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Since 1990 Skagit County has protected farmland with good planning and county codes. The current Skagit County code prohibits non-agricultural uses on the 90,000 acres of farmland zoned Agriculture-Natural Resource Lands (Ag-NRL). The proposed code changes strengthen farmland protection and do not affect farming and agricultural activities. The code permits farmstands, CSAs, U-pick, farm stays, farmers markets, farm to table meals, processing and sales of value added products, nursery sales, farm tours, hayrides, public education programs and...
This year’s tribal Canoe Journey brought sacred tribes to the shores of Swinomish from distant lands with their final landing at Muckleshoot, Alki Beach. The canoe journey is a tradition that has taken place for generations. The canoes were most often crafted from a single log that may have been several hundred years old. There is much honoring around the wood used, as their use has been integral for the tribe’s survival. This was their way of travel, their way of life was upon the water. It was relied upon heavily. Many of their resources cam...
Some of us are quicker than others, have our priorities in better order, are more in tune with the rhythms of the season. Partly, too, it is a matter of location and timing. For me, confined to a narrow course of home and office, it has only been since last week, Monday, Aug. 21 that I have heard and seen Canada geese returning to the Skagit. That first evening the sound of their honking followed me home. I did not see in the evening haze and smoke but heard the telltale sound somewhere over Hedlin farm fields. Honking brought me out of my offi...
Finally. A witch hunt exposed, captured on the front page of newspapers all across the country and blaring from TV screens. Yes, corrupt law enforcement staff exist, backed up by a law-breaking judge willing to bend the law to punish those nipping at their heels. Cronyism run amok, on steroids! Kurt Batdorf’s story, below, sums up the unprecedented-in-our-time attack on a Kansas newspaper, the Marion County Record, gone after for doing its job. Small town cronies tried to out-muscle the 69-year-old publisher and his 98-year-old mother, the c...
Affordable housing is the issue nearly every city and county in our region is struggling with, including La Conner. And, with the town considering new code changes, it seems the situation may only get worse. Over the past few years, I’ve attended many planning commission meetings and at every meeting, the urgent need for affordable housing is discussed. Yet, instead of pursuing policies that will produce more affordable permanent housing, the town is considering encouraging even more short-term rentals by expanding the rules for short-term r...
I am at this moment (early August – ed.) watching these heartbroken Moms testify about their beloved sons and daughters who lost their lives, needlessly, at the hands of the U.S. Government. They are asking for the truth about who made the decision to pull out of Afghanistan in a deadly, foolish, coldly calculating, absolutely horrendous method. It was a complete failure. Shame on this administration. Disgusting and unforgiveable decisions that cost 13 lives needlessly. Also, other questions that need to be answered, which this government seems...
On Wednesday, Aug. 16, a young, seemingly likable, fast-talking fellow knocked on our door to pitch his pest control services. My wife and I listened for a short while and I went back indoors since I was busy. He kept talking to my wife and wanted to quickly check our shed for signs of pests. Later, my wife mentioned she had made an appointment for him to come back on Thursday, assuming it was for a more detailed discussion about whether to sign up for the services. To make that appointment, he asked her to sign and initial a form on his smart...
What is it like to use a short-term rental? Simple. You look for a mega corporation site (VRBO or Airbnb or similar – one that advertises units in a location you wish to visit and then sign up for a rental of choice. (They are usually expensive once all the charges are added in, which doesn’t happen till the final page of your agreement.) Financial advisors suggest that people “put their money to work” by buying property in a place where said client might want to hang out. Easy money for the owner, they say. A contract is signed with AIRBNB...
Some readers, surely, were among the over 500 people crowding Mount Vernon’s Riverwalk Plaza last Wednesday, raffle tickets in hand, as Skagit Valley Food Co-op General Manager Tony White called out winner after winner, giving away prizes donated by local businesses and the Co-op in recognition of the 13,000 members who make the Co-op the amazing success it is today. Residents from Samish Island and Sedro-Woolley came and others from perhaps as far away as Vancouver, B.C., and Seattle. It may be possible and is certainly true that pound for pou...
Try reliable solar power Dear Skagit County citizens, As the vice president of Skagit Valley Clean Energy Cooperative (SVCEC), the organization sponsoring the Solarize Skagit 2023 program, I want to remind folks that one of the benefits of the program is to get connected with pre-vetted, qualified and reliable installers. I am hearing that several residents have been approached by “door knockers” selling solar. They are not affiliated with the Solarize Skagit program. Please check with the Better Business Bureau prior to making any com...
Questions about flooding I was pleased to read in last week’s Weekly News of the emergency flood commission touring the areas that were breached in last year’s flood. It has been seven months since the high tide inundated the town causing 1.8 million dollars damage to people’s homes and town businesses. Having experienced the flooding up close and personal, I have a few questions. I have photos of the water pouring through the blue metal buildings on the old Moore Clark property. That water spread throughout the south end of town. My quest...
