Mill Creek Beacon - Your Hometown News Source

Even with the coronavirus chaos, there are still a lot of good things happening in Mill Creek. Congratulations to Ethan Thong  The City Council has nominated Ethan Thong of Jackson High School as its representative for the Association of Washington...

Almost 24 hours a day it’s discussed on every major television station. Our friends are constantly talking about it. Even when we are using social distancing, one can overhear others focused on it. What is it? Of course, it’s the novel coronaviru...

I was standing in line this past weekend, watching a symphony of social unease played in a minor queue. There were just a few of us in line, and we were twitchy. I could be projecting. I could have been doing all the twitching by myself. It’s just...

Dear friends, I have been out in the community talking about our upcoming bond vote in April and have discovered there is a lot of confusion about how schools are funded. I would like to take I the opportunity to try and clarify a pretty complicated...

In all probability, it was in Rick Atkinson’s book “Day of Battle” where I read about a G.I. on the front lines during World War II who wrote home discussing the hypocrisy of many of his military leaders. From his foxhole, this grunt wrote...

The word spectacle is derived from the word spectacular. How does one know you are witnessing a spectacle? Easy, first and foremost you should feel a chill or goosebumps. That is your body telling you that you are seeing something special. Something...

In June of 1972, right about the time I was finishing the eighth grade, the grown-ups were all talking about a dirty movie. This was “Deep Throat,” and it was a sign of the times, I’d heard, another indication of a rapid moral decay that matche...

There are plenty of things going on in our city, and here are five that I wanted to highlight and share. Extended hours for passport services City Manager Michael Ciaravino has extended weekend hours at the Mill Creek City Hall passport counter. We...

We are just coming off of celebrating Presidents Day so let’s look back at how this holiday came to be. The 1885 Congress established President George Washington’s Birthday, Feb. 17, as a national holiday. In 1971, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act...

I slipped in and out of the grocery store on Valentine’s Day, getting what I needed quickly and trying not to stare. It’s become an annual adventure, observing the mating rituals of the contemporary American male on the most desperate holiday hum...

OK, I’ll admit it right off the starting mark. I can’t stand the over-blown, over-exposed, over-anticipated ceremony marking the annual pilgrimage of the world’s greatest “stars” to Hollywood. What do they do there? They give themselves...

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” I believe love is an emotional process, which has many levels, and can be directed at many things. It also has the power to decrease one’s ability to reason. If my definition is even close to what...

Dear friends, in September 2018, Everett Public Schools board of directors asked that a community committee be established to determine the scope and size of a capital bond to be considered by district voters. This committee, consisting of over 30...

I said goodbye to two old friends last week, although it was hardly sad, and not really goodbye anyway. A favorite television show ended, for one thing. I watched the finale and appreciated the elegant closure, although I wasn’t sorry. The time...

Since the widespread implementation of the internet, many of the things that have been in our lives for 50 years or longer are undergoing a radical change. Television is one of them. I was a kid when wide-scale nationwide television became a...

Here at the Beacon family of newspapers, we’re grateful for the community’s support. In 1992, when we founded Beacon Publishing in Mukilteo, city officials and others were incredulous that we thought a small town of 8,000 could support a weekly...

What a difference the right city manager can make. Last February, the City’s response to the extreme snow event was anemic at best. It wasn’t all the City’s fault. According to WSDOT, half of its plowing equipment was out of service. Even our...

It’s a little cold, which is as cold as it gets where we live. To be fair, I mean. This region hasn’t seen single-digit temperatures in decades, and it’s not likely to in the future. We live in a relatively mild climate, and the earth appears...

It was all around me, but it was subtle in our household. My mother was an Oklahoman southerner who was raised by a father who “had to be a KKK member if he wanted to stay in business.” My mom’s views were, “individually ‘those people...

Did you know that one out of four students in the Snohomish School District attends school in a portable? Are you aware that portables have no bathrooms? The district currently uses 52 portables for student instruction and 43 of those are for...

Mayor Pete Buttigieg has earned my vote for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States when ballots arrive on Feb. 21. I vote Buttigieg because his vision for a greater future for our youth is interwoven in each of his policy propos...

I’m all for free speech. Everyone has a right to express their opinions in our great country. Including President Donald J. Trump. Your little article [Editor’s note: “Mill Creek woman joins hundreds for impeachment rally” in Dec. 20, 2019...

I am writing about the Snohomish School Bond. I am not typically a guy in favor of raising taxes. In fact, in most cases, I vote against the increase of government spending because I often question the stewardship of the money provided. Eighteen mont...

Three years ago, I thought I was so smart. It was a bad year, that one. Not only did a presidential election roil us in 2016, unleashing spasms of disbelief and nastiness, but we lost a bunch of people along the way. Beginning with the deaths of...

Just in time for a belated Christmas, our new Mill Creek City Manager, Michael Ciaravino, has proposed that our elected officials on city council give him a few late Christmas gifts. Of course, I am just guessing that it’s Ciaravino’s belief...