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Dear Citizens, A contract was given to the council for discussion at the last minute last week so you are probably unaware of it. That is par for the town’s inability to provide transparency. Basically, the developer has proposed some outrageous language. The Easement Release Maple Ball Field agreement the town council received from Landed Gentry and discussed at their July 13 meeting gives no apparent advantage to the town. Encourage your favorite council member to vote against signing it. The deal is – Gentry would get what they said t...
To the Editor, The average home in La Conner consumes 324 cubic feet of water each month, and pays a sewer bill of $53.41 per month. The average inflow and infiltration (ground water) is 37.76% at the sewer plant. If I&I could be reduced by 50%, the bill for sewer service could be reduced to $40.72. At 25% the bill would be $42.69, and at 10% it would be $43.68. There is a 97% correlation between rainfall and I&I. Maybe some of the homes have their roof drains connected to the sewer. That is a no-no. The Town Council allocated $50,000 in 2020,...
Is La Conner blessed to have a cadre of concerned citizens, an ever shifting but attentive segment of our population who insist on saying “wait,” “stop” and “no,” or even “no more?” In December 2017, a group of the board of directors of the Museum of Northwest Art resigned and were critically questioning the administrative and financial management of Director Christopher Shainin. A public meeting to discuss the museum’s future in February 2018 brought a critical crowd and a robust discussion of the museum’s problems. Shainin resigned th...
Based on the many comments by neighbors and friends, opposition to developing the Hedlin Play Field is abundantly clear. Additionally, comments at the June 22 town council meeting identified critical issues that are problematic and need to be addressed, including, but not limited to: • possible litigation costs relative to the original deed covenants • traffic and parking issues related to the proximity to Maple Avenue and Hedlin Farms “When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging” – Will Rogers A Path Forward: • Dev...
Dear Citizens: On June 29th, the planner granted an administrative variance from on-site parking requirements for a North First Street project that has five visitor units facing the water on first floor and three residences upstairs on First Street. (There is also a laundry there with its requirements.) The location is commercially zoned but not historic and is between Channel Lodge and the Harlans’residence. From our code. 15.10.1230 Variance “Variance” means the means by which an adjustment is made in the application of a specified regul...
Lytton, BC burns while La Conner, WA fiddles. Grass fires caused by irresponsible fireworks on the westside of the Swinomish Channel threaten the community. Response by the fire department may have saved destruction. Canadian brothers and sisters of the local Swinomish nation were devastated. The local land and the culture are reduced and scarred by the blackened ground and the fireworks waste left behind. Perhaps, the elders have forgotten how to teach, or, perhaps, they receive no respect. Thankfully, the tribal backhoe is not digging graves...
On June 22 the Town Council’s agenda for their meeting was to include a public safety discussion. It was tabled until there could be a representative from the Skagit County Sheriff’s office there. It is supposed to be part of the agenda for the next meeting, held on July 13th at 6 p.m. This will be the first in person meeting since the pandemic closed everything. I want to encourage everyone to attend to voice their concerns about the public safety issue in town. The current contract with the Skagit County Sheriff’s office is due to expir...
Our nation’s 245th anniversary is Sunday. But for many of us, this is not a happy birthday. The one issue of unanimous consent among us is that we are divided. There are two issues of agreement among the population. One is that we are divided. The second is that the other side is defiantly wrong. July 4th is to celebrate the Declaration of Independence, our founding document, our first statement of principles. It is our touchstone. It can help us today. The first paragraph unites us in purpose: “one people to dissolve the political bands whi...
In the summer of 1969, I was in the south of France, visiting my cousins, when Neil Armstrong took a stroll on the moon. The event blew my mind. I am not very technically savvy, so it was beyond my comprehension that something like that could be accomplished. And it made me think that our world and our country, were extremely advanced. More than 50 years have gone by and it is abundantly clear how wrong I was. Let’s just look at the start of the year 2021. Mass shootings in the United States i...
Next Wednesday, June 30, Washington state will fully reopen under Gov. Jay Inslee’s Roadmap to Recovery plan for public health and economic guidelines to protect residents during the coronavirus pandemic. If 70% of residents 16 and older have gotten at least one vaccination shot against the virus, Inslee will give an earlier go signal. Through Monday, June 21, 67.8% of eligible residents were vaccinated. As this paper noted earlier, Inslee bet on an aggressive vaccination campaign to drive down the infection rate. He has won his bet, even a...
For over 65 years, the Hedlin play field has been enjoyed by multiple generations of local residents playing little league baseball, softball, soccer and many other activities. It was the only venue in La Conner configured to accommodate little league baseball. This nearly two acre play field was made available by the generosity of the Hedlin Family – and aside from a lease for a utilities assessment, the only expenses incurred by the Town were property taxes and maintenance. Early in 2019 the Hedlins had an opportunity to acquire...
I have known Eric Day for several years. He is humble and has a servant’s heart – working with young people, teaching cultural ways, helping to feed people in the community, standing and speaking for justice and serving as a senator of the Swinomish Tribe. I support him for commissioner, Position 2, of Fire Protection District 13. As a Swinomish Tribe senator, Eric has been part of the decision-making that has resulted in programs that are meeting the health care and housing needs of people – native and non-native – in our a...