Governor Gavin Newsom of California calls for a constitutional amendment enshrining common-sense gun control. He calls his effort a “mechanism to address the echo chamber of despair” – the ever-more-frequent mass shootings. Newsom’s proposed twenty-eighth amendment to the U.S. Constitution is hardly the comprehensive measure this country would need to stop the bloodshed. It would merely raise the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21, mandate universal background checks, impose a waiting period for purchasing a gun and ban assault weapons...
The foundation board would like to take this opportunity to share with you some of the people and organizations in the community that have given us the means to award scholarships each year at La Conner High School. We are pleased to share that the general foundation fund has grown to $1,100,000. This endowment was created solely by the generosity of you folks in the community. Many alumni have given one dollar for every year post-graduation. Many of our neighbors from Shelter Bay, past...
Yesterday, Aug. 8, was the 49th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation as president is the United States. Why did Nixon resign? First for our youth, the ahistorical, those who forgot or cannot remember our 37th president, Nixon’s top White House staff worked with a dirty tricks squad. The tricksters first broke into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in 1971. Then in June 1972 they burglarized the Democratic Party’s Watergate office and were caught, arrested by Washington, D.C., police. For two years, through Senate and House inv...
This really happened last week, though instead of it being on a TV or movie screen the set was the office of the Weekly News and the players were the real-life Rhonda, design and layout editor, and Kurt, production manager for the Weekly News. The truer-than-life star coming in was Pamela, her real name, and her 12-year-old daughter, visiting from Seattle. She walked in the door and without being cued asked, “Do you have a newspaper for sale?” and put a five dollar bill on Kurt’s desk and would not take change. “Keep it,” she said. “I work at M...
Truth, Trump and democracy “Truth is on the march … . Those who are guilty do not want the truth to come out … . When truth is buried underground, it grows and builds up so much force that the day it explodes, it blasts everything with it. We shall see whether we have been setting ourselves up for the most resounding disaster yet to come.” So wrote French author Emile Zola in his “J’Accuse” letter of 1898 regarding the antisemitic trial of French military officer, Alfred Dreyfus, of Jewish descent, unlawfully accused of espionage. No...
Lithium-ion batteries have long been in the news because of their role in electric vehicles, but uses for this technology are expanding to the utility industry. Batteries that can be charged and discharged quickly, and re-used for thousands of cycles, open up options for utility-scale energy storage that haven’t been economic before. Now that utility-scale lithium batteries are available at commercial scales and reasonable prices, they are being adopted by the utility industry itself. As a...
I love that phrase. It always makes me smile. It is what brought me to La Conner in March 2017 to look at buying the Weekly News. I will always associate my newspaper publishing career with my best friend, Dick Wittenberg, who loves to see his name in print. My newspaper ownership is fundamentally due to friendship but more, to love and trust. Dick believes in me completely. He knew I could successfully run a newspaper. He was right. Weekly newspaper for sale. This is the second month of my seventh year owning the La Conner Weekly News. You...
I attended the meeting of the Skagit County Planning Commission Tuesday, July 25, along with scores of others to express concern regarding proposed increased regulations for local farm families, many whom are already struggling to keep their family farm businesses viable. It is being reported that many limits and restrictions could be put in place to prevent celebration events and would even block new farm stands from opening. Many of the good people in the room have been the backbone of preserving Skagit farmland over the years, leading the...
Fire Blanket saves lives Please share this with your readers! Several weeks ago, I nearly set my home on fire. I had a three-quart saucepan, with 2 tablespoons of cooking oil, on the gas stove, as part of a recipe in the making. I stepped away from the stove to take care of laundry. Let’s just say I was distracted. Suddenly the smoke detector went off. I rushed back to the kitchen to a pan on fire, flames nearly 20 inches in the air! Instinct kicked in, as I reached for a Fire Blanket hanging in the pantry. If not for this blanket, I would n...
When I started working on lithium-ion batteries, in 1993, Sony and Toshiba had introduced the first such commercially available batteries a couple of years earlier. They were mostly used in “the 4 Cs” of small consumer electronics – cassette players, camcorders, cell phones and computers. If anyone had thought about putting a bunch of lithium-ion batteries together into huge battery packs, for vehicles or utility distribution systems, they would have stopped as soon as they found out the cost:...
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 just turned 77 years old, and as I write this, I feel older and wiser. Well, wiser in some ways as we can always learn from our own experiences, but also facing the challenges of short-term memory loss. As the son of Holocaust survivors, I thank God for every moment I have on this planet and when I sit in my rooftop hot tub and look out at the vast Universe, I thank God that humans are an incredible and extremely rare species. I was very close to Father William Treacy and he gave me a column t...
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...
New solar and wind electric generators are being installed at increasing rates because their costs are declining and utilities are getting better at integrating intermittent generation into their grids. New renewable generation plants are more economical than new coal or natural gas plants. Renewable generators are, therefore, displacing fossil or nuclear fueled plants when the old plants are retired. However, generation from solar and wind sources doesn’t necessarily happen at the exact same t...
