If one of two packages of, say, frozen edamame on the supermarket shelf says “partially-produced with genetic engineering,” which of those packages would you buy?
Responding to the 2012 voter-approved charter amendments that reduced the size of the County Council from six members to three, the former six-member council proposed Proposition 1 for a voter decision on the 2013 election ballot.
Disagreement over strategies for deployment of broadband has prompted another resignation from the local power and light cooperative’s board of directors.
If you think that the critical areas ordinances took too long — seven or 10 years, depending on whose calendar you look at— more opportunity for outrage loom in the future.
Three marijuana retail stores will be permitted in San Juan County, one each on Orcas, San Juan and Lopez islands, under regulations proposed Sept. 4 by the Washington State Liquor Control Board to implement Initiative 502, which legalizes marijuana production, processing and retailing.
Commissioner Mike Ahrenius opined that even though the downstairs is not destroyed, “the property probably can’t be used” until the building is either rebuilt or replaced. The town has informed the Port that the downstairs cannot be occupied for the foreseeable future, if ever.
At a meeting on Aug. 29 in Mount Vernon, commissioners of the public hospital district governing Island Hospital, which operates the Orcas Medical Center in Eastsound, voted not to join Skagit Regional Health hospital and Cascade Valley Hospital in signing a “letter of intent” to affiliate with the PeaceHealth hospital system, which operates hospitals and clinics in Bellingham and Friday Harbor.
Local public hospital districts that provide reproductive services or information must also offer access to contraceptive and abortion services and information consistent with the “fundamental rights” to birth control and abortion guaranteed by Initiative 120, according to a legal opinion issued Aug. 21 by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
On July 30, Philip Green, Robin Hirsch and Chuck Schietinger were appointed to MRC positions 2, 1 and 4, respectively. The appointments were made without notice or prior naming of the candidates during the final agenda time, titled “County Manager Clerk Updates.” Other appointments, including three to the Veterans Advisory Board and one to the Agricultural Resources Committee, were on the agenda with names of the appointees.
In the first of what may become many legal battles about the Gateway Pacific Terminals Cherry Point coal port proposal, RE-Sources for Sustainable Communities settled in U.S. District Court its lawsuit claiming that Pacific International Terminals illegally cleared, bulldozed, drilled and filled 1.2 acres at the site of the proposed coal port.
The unappetizing red foam seen floating on the surface of inshore marine waters in San Juan County is not related to the organism that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning.
One year to the day after the Pacific Legal Foundation petitioned the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on behalf of a group of California farmers to remove Endangered Species Act protection from local resident killer whales, NOAA rejected the delisting petition.
Lopez voters will be asked to approve a .13 percent increase in the local property tax to partially fund operations of the Lopez dump in 2014, a proposition that will be on the November 2013, general election ballot.
