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Save Local BroadbandOkanogan County, WA
Documents & Sources

Don't take our word for it. Read the records.

Everything on this site is built from primary records — most of them obtained from the Okanogan PUD by public-records request. They're all here to download, so anyone can check the math.

The decision & the wireless-upgrade plan

The PUD's May 4 letter, and the District's own Tarana 6 GHz upgrade cost workbooks and presentation — the records behind the District's stated ~$1.2 million cost to complete the upgrade.

"NO SMs" = tower hardware only; "With SMs" = plus customer radios. The District has stated the upgrade would cost ~$1.2M; these workbooks document the equipment — ~$0.79M (planned take) to ~$1.06M (every customer); the District's full ~$1.2M figure adds the usual soft costs (labor, tax, install, contingency). See The Case.

The revenue evidence

The District's monthly telecom billing reports (Jan 2021 – May 2026), and the spreadsheets where we computed the wireless-vs-fiber split. This is the source behind "wireless ≈ ⅓ of telecom revenue."

Includes recovery_model.py — the cost-recovery analysis behind "Does it pay for itself?". It's a per-customer cash-flow model scoped to exactly what the ~$1.2M buys (seven tower sites serving 878 customers, per the District's own Tarana workbooks), with a fixed random seed so anyone can reproduce the result, change the assumptions, and check the math. The one input the District has never published — the wireless-specific operating margin — is shown as a range, not asserted.

Budgets & audited financials

The District's wholesale-telecom budgets and the Board's adopted annual budget resolutions. The audited telecom-segment figures come from the Washington State Auditor's report, linked below.

The county's own broadband plans

The two broadband planning documents prepared for the Okanogan County / Colville Confederated Tribes Broadband Action Team — the documents critics point to. The December 2020 Strategic Plan is a grant plan scoped to a new fiber buildout, and its own headcount records ~2,500 wireless connections vs. ~450 on fiber. The newer June 2023 Digital Equity Action Plan centers affordability and the rural digital divide, and flags the "high cost of construction of fiber networks in low population density areas." Read together, both point the same way we do — we work through them on the critics page.

The board's decision trail

The District's own meeting records — where the wireless pause, the backbone purchase, and the grant rescission were taken up. The PUD posts these; we link them so the timeline checks out. (June 2026 minutes weren't posted yet at last check — agendas and the meeting video are linked in the meantime.)

The grant record — won, lost & walked away from

The federal and state broadband awards across the county, and the records behind each. The full picture, with status, is on What's at Stake.

The data sources — check every number

The figures on the Ratepayer and What's at Stake pages come from these public datasets and peer-reviewed studies. Each is named on the page; here they are in one place.

What we're not publishing. A retail provider's customer list (names and addresses) was used only to study fiber-vs-wireless adoption by area; it is withheld for privacy. The map on the Income & Equity page shows only approximate, offset "served-area" points — never identifiable households.

These are public records provided by Public Utility District No. 1 of Okanogan County in response to a public-records request, reproduced here for public review. This is an independent community site, not affiliated with the PUD.