For the second time in a week, a group of Whidbey Island residents confronted Island County officials to air their concerns about the county’s current policy of spraying roadside weeds with what they deem harmful industrial pesticides.
Election results in Island County have been tallied and certified, bringing to a close a handful of local races that went right down to the wire.
A group of Oak Harbor volunteers and business leaders that banded together to provide a Thanksgiving meal to any community member that needed or wanted it, report the event went extremely well.
I looked around the table this Thanksgiving and what I saw really did my heart good. It matched, in fact, a vision that originated Sept. 11 when I had carefully built deep within my heart a mental picture that included every person who sat before me this Thanksgiving. While I knew it would be some weeks before that picture would become reality, we had planned this event well in advance and I knew I could depend on my family because we have never failed to be a family.
Island County was a county before the Washington was a state. The first boundaries were set in 1853. Mostly through the efforts of Col. Ebey, representative from Thurston County, Island County became a county in its own right on Jan. 22, 1853, and included Snohomish, Skagit, Whatcom and San Juan and the county seat was Coveland.
A 24-year-old Clinton man who threatened his wife with a loaded rifle will be spending the next nine months in the county jail.
Permits issued by the Island County Health Department will cost more come next year, as county commissioners approved an across-the-board rate increase of 8 percent for all environmental health services.
Lana Labuda attacked Whidbey Environmental Action Network (WEAN) and myself in her Nov. 17 “Soundoff” column for attempting to protect Blue Flag Iris on Grasser’s Hill and (presumably) the 25 other native plant species we believe are at risk of extinction from Whidbey Island. Her column contains numerous factual errors.
Upchurch Scientific of Oak Harbor has a new member in its holding company.
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Worms? Oak Harbor’s early birds this week didn’t care about worms. They were looking for deals, and there were plenty of them as the Christmas shopping season officially began.
When the Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the first Thanksgiving meal, they probably didn’t have any tubs of Cool Whip, cans of gelatinous cranberries or Stove Top stuffing.
A coalition of Whidbey Island citizens, many designating themselves as “chemically sensitive,” gathered at a Island County Board of Commissioners meeting on Monday to demand a stop to the county’s current practice of spraying roadside vegetation with chemical compounds, which they deem harmful to human beings and the island’s ecosystem.
