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Sorted by date Results 505 - 529 of 2077
Summer is quickly coming to a close, but we still have lots of exciting things happening at the library. We have several weeks of summer reading to keep everyone busy. Keep buzzing through those books so you can turn in your completed packet for a prize. Thank you to drummer Ray Soriano for a great drumming workshop. Those who attended had a wonderful time. Thank you also to La Conner firefighter Natalie, who took time to let us explore and learn about a fire truck. Everyone who came got a chance to sit in the truck and explore all the cool...
The Town of La Conner Public Works Department will be performing its annual fire hydrant flushing and valve exercising during the month of August from 7:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. If you notice any discolored water, please run your cold water supply until it clears up. If the problem does not clear up please call Todd Park, 360-770-4536, or Chip Sherman, 360-840-3684, for assistance. Source: Town of La Conner...
We count “boat nights” as a measure of how busy the marina is over any given time period. Each boat that spends a single night on one of our guest docks counts, so a boat that is here for a week will count as a stay of seven boat nights. Over the past week, we have hosted 124 boat nights, or just over 30 boats per night on F and G docks. That is a lot of visitors coming to our town and for more than just a few hours. The boats that come in for lunch and shopping and then depart for home are coun...
Next Monday, July 31, the La Conner school board will approve the school district's 2023-2024 budget. The vote will almost certainly be unanimous but it will not be an easy decision. Board members and staff have known about and been grappling with cutting millions of dollars and reducing teaching, support and administrative staff.. The ongoing decline in student enrollment and the district’s despair at the low number of families with school-age children has been editorialized here before. The difficulty of little available and increasingly e...
I read your editorial “La Conner needs to plan for more than just floods,” (Weekly News July 12) with great interest, and your words raised my eyebrows more than once. You see, you made a blanket statement, “No one in La Conner, elected officials, town staff, activists, or this paper, saw, much less grasped the opportunity and possibilities for working family housing when Dave Hedlin offered to sell his family’s Maple Avenue property in 2020.” Now, I think of myself as an activist, and I did see an alternative plan, even went out of my way to...
Because it’s never too soon to prepare for the future, La Conner Town Council invested an hour in a special session last week studying factors and strategies that could define La Conner decades from now. The 60-minute hybrid meeting, which featured online commentary from Seattle-based consultants, was a down payment of sorts ahead of a daylong July 24 council retreat. The topics discussed and identified as either community strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats (SWOT) – some of which overlapped into more than one category – were...
It took a do-over, but the La Conner Town Council last week approved an infrastructure improvements plan for the construction site of a three-story, 19-unit condominium building on Center Street. The unanimous action – though some of the “aye” votes were barely audible – came during a special session in the Maple Hall’s Fireside Room Thursday morning and allows staff to begin a review process needed for project modifications. A motion by Councilmember Rick Dole seeking approval for the infrastructure plan died for lack of a second July 11....
A time-honored adage says no job is finished until the paperwork is done. For the Town of La Conner Parks Commission, the reverse is true when it comes to installing a much-anticipated pavilion at Conner Waterfront Park. The pavilion project, on the drawing board for several years, has received approvals for both shoreline and building permits. Now, it’s just a matter of working out final details with the public works department and reaching a consensus as to exactly where at the park the structure should be located. “The pavilion is going to...
Mayor Ramon Hayes called a special daylong meeting of the La Conner Town Council for Monday, July 24 for the purpose of holding a retreat with a discussion only agenda. The meeting will be held in person only. There will not be public comments or public participation. Council will meet at the Vaux Retreat Center in Bakerview Park, 3011 East Fir Street Mount Vernon, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Source: Town of La Conner...
Folks are asking what's going on at the former COA Mexican Eatery at Maple and Washington. Town of La Conner officials are wondering as well. Unspecified renovations are under way at the building, which was transported to the site in the 1970s as the new Joe's Drive-In when that business outgrew its original venue at Maple and Talbott. The Town Planning Department wants to contact property owners Adrian and Ruth Ibarra to learn their intentions for the structure since it has been vacant and may...
Town of La Conner Emergency Management Commission 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 25 Walking tour of North First Street. Meet at Gilkey Square. In-person only. Agenda Minutes Public Comment (items not on the agenda) Old Business Temporary flood measures – develop consensus Conditions to implement temporary flood protections measures What level of flood protection? 100-year flood event (1%) 500-year flood event (0.2%) 1,000-year flood event? Flood height for Skagit River design Trigger(s) for a Skagit River Flood watch for La Conner Flood height for c...
Amber waves of grain are beautiful, until you can't sell them. Dave Hedlin's barley fields along Chilberg Road – labeled "Spring Malting Barley" on crop signs – will be ripe in about a week, along with several other fields tucked in around La Conner. Unfortunately, Hedlin's barley buyer, Skagit Valley Malting, closed abruptly on Friday, June 16. Hedlin grows about 100 acres of conventional barley and 100 acres of organic a year for Skagit Valley Malting, which turned locally grown barleys int...
