No permitting on Tokeland project yet

The PUD met last week met on Tuesday, November 4, where PUD Manager Doug Miller presented the 2015 PUD budget, which came out to be just shy of 40.5 million for the Electric Department. The 2015 budget for the Bay Center Water Department is $83,170. The 2015 Lebam water budget came out to $25,850. The 2015 Wilson Point Water budget came out to $18,950.

PUD Manager Doug Miller then briefed the attendants of the meeting about the current court case that they are in regarding pole attachment fee's with some of the PUD's customers: "Just one comment, yesterday was the deadline for any of the parties in the pole attachment lawsuit to file a motion to consider at the appeals court, and we did not file but the companies, all three, did. Century link filed separate from Comcast and charter so there were two documents filed. In century link there were a couple issues that they're objecting to, in the Comcast-charter there were four major items," said Miller. "Within two weeks they had to file at the appeals court if they had a problem with what they said, and so now they've done that. If they didn't do that and they wanted to go directly to the state supreme court they would've had to have done that by the fourteenth of this month. But now since they've filed in the appeals court, then the appeals court will consider that. Depending on what comes out of that, assuming that they'll say "no, we did what we did", then there will be a new calendar of filing with the state supreme court and that would be another thirty days past that and then they either have the option of going back to the superior court or filing at the supreme court if they feel they will do better there."

After the brief on the court case, Commissioner Hatfield had a comment on the budget presentation: "I would just like to thank staff and our manager for an excellent budget presentation. This is my 49th presentation I've sat through, and I think they improve every year, so thank all of you," said Hatfield.

It was time for items from the public at the end of the meeting, where Dick Anderson stood up for some of his own inquiries: "Would you enlighten us a little bit about that, what came of the appeals at the court decision, it sounded like the PUD had to file all of this. We spent how much on attorney fee's, a million, is that what it said?"

Miller replied saying that at the present time, the companies that the PUD are locked in a court case with owe them their cost for attorney fee's, and then they also owe interest. Once the business about the court case was settled, Anderson inquired about the permitting pertaining to the Tokeland project. Miller replied saying that they hadn't begun permitting yet, after which the meeting was concluded.

The next PUD meeting will be held on December 2, at 1 pm in the conference room at the PUD in Raymond.