called in for meetings with state officials. But t...
Attorneys working for tribes, including some employed by the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, helped write a Washington State Department of Revenue’s guidance document that had a profound effect on local taxpayers. Last year the Skagit County Assessor’s Office removed 931 La Conner area parcels from the county property tax rolls, which caused the tax burden to shift to the remaining taxpayers. Property taxes went up by more than 20 percent for many La Conner families – some saw their bills jump by thousands of dollars. Research by thi...
About a quarter of the Swinomish Police Department’s officers have submitted resignations, according to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. Allan Olson, the tribe’s general manager, said four officers, including Chief Andrew Thorne, Assistant Chief Larry Yonally, a sergeant and a patrol officer “resigned” after the Swinomish Senate decided to “reorganize” the department following a two-month review of police department activities. The 11-member senate met last Tuesday, July 18. Its meetings are not open to the public. That same morning, this...
Officers at the Swinomish Police department wouldn’t say what was going on yesterday. Reporter questions were referred to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s General Manager Allan Olson, who initially said “no comment” when asked whether officers had been disarmed, or forced to forfeit their weapons. But at about noon on Tuesday, he did say the police department was in the process of reorganizing. And, “the police department is fine,” he said. Though specific details about the reorganization were not forthcoming on Tuesday, a search of f...
Monday June 13 3:28 p.m.: Fender Bender – Minor damage to vehicles involved in an accident at a business on Pearle Jensen Way in La Conner. Deputy helped in the information exchange. 7:36 p.m.: Unwanted Company – A guest who refused to leave an apartment, 900 blockMaple Avenue, La Conner, was gone by the time deputies arrived. Swinomish Police contacted the unwanted house guest and issued a trespass warning. 9 p.m.: Pooch Snatching – A theft of a pet dog that occurred on the Swinomish Reservation was reported at an apartment,...
Monday May 23 5:31 p.m.: Stranded – A 75-year-old woman was stranded inConway and needed a ride. A deputy gave her a lift to the Stanwood Park & Ride. Wednesday May 25 6:27 a.m.: Mean driver – There was a report of a vehicle that swerved, trying to hit two raccoons that were on the shoulder of the road near theRainbowBridge in La Conner. Deputies were unable to locate the vehicle. 7:13 a.m.: Get home, Aaron! – A cattle dog named Aaron was reported missing inConway. 11 a.m.: Low limb – A delivery truck hit a low tree limb...