With the last name Holmes, it was only natural that he entered law enforcement. And with interests in boating and basketball and a knack for building relationships, the La Conner detachment office seems an ideal assignment for veteran Skagit County Sheriff's Sgt. Brad Holmes. Holmes, who has worked nearly a quarter-century in a wide range of police services, has succeeded retired Sgt. Beau Montgomery as lead officer in La Conner. "I put in for La Conner a while ago," Holmes, who has an...
Finally, five new homes are complete and ready for move in at Channel Cove, at the south end of Park Street in south La Conner. Construction started last December on the one duplex and four single homes, but it has been four years since Home Trust of Skagit Executive Director Jodi Dean announced that funding had been assembled for the project. The two story homes, pre-sold to buyers qualified by Home Trust, are priced at $260,000, but appraised at $500,000, Dean wrote in an email. They are...
onner resident Linda Talman has crafted an enduring legacy through long service on the Town's planning commission, tireless advocacy of open government and access to public records and support for retention of local green spaces and creation of non-motorized transportation options. Now that legacy might also be linked to something not of her choosing. In an ironic twist, the infrastructure improvement plan submitted for the 19-unit condo building proposed for 306 Center Street that Talman has...
Good but not a record may become the new normal for 2023 Town of La Conner tourist tax revenues. The June sales tax revenues of $53,130 reported to town council by the state’s Department of Revenue are the third highest total for the month, but again below the record amounts of 2022 and 2021. The Special Use Fire Tax revenues drop tracked the sales tax pattern. At $5,297 it was well below 2022’s total but only $272 below 2021. Sales and fire tax monthly totals are over double 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, and 10% above 201...
If you often drive over the Rainbow Bridge between La Conner and Shelter Bay, you are likely to have seen a man pushing a disabled tribal member in a wheelchair and they both seem to be very comfortable. Bob Grace has spent his life being a caregiver. In 2013 he connected with Francis Sylvester, whose mother is a member of the Swinomish Tribe. As bystanders, we witness one of the most positive challenges of Grace's caretaking responsibilities, pushing Sylvester across the bridge to La Conner, bu...
Home-grown talent Matika Wilbur has spent years traveling the country to exhibit her critically acclaimed photography and compile narratives for her ground-breaking book "Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America." But last Thursday afternoon her happy place was Gilkey Square in La Conner. Wilbur exchanged laughter and shared fond memories with a steady stream of local admirers, who included civic leaders, fellow artisans and retired teachers and school administrators, during an...
At times shrouded in mystery after its closure in the early 1970s, Northern State Hospital and its unique history will be revisited during a July 29 public program at the former mental health facility's campus four miles northeast of Sedro-Woolley. The daylong event (10 a.m.-4 p.m.) invites those attending to share memories, scan photos, take self-guided tours and listen to stories and reminiscences of former employes and family members of Northern State. The program, billed as a "public history...
The Town of La Conner’ s emergency management commission will start meeting monthly after half a year of bi-weekly sessions. It has made some progress and is settling into a routine. The town council and mayor moved quickly to form the commission after December’s Swinomish Channel flooding got their attention. Maybe emergencies are required to form commissions and plan solutions to past problems. Will it take a flood of homeless people floating into taking up residency in Pioneer Park to engage town leaders to move toward significant developmen...
In 2010 Christchurch, New Zealand was devastated by two magnitude 7 earthquakes only days apart. Buildings were shaken to the ground; roadbeds overturned; water pipes snapped, etc. Nearby, the hamlet of Littleton, a town somewhat larger but like La Conner, was similarly shaken. But Littleton had a secret: a neighborly system of sharing services hour for hour they called a “time bank.” When Littleton’s 300 time bankers heard about an elderly couple being left homeless by the quake, the time bankers found the couple a temporary home and tappe...
For a while I was googling for an engineer named Talmon for the 306 Center Street project. But now I see that the name of the project is the Talmon Project in drawings submitted by the developer to the Town of La Conner. Since projects are usually not named after engineers, I assume that the name is joke. Kind of funny. As is the project. It is still too big. Still lacks enough parking. Still has bad contamination on the western portion of the property. And it is still a design that is cookie cutter. It is an insult to the historic nature of...
Mayor Ramon Hayes called a special meeting of the La Conner Town Council Thursday, July 13 at 10:45 a.m. The purpose of this meeting is to approve the Talmon infrastructure improvement (DE) agreement. This is the Brandon and Katie Atkinson three-story condominium project at 306 Center Street. Council will meet in the Maple Hall Fireside Room. The meeting will not be streamed....
Nothing in life is perfect, but the annual July Fourth Parade in La Conner Tuesday came close. The weather, which more than once has been wet and chilly here on Independence Day – hence, the local adage that summer starts on July 5 – was sunny and warm for an eclectic blend of patriotic-clad entrants and spectators lining the length of First Street for the 20-minute celebration. So good was the parade honoring America’s 247th birthday and formal separation from Great Britain that those resid...
The Fourth of July parade in La Conner always has something for everyone and often makes memories to last a lifetime. Yet few have had as much of a blast at the downtown summer serpentine as the popular "Kazookie" duo of Felicia Value and Gem Tartaglia, who recently bid farewell – reluctantly, of course – to La Conner and are now creating positive notes in the Portland area where they have family and friends of longstanding. Regular parade-goers fondly recall Value and Tartaglia playing pat...
