A school budget and a dike plan

As expected, the La Conner School Board adopted the school district’s $10,232,197 budget for the upcoming 2016-2017 school year with little fanfare.

Only a handful of people turned out for a public hearing on the spending plan, which had been crafted after a series of public workshops involving community members during the spring.

School board President Rick Thompson, who celebrated his final meeting at the dais on Monday, noted that in his 22 years on the board he had never seen so many meetings held to prepare a budget.

Also on Monday, La Conner Town Administrator John Doyle and Town Attorney Brad Furlong were at the meeting to ask the board for a favor regarding an “orphaned” piece of land that would up abandoned during various parcel line adjustments during the last 100 years or so.

The town wants to build a flood prevention dike along the north end of town and recently discovered that a skinny strip of land that runs between a Drainage and Irrigation District 15’s ditch and the school’s athletic fields has no owner of record.

That’s where the town wants to build it’s dike. So Doyle and Furlong asked the school board to have it’s attorney contact the town to work out a plan to have either the school district or the town own the property.

The board agreed that Superintendent Peg Seeling would have the lawyers determine which would be best – should the school district claim ownership and give the town an easement, or should the town claim the land?