367
homes & businesses to be passed (the state award's own figure)
Background · The Conconully project
Fiber to Conconully: what it is, and why the District is building it.
One fiber project comes up again and again in this debate, so here it is in plain terms — the numbers, the money, the town, and the reasons. Up front: we support this build. Conconully is a small, isolated community with a real need, and bringing it a permanent connection is exactly the kind of thing a public utility should do. Laying it out honestly only makes our actual question clearer.
By the numbers
A ~$4.3 million fiber build for one small town.
The project runs about 22 miles of new middle-mile fiber from the PUD's network out to Conconully, then last-mile fiber to the homes and businesses there. The total cost is about $4.3 million in state and county funding (broken down below).
~$4.3M
total project cost (state + county funding)
~22 mi
of new middle-mile fiber from the PUD network to the town
2026–27
anticipated construction window
How it's paid for
Mostly a loan and state grant — not a free gift.
The funding came together because the project was small enough to finance by stacking a state loan, a state grant, and county money. Importantly, the largest piece is a repayable loan — the District (and its ratepayers) carry it.
$2.66M — WA Public Works Board loan (repayable) $1.14M — WA Public Works Board grant $0.5M — Okanogan County ARPA
So of the ~$4.3 million, only about $1.6 million is grant or county money the District never had to repay; the rest is a state loan it pays back over time. That's worth understanding for two reasons. First, it's the opposite of "a town getting free fiber" — the public utility is taking on debt to make it happen. Second, this money came from the Washington Public Works Board and county ARPA — it was not available to spend on anything else, and it has nothing to do with the federal BEAD grant some confuse it with. (The lost $19.7M BEAD award was for the Methow Valley, a separate project.)
Why this matters to the bigger question. The Conconully loan is a future obligation on the same telecom operation that runs the wireless network. It shows the District can mobilize real money for a rural broadband gap when it decides to. Our question is simply why the much smaller, self-funded wireless upgrade hasn't gotten the same green light. See the priorities question →
The town itself
A 190-person former mining town in a wildfire canyon — not a wealthy enclave.
It's worth being precise about Conconully, because it's easy to get wrong. It is a tiny incorporated town of about 190 people, tucked in a narrow forested canyon at 2,300 feet — a former 1880s gold-mining camp and the original Okanogan County seat (the seat later moved down to Okanogan), now a small lake-and-fishing village.
By income it sits at or below the county average, not above it. The town's per-capita income is roughly county-level; the exact 2000 Census long form put its median household income at about $23,000 with poverty near 19%, and more recent small-sample estimates run higher but with margins of error so wide they aren't reliable for a place this small. The point: Conconully is a modest-income community, not a rich one. If you've seen this project described as "fiber for a higher-income area," that comes from reading a large rural census tract as if it were the town — it isn't.
Why the District chose it
Four honest reasons it made sense.
Putting the record together — the state award, the county's own broadband planning, and what the Board has said publicly — the case for building Conconully is straightforward and, in our view, sound.
It's genuinely unserved
Fiber availability in the area is near zero, with average speeds around 11 Mbps and a large share of homes counted as unserved — which is what made it eligible for state broadband funding in the first place.
Real context: fire-exposed, poor cell
The canyon has weak cell coverage and one main road out, with a repeated wildfire-evacuation history — 2015 (Okanogan Complex), 2021 (Muckamuck), and 2024 (Salmon Creek) — so a permanent connection there has real value. This is our observation, though — not a reason the District put on the record (see the footnote below).
It penciled — it was fundable
Because it's a short extension of the District's existing fiber and small in scale, it was one of the few rural fiber builds that could actually be financed — by stacking a state loan, a state grant, and county ARPA. Most of the dispersed county can't be reached that way (here's why).
It serves the whole corridor
It isn't only the town center. As the Board's vice-president put it, “We're going to get to Conconully and all the people along the road” — the 22-mile run passes rural homes the whole way out.
One honest footnote — and a real gap in the record. The District has not published a detailed rationale for choosing Conconully, and we could not find a safety justification anywhere in the funding approval, the board materials, or the June 22 discussion. The board minutes that authorized the grant agreement (Aug 12, 2024) record it as a single procedural sentence with no stated reason. The records point to the mundane-but-legitimate driver: grant money was available. In January 2024 the District applied for a larger ~$11.6 million three-town fiber bid — Twisp, Pateros, and Conconully — and the state funded the one piece that penciled: Conconully (the others remain unbuilt). The county's own 2020 study actually ranked Conconully low (16th of 18) and flagged it as a possible skip — so this wasn't a long-planned priority; it was a fundable opportunity the District acted on. If anyone can point us to a board record stating a different reason, we'll add it.
Where we stand
We support Conconully. We're asking the District to fund the wireless upgrade too.
None of this is an argument against Conconully. It's a worthwhile build for a community that needs it, and we're glad it's happening. We lay it out because it answers a question people keep asking — and because it sharpens ours.
The District found the will and the money to take on a ~$4.3 million fiber project, much of it debt, to reach 367 homes. In the very same period it set aside a ~$1.2 million wireless upgrade — one that would modernize the network serving ~2,700 households across the same rural, fire-prone county, and one that's affordable from the network's own surplus — leaving it out of the 2026 budget. Both are worth doing. At its June 22 meeting the discussion surfaced the same concern we have about losing the local network, and the Board agreed to take the wireless up in a workshop.
So our ask is simple and friendly: follow through on that workshop, and fund the wireless upgrade too.
The meeting
What happened June 22
The providers' case, the discussion, and the workshop agreement — watch the recording.
Watch & read →The context
Why fiber is hard here
What it costs to build fiber across Okanogan's terrain — and why most of the county can't get it.
See the math →The question
The priorities question
A self-funded upgrade for 2,700, set aside as "not budgeted." Why?
Read the case → Sources
Where these facts come from.
Funding, mileage & homes: Washington State Dept. of Commerce / Public Works Board broadband award announcement (May 2024) — Conconully FTTx, $3.8M ($2.66M loan + $1.14M grant), ~22 miles, 367 end users; Okanogan County ARPA allocation of $0.5M (Quad City Herald / Wenatchee Business Journal). Construction window: Okanogan PUD's Conconully fiber sign-up page (2026–2027).
The District's description & the workshop: Okanogan County PUD board meeting, June 22, 2026 (full recording).
The town: U.S. Census Bureau (Conconully town — 2000 long-form figures are exact; recent ACS estimates carry very large margins of error for a town this small); general history via public records.
Wildfire history: 2015 Okanogan Complex (HistoryLink / contemporaneous reporting); 2021 Muckamuck Fire; 2024 Salmon Creek Fire (local news).
Feasibility ranking: Okanogan County / CCT Broadband Strategic Plan (Dec 2020), service-area prioritization. BEAD clarification: the separate $19.7M BEAD loss was the Methow Valley (Methow Valley News, 2026), not Conconully.
Confidence notes: funding, mileage, and the 367-home figure are firm (state award documents). Cell-coverage is characterized from terrain and local knowledge rather than a carrier statement. Current town-level income estimates are imprecise due to the small population, so we lean on the exact 2000 figures and a per-capita comparison.