Partnership proves mutually beneficial
For several years the Town of La Conner and Western Washington University have partnered on a textbook summer internship program.
Students from the Bellingham campus have engaged in three projects benefiting the town planning department, providing those WWU interns with real-world job experience while reducing the workload at Town Hall.
“I’m excited that they’ve gotten the chance to undertake these projects,” said Town Planning Director Ajah Eills. “It’s nice that we can benefit from the contributions of these students.”
The WWU students have helped update archived Town property files, assisted with records retention, and begun crafting a commercial land-use capacity analysis, Ellis said.
Ash Reichenbach, a third-year urban planning major, took on the task of organizing and scanning the town’s planning records.
“Over time,” Reichenbach said, “the planning department at Town Hall has accumulated hundreds of planning documents. They had historic plat maps showing the original additions to the town, blueprints from the wastewater treatment plant, comprehensive plans from the 1970s, and much, much more.”
Eills confirmed that Reichenbach took on a lengthy to-do list.
“It required a lot of work,” said Eills, whose promotion to Town Planner upon the retirement of her predecessor, Michael Davolio, occurred as the WWU interns were just hitting their stride.
Reichenbach, whose La Conner assignment was from June through August, worked alongside fellow intern Jack Bengston, whose focus was updating property files and assessing commercial space in town.
“It’s cool to know that these documents are now widely accessible for future planning work.”
Ash Reichenbach,Western Washington University intern
Reichenbach enjoyed delving into La Conner’s history.
“From what I saw,” said Reichenbach, who grew up in Seattle, “La Conner has done a great job of preserving its historical charm and I greatly appreciate how welcoming the Town Hall staff were in letting me sift through their archives room all day.”
Reichenbach also found the work challenging.
“There was some really interesting and valuable history about the town,” Reichenbach reflected, “but since they (the planning documents) weren’t organized or easy to sort through, they were mostly collecting dust. I was able to categorize the records according to the Washington State Records Retention Schedules. I then took the most important ones up to WWU where I scanned them on a map scanner so that the town can now access them digitally.
“It’s cool to know,” Reichenbach continued, “that these documents are now widely accessible for future planning work.”
There is ample precedent for Western interns having a significant impact on La Conner.
Three years ago, it was a WWU intern, Hunter Tautvydas, who developed the 30-page La Conner Citizens Handbook for Local Government.
Tautvydas, who was a political science major at Western and whose father, Keith Hunter, is a long serving La Conner Elementary teacher, has since returned here as a La Conner High boys’ assistant soccer coach.
Tautvydas has credited Town Administrator Scott Thomas and Town Council member MaryLee Chamberlain with championing his 2022 internship project, which can be accessed on the Town Council’s webpage.
Reichenbach maintains there are yet more intern opportunities for WWU at Town Hall.
“There are a lot of projects that planning interns could help with for La Conner,” said Reichenbach. “My project was just one piece of the overall work that could be done and, even then, there’s more documents that could be archived.”
Like Tautvydas, Reichenbach most likely will be back in La Conner — quite often, in fact.
“I have family who have recently moved to the town,” Reichenbach said, “so it was great to get involved in the planning sector for such a nice community. It’s been great working as an intern for the La Conner community.”
Bill Reynolds is a general assignment reporter who covers Town government, schools, and spot news.
