Walk it through, start to finish — then decide for yourself.
The quotes are damning on their own. But the record only makes full sense read in order — the slow starve, the staff rescue attempt, the one meeting, the pivot to a new business model, and the quiet sell-off. This page walks the whole arc, adding what a deeper six-angle review of all 244 records found: where the money went, what's missing, and who benefits.
How this page works. Most claims carry a pill like more than enough in a broadband account
open the email ↗ — click it and the actual email opens in the Ratepayer Inbox with the quoted passage highlighted. Colored boxes are our analysis of the record; everything inside quotation marks is the record itself, verbatim.
The starving starts — quietly
On this date the District buys customer radios for the wireless network for the last time. Between 2019 and 2022 it purchased 2,178 radios ($550,695). After May 2022, its own order log shows zero. AP replacements fall from a peak of 47 a year (2020) to 3 by 2024. Meanwhile every wireless subscriber's provider keeps paying the $8-per-radio monthly lease — a line that stays on the last rate card ever drafted.
Over the 47 months after the last radio purchase, the lease line collects roughly $1–1.3 million against $0 spent on the radio fleet that fee covers (the range spans the District's two subscriber counts) — the fleet's entire historical cost, repaid about every two years. In June 2025 someone tried to restart purchases: the requisition was authorized at 3:45 PM and returned at 7:19 the next morning. No reason appears in the released record.
Source: Site Client Counts.xls ('SM Orders', 'Replacements' sheets); Requisition 22469 notices — Okanogan PUD public records, Aug 2026 release
The network hits the wall, and everyone says so in writing
A mountain-top access point where one reseller alone has 221 customers hits 100% frame utilization at peak — interference and tower obstruction compounding it — and people start leaving. The District's biggest reseller warns it, in plain words, where this ends.
Staff build the rescue case — and receive the key to the whole thing
A staff analyst writes an email literally titled "The case for wireless": staff estimate the mountain tops alone at $324K a year — half the wireless subscriber base. And in August, a vendor's marketing email lands on the staff list carrying a rule change that mattered enormously:
we are looking at… $324k per yearopen the email ↗
you can prevent someone else from using BEAD dollars to overbuild in your areaopen the email ↗
they are in need of a refresh… we have not kept up on current wireless trendsopen the email ↗
Upgrading was arguably the only available defense against the threat that later killed the project. Under the new BEAD rules, fixed wireless proven at 100/20 Mbps can block BEAD money from overbuilding an area — whether the window was still open is a question no one at the District ever put on paper. The email went to the network team only, as far as the record shows — and no released version of the Tarana presentation contains a single word about BEAD, for or against. The decisive risk was never analyzed in connection with the upgrade, in either direction.
The upgrade becomes real: bought, built, tested, priced
Competing vendor quotes. A $78,362 test order routed to the broadband director for authorization. The District's own network manager reports a first-blush 24-month payback for a flagship site to that same director. The field test peaks at 999 Mbps down in link tests, on a network whose top tier is 20. A $40/250Mbps wholesale rate is drafted into a board resolution. Meanwhile NCI/Core Fiber — the provider staff say won every BEAD zone in the District's footprint, and its second-largest reseller — announces Tarana upgrades across its own towers: the very same technology.
The chorus: everyone downstream says build it
This is the part the letter never mentions. The providers weren't just complaining — they were asking for the go-live date. The District's own engineers had named the new gear as the fix for failing sites. And the customers leaving said, in writing, they'd stay if the District upgraded. Every voice in the record that touches the network — reseller, engineer, ratepayer, even the vendor — says the same word: build. The only voice missing is leadership's.
“How soon do you think this is going to go live for my customers? I'm starting to lose 4-5 customers a month to Starlink and I need to stop the bleed…”
Faster Speeds on Mountain top towersopen the email ↗
Once we get Coleman onto Tarana 6Ghz, these issues should become a thing of the past.open the email ↗
25 radio returns… eagerly awaiting our new wireless gearopen the email ↗
The middle chip is the District's own engineer, February 2026 — Tarana named, in writing, as the fix for a failing mountain-top site. The third is PUD staff's own log of a provider's call, April 1 — the day the project died upstairs.
Twenty-three days from "load up the gear" to frozen time
March 3: the General Manager, in writing, is delighted. March 26, 8:00 AM: the engineer presents the costs — $275K for a dense site; ~$1.1–1.2M for all seven, at a 3.5-year payback — to the GM and a director, per the weekly report. It is the only executive presentation in the record, and it leaves no minutes, no notes, no written decision anywhere in the release. We know what happened in that room from one source only: the engineer, describing it to a vendor.
A decision memo, an analysis, minutes of the meeting, or one written sentence of executive reasoning — anywhere. Found: 0 of 244 records. Staff's own plan had been different: "The approval will have to come from the Board." The presentation stopped one floor short. No commissioner is individually named or copied anywhere in the release — and none appears in connection with the wireless decision.
“When we delivered the stats of 275k for one of our denser sites and a 3.5 year ROI, you'd think we froze time or something.”
The audience: General Manager Randy Bird and Director Jeri Timm. No minutes, notes, or written decision from that room appear anywhere in the record.
The kill — with the money admission attached
The stop order comes down verbally. By the next afternoon the engineer has written the sentence that settles the affordability question, and floated where the brand-new hardware will go. By the following week's report the project is not just dead — it's erased.