Family members of the La Conner High School graduating class of 2021 will attend this year’s graduation ceremonies Friday at 5 p.m in the football stadium. Teachers and staff will be there, but few others. Attendance is limited to keep people safe from the last vestiges of the coronavirus, not quite wrung out of our community or society at large. The 54 teens – the largest graduating class in years – will graduate together, sitting shoulder to shoulder, throwing their hats in the air en masse, getting to hug and kiss each other, a...
In recent months news reports of events in Israel/Palestine, Xinjian, Cashmere and Afghanistan have caught our attention. Because we care about people and hold justice and human rights as values, we are drawn to speak and act. Good. Actually, not just good, but AWESOME! A representative democracy like ours needs all of us to actively participate in the policy debates of the United States. We need rigorous debates among us about the impact of our policies and how we can help create a more peaceful and just world. Democracies die when citizens...
The roundabout coming into La Conner has been a huge success over the years, but a potential problem is growing. Leaving La Conner east bound last week, there was a long line of cars coming in from the north who have the right of way; east bound traffic has to stop. There is a large shrub blocking the view of cars going east. It is a wreck waiting to happen and, in the hands of an attorney, guess who might be sued because of an overgrown shrub? Denny Sather La Conner...
Family members of the La Conner High School graduating class of 2021 will attend this year’s graduation ceremonies Friday at 5 p.m in the football stadium. Teachers and staff will be there, but few others. Attendance is limited to keep people safe from the last vestiges of the coronavirus, not quite wrung out of our community or society at large. The 54 teens – the largest graduating class in years – will graduate together, sitting shoulder to shoulder, throwing their hats in the air en masse, getting to hug and kiss each other, a...
The rain report for May is in this week’s issue. For more than two years, month after month, a rain report summarizing the local weather from the last month’s weather data at WSU’s Mount Vernon Memorial Highway research station has been compiled. Why? Maybe it is because frogs cannot read. Some say, placed in a pot of water, frogs cannot ascertain or react to water slowly being brought to a boil. But people can read. Whether it is this week’s readers or great grandchildren or alien archeologists digging through archives in the 22nd century...
I offer a unique idea for bringing about peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The idea is based on an incident in World War II. It was told to me by a German priest, Bernard Haring. He was serving in the medical corps in the German army when the German troops began to retreat from Russia. He was assigned to care for three severely wounded German soldiers. To add to his problems, the temperature was way below zero. He came to a Russian farmhouse and decided to seek shelter. He knocked at the door and the owner appeared and saw the Germans...
I have let down my dear friend Elizabeth Hedlin. She was the most generous and kind-hearted woman I have met in my lifetime. She passed those and other virtues to her descendants who still live and work here in La Conner. They are the kind of folk who keep their heads down and work hard and do what they can to serve their community. I was not aware when my representatives in town government were planning to sell the majority of the ballpark that the Hedlin Family Farms had so lovingly shared with our community and baseball lovers from all over...
Thanks to Patricia Aqiimuk Paul for sharing stories about her recipes in a unique column, “Aqiimuk’s Kitchen.” Her descriptive words remind me that decades past, my mother always saved the berry jam “foam” for my father. A spoonful of this warm, tasty sensation was his to enjoy. Sun thoughts, Sunnie Empie La Conner, WA...
Good news: La Conner residents will have choices and decisions to make in the November town council elections. All three positions on the ballot are contested. The updated story about candidates filing on page 1 correctly reports that incumbents John Leaver, Bill Stokes and MaryLee Chamberlain are challenged by Ivan Carlson, Rick Dole and Glen Johnson respectively. Likewise, the Fire District 13 commissioner 2 position is between Eric Day and John Doyle, appointed in April. This is what democracy looks like. Each candidate is unique and brings...
Dear La Conner community and beyond: Thank you for supporting the Rotary Club of La Conner’s annual tulip sales. The club sold nearly 8,000 bunches of tulips, more than the 2019 total. What a fantastic comeback after 2020, when we were not able to hold this annual spring fundraiser to benefit our community. As is so often the case with Rotary, this was truly a community endeavor. Washington Bulb Company partnered with us for our tulip supply, Thulen Farms provided cold storage for the boxes of blooms, Lafayette delivers and stores our Tulip B...
Trading a multi-generational play field, part of the fabric of our “historical” waterfront community, for a housing development, located next to a busy arterial, is not a good deal! I acknowledge and appreciate the countless hours logged in by the town officials on this complicated issue. However, in my opinion, these efforts were spurious and not in the best interests of the community. Public officials, whether elected or appointed, have a fiduciary responsibility to the citizenry they represent. In other words they are charged with deferring...
Roughly 42% of the wastewater that is processed by the La Conner sewer plant is groundwater. This is called I&I (inflow and infiltration). There is a 95% correlation between rainfall and I&I, meaning that we have a pretty leaky sewer system. Whether it is the sewer mains or the side sewers that service each residence, the system is leaking. The sewer system is 46 years old. It has a right to be leaky. The question is what are we doing about it. For 2020 the Town Council appropriated $50,000 for rehabilitation of the collection system. Not a...
Memorial Day is Monday, the time when we stop to consider our war dead, who “ gave the last full measure of devotion,” as Lincoln said at Gettysburg in 1863. War, we know war. Yearly there are fewer World War II veterans among us and the same is true of those who fought in Korea. Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Iraq twice and even those who fought the last 20 years in Afghanistan. Our soldiers fought in El Salvador and Nicaragua and have been deployed to Bosnia, Syria and throughout Africa since the 1990s. In the twentieth century over 640...
