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Be Kind to Editors and Writers Month honors those hardworking individuals who make the world a more interesting place through their narratives and other creative works of art. The month was established in 1984 by Lone Star Publishing of San Antonio, Texas. Show your appreciation: find a writer or editor you like and tell them thanks, instruct Bellevue University library staff members. It is also day four of Library Card Sign-up Month. Go to the library to get one. Source: The internet...
The Aug. 21 editorial stated that the Town of La Conner bought the Jenson property for $169,000 and that it is landlocked. The purchase price was $60,000. There is access by a 15-foot wide easement from S. Fourth Street. The editor regrets these mistakes....
13 issues printed since July 5, 2017. 16 weeks to paper’s final issue. Monday is Labor Day, the last of the summer season holidays and the unofficial start of fall. It is the picnic and barbeque holiday, the gather friends and family together occasion, the toast the kids before they head off or back to college or return to the classroom holiday. It is a holiday that is uniquely American, as if our laborers are special, and separate from the riff raff of all the other workers around the world. The U.S. Congress created Labor Day in 1894 to d...
The Hearing Examiner’s decisions shouldn’t be a popularity contest. The code, the council, and administration shouldn’t leave it up to a hearing examiner’s decision to ensure a future with adequate housing! If the Municipal Code isn’t strong enough to preference housing over commercial use...especially in already residentially- zoned areas!... what has to change? This is not a new problem. Is it the municipal code? Or the council’s or administration’s or planning department’s commitments to housing? (Especially affordable housing... whet...
There are two candidates for Skagit County Commissioner, District 1, Ron Wesen and Rylee Fleury. I support neither, but I wish to know who will be representing the affairs of this county for the next term. Unfortunately Fleury is vague on professional experience, education and community service in the voters’ pamphlet and his personal statement sounds like it was written by someone else for him. He has a billboard on Hwy 20 as well as many yard signs and a large box truck plastered with large campaign signage on its sides. These cost a lot o...
Those who support the reelection of Mr. Donald Trump remind us that none of us are perfect, that to lash out at one over another is unfair, that we all have our faults. It must be said, however, that some individuals appear to be more imperfect than others, especially those in high places. “The US could have averted 40% of the deaths from COVID-19,” according to a Lancet commission (England) tasked with assessing Donald Trump’s health policy record. In seeking to respond to the pandemic, Trump has been widely condemned for “not taking the pan...
I met with the mayor and the administrator of La Conner on Aug. 21. The purpose of the meeting was to see if the Town was going to contest the amount of money the Town of La Conner paid to the City of Anacortes for water for 2021 and 2022. The answer was “no.” The agreement between the town and the city calls for arbitration if there is a disagreement, but the mayor and the administrator found no problem, no need to sit down with the mayor of Anacortes. This, in spite of the fact that Anacortes, by my calculation, owes us $46,858 for 2021 and...
From 1999 – 2001, I worked for Florida Power & Light. Part of my job was to figure out how that company should make use of energy technologies that were just emerging from the laboratory into commercial use. Twenty-five years later, to borrow a line from Raul Julia in “Street Fighter,” some of the technologies I was studying “are Tuesday.” In other words, they’re no longer exotic. They no longer attract attention. They’re just what exists, barely worthy of comment. Compact fluorescent l...
12 issues printed since July 5, 2017. 17 weeks to paper’s final issue Yesterday afternoon, at a hearing before the Town of La Conner ‘s hearing examiner, the case of granting a conditional use permit for a health club to open at the former COA restaurant on Maple Avenue was heard. The land is zoned residential. The restaurant operated with a conditional permit. Once the building was vacant for six months the zoning reverted to residential. Several residents oppose the permit application, saying workforce housing is needed in La Conner and an...
Electric cars were introduced in the 1890s. They only had about 50 miles of range between charges, but they wouldn’t break your arm starting them and they didn’t make loud noises and scare horses. Internal combustion engine cars weren’t reliable, gasoline wasn’t widely available, tires on all car types were unreliable and roads were bad. As late as 1905, electric, steam and ICE cars split the market with about a 33% market share each. Steam and ICE cars gradually got better tires, electri...
I am sympathetic to your recent view article questioning the value of our present two-party system to our election process. The criticism can apply to either side. The parties gain total control by holding the purse strings and thus keep things in uproar as an easy way to generate funds. In this game, money talks loudly. The whistlestop train campaigning may be too outdated, but the undergirding of what we stand for may still be there. Namely: 1. That truth is the most sustainable way to keep us free, safe and fair in our interactions. 2. That...
I just read an e-mail blurb from a Tunde Wackman who is staff at World Central Kitchens. The New York based non-profit who is working non-stop in Ukraine, Sudan and other troubled locales around the world, including Gaza and the West Bank. You may recall that World Central Kitchens is the organization that Jeannie Wedin, myself and others raised $18,000 for a few years back feeding refugees in Ukraine. Now they are distributing much-needed food to starving Palestinians. A month or so back they were in the news resulting from Israeli Prime...
Back when there were only three channels on TV, and you had to change them by hand, some new cars arrived in America. To paraphrase a quote often misattributed to Mahatma Ghandi: First, Detroit ignored Japanese car manufacturers. Then, Detroit laughed at Japanese car manufacturers. Then, Detroit fought Japanese car manufacturers. Then, Japanese car manufacturers won. In 1972, according to Detroit, nobody would ever want small Japanese cars, and Japan didn’t understand the U.S. car market. T...
Richard Nixon announced he was resigning his presidency 50 years ago tomorrow, Aug. 8, 1974. Why did he resign? He knew he was going to be impeached and convicted by each House of Congress. Why was Congress about to do that? The House Judiciary Committee had drafted articles of impeachment making the case that Nixon had criminally broken the law. The first article was obstruction of justice. It begins: “Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best o...
My name is April Emanuelson-Barnett. I am working on my doctorate in natural medicine and work at Thrive Direct Health Care as a certified functional nutrition coach. I plan to continue to offer my expertise there, in the clinical setting and offer the fitness and fresh food side of health at La Conner Wellness and MMA. My husband, Tracy Barnett, is a retired paramedic. He did rescue work for over 24 years and has taught martial arts and self-defense for 23 years. Our SBA (Small Business Administration) lenders love our idea of turning the old...
Local permits and Washington’s Growth Management Act Last week I wrote a citizen’s view column about the proposal for 214 Maple Avenue (the old COA) and promised that I would write more this week about the condition that is hardest to understand: (e) The proposal, through findings, satisfies the goals and policies of La Conner’s comprehensive plan and floodplain ordinance and the state Shoreline Management Act. I will address the Comp Plan only here. Long ago the Washington State Legislature passed the Growth Management Act The GMA estab...
Lighting experts expect that light-emitting diode lights will soon completely eliminate fluorescent lighting and that LEDs will reduce the use of incandescent lighting to a few specialty items like high-powered outdoor halogen lamps. This shift is expected to be nearly complete by 2030. Further improvements in LEDs, including a shift to what should ultimately be lower-cost organic LEDs are likely to continue. By 2050, all new lights may be LEDs or OLEDs. This change means that we’ll use less e...
The public hearing held on July 29 by the La Conner school board revealed that next year the district is going to levy $1,434,000 for debt service on the bond that built the middle school. That will be paid by about 4,400 non-Native American taxpayers who live in the school district. The Swinomish do not pay taxes. Yet, they account for 38.7% of the student body. They should contribute $554,958. The tribe can afford it. They will collect $1,958,197 extra cash from their tax on Shelter Bay and Pull & Be Damned residents this year. One of the...
La Conner’s town government – elected officials and staff – created a long task list for the second year of implementing the five-year strategic plan they adopted last September. Credit them for being ambitious: 31 tasks came out of their June retreat, with over half of them placed on Mayor Marna Hanneman and Administrator Scott Thomas’ shoulders. The fire department, with five tasks, has made progress, getting a $150,000 commitment from the town council to buy a fire boat. Public works and finance staff are assigned these tasks: improving inte...
7 Maple Street is the site of what many call the old COA restaurant. This letter is an attempt to make La Conner’s conditional use procedure process clearer. The property’s current zoning is residential. This means that residences can be located on the property. The residences can be single family or multifamily. Residences are not a conditional use. No conditional use permit would be needed to locate new residences there. Most of Maple Street is residential. Is there anything else that can go on 214 Maple Street? Yes, The code specifies a nu...
With the expected finalizing of Kamala Harris to be the Democratic presidential nominee, our planet has hope for remaining livable. Earth will of course remain no matter what, but the four years that Trump occupied the office set back actions to limit climate change by 10 to 15 years. No one can argue that our weather has become more hostile to humans and animals. Many cities are passing the temperature threshold for outdoor activities plus the number of severe storms and wildfires has gone beyond any expectations. By Trump eliminating the...
The Federal H-2A Temporary Farmworker Program was designed to provide “temporary workers/guest workers” in areas where industrial agriculture can request a cheap, flexible and deportable workforce with no labor rights. This program relies on cheap and exploitable temporary workers working on farms at the expense of local farmworker communities displaced from secure jobs to support their families. Local workers work/live in Skagit County (some for decades), have families, pay taxes, pay for housing, buy clothing and groceries, and support the...
Before electric lights were available, we created artificial light with fires, and beeswax or tallow candles, and oil lamps and gas streetlamps. In the 1860s, kerosene largely replaced whale oil for lighting. Then, starting in the 1880s, incandescent electric lights were introduced on a large scale. Electric lights were more convenient, easier to maintain, and less of a fire hazard than gas or kerosene lamps. That seems like an uncontroversial statement. In 1880, it wasn’t. Electric lights were...
Yes, it’s hard for me to believe but I just turned 78 years old and recently had my 60th high school reunion in Roslyn, Long Island, New York. Roslyn is a charming town that was first occupied by Dutch settlers hundreds of years ago. My father’s jewelry store was right next to an incredible clock tower that is hundreds of years old and the town has a boat launch heading out to the Long Island Sound on one side and a beautiful duck pond on the other side. I was captain of the football team and...
This is going to be hard for our committed Republican neighbors, friends and family members to read, but being in a community and living in a democratic society obligates all of us to accomplish the difficult task of continuing to the end of this editorial. It seems we have been collectively engaged in an agonizing drama these past three weeks. The world watched and without any hesitation universally agreed that President Joe Biden’s performance in his debate with Donald Trump June 28 was a disaster. More than stumbling terribly, he was a p...