We were given the bad news today… stop any wireless upgradesopen the email ↗
we technically have more than enough in a broadband account to cover this… a hard NOopen the email ↗
The window to stay relevant it closing rapidly.open the email ↗
Our general manager has made the decision… I have been directed to move onto other projects.open the email ↗
The only customer-loss figure attached to the decision anywhere in the record — "losing 10-15 customers per week," which exists only in staff's relays to vendors — is contradicted by the District's own tracking sheet: 6.7 per week, net, year-over-year, all causes, all seven resellers (6.0 in the window ending at the decision). The one double-digit stretch was 76% NCI alone — consistent, per staff's own emails, with the BEAD awardee migrating its retail base as it announced its own Tarana network. The panic number was the competitor's business plan wearing Starlink's jersey.
Broadband Status Updates · week of April 6, 2026 · ongoing projects
Tarana
**PROJECT CANCELLED AND WILL BE OMITTED FROM FUTURE UPDATES**
The same report's heading for what remained: “Cambium spectral optimization AKA ‘Life support’”
The pivot: from competing with the overbuilder to supplying it
Two weeks after the stop order, the weekly reports reveal the new business model. NCI — the company whose overbuild was the stated reason to kill wireless — is asking to buy backhaul upgrades at the District's own tower locations. That projected revenue goes into the business case for a $718K 400-gig backbone… at a 46-month ROI. The board votes it +$435K three weeks after wireless died at 42 months.
The same spring, a draft rate resolution cuts carrier Ethernet prices roughly in half — $33,312/month (~$400K a year) of voluntary revenue reduction. Computed from the District's own workbook, the top two beneficiaries: NoaNet (69.5%) — of which the PUD is a member, its staff delivering “OKPUD member updates” at NoaNet board meetings — and NCI/Core Fiber (14.4%). The wireless providers, meanwhile, were told the District is "required to set rates strictly to recover the full cost," and wireless was ranked Priority 5 — last — for service response. Not corruption; priorities. But the beneficiaries of the priorities are the overbuilders.
Sources: Broadband Status Updates (weeks of 03/23 & 04/13/2026); WDM and Other CustomerServices workbook; Resolution drafts Proposed-X/Y — Okanogan PUD public records, Aug 2026 release
The letter: a month-old decision, dressed as an update
Three executives meet to discuss "what messaging needs to go out." The GM's entire recorded review is four words. The letter is dated for the day of the board meeting — sent after the discussion; no vote appears anywhere in the release — and by the morning it goes out, "Tarana Surplus" is already a line item in the weekly report.
“Looks good to me..”
Staff instruction in the same thread: the letter “is dated for the day of the Board meeting, because it will be sent out after that discussion.” The board discussed. No vote appears in any released record.
The fire sale — and two numbers that match to the dollar
The working hardware is queued for auction at a recommended $75,000, no reserve — below its $78,373 cost — and listed June 23; the authorization's only trace in the record is a phone call. The same week, a provider writes that he was told "the board turn[ed] down what was purposed" — a board vote of which the record shows no trace — and the email goes to four executives plus the General Counsel, whose entire recorded response is one word: "FYI."
Per phone call with Randy I'll get this listed.open the email ↗
Suggest $75,000, no reserveopen the email ↗
the board turning down what was purposed…open the email ↗
back and fourth… I really can't speak as to where we'll end upopen the email ↗
The "about 700k in backbone switch hardware to replace" caution? On June 25 — two days after the Tarana auction opened — a state Public Works Board grant was announced for exactly $717,900: to the dollar, the 400G backbone's stated cost. The burden cited as the reason for caution was board-funded in April and apparently externally funded by June. The wireless decision was never revisited. (The grant's precise scope is the top item on the records-request list.)
Any written authorization for the disposal. The staffer who listed the gear is the same one who, in a 2024 grant filing, had quoted RCW 54.16.180 and the District’s bond covenants to a state grantor, to show that disposing of system property is tightly restricted. (To be fair to the record: the statute’s voter-approval rule covers selling the system, and the covenants come “with exceptions” — largely new-in-box test gear is likely ordinary surplus.) That is exactly why the gap matters: at a District that tells grantors disposal is serious business, this disposal ran on a phone call and an auction rule that was, in her own words, “internally decided.” Board resolution or written directive: none found.
The exit — the prophecy fulfilled
In April, Tarana's own sales director had warned the District not to "wait for BEAD funded networks to come in and take them from you." On July 21 the engineer who built, tested, and fought for the upgrade announces his last day: Thursday, July 23. Four days after walking out — by his own public announcement — he starts at Core Fiber, the BEAD winner, as Construction Project Manager. The night before his last day, a mountain-top access point failed in the summer heat.
my last day with Okanogan County PUD will be Thursday, July 23, 2026open the email ↗
I believe heat is playing a role in the instability of the AP.open the email ↗
…or wait for BEAD funded networks to come in and take them from you.open the email ↗
And the demand never went away. Two weeks before the engineer left, a rural customer cancelling his service wrote — through his provider — the sentence that answers the letter's entire subscriber-enrollment theory:
“I find no fault with your company, but with the current equipment PUD has… When and if PUD ever upgrades their end, I will be happy to reevaluate options.”
The competitor now holds the federal money, the technology, a seat among the District's backhaul customers — whose upgrades the District's own 46-month backbone payback counts on — and the engineer the ratepayers trained.
“…if the community makes enough noise on this, there is a small chance we may get the nod to at least research alternatives.”
The path forward, named by the District's own staff. Which brings us to what the public can do with everything above.
Read in order, it stops looking like caution.
A network was starved for four years while its lease fees kept flowing. Its rescue was built, tested, and priced by staff — then killed after a single presentation, by a decision that left no written record, on a churn number the District's own spreadsheet contradicts, while the answer to the stated threat sat unused on a staff mailing list, never reaching an executive deck. The money moved to a backbone whose payback counts revenue from the overbuilder itself; the gear went to auction before the decision was settled, on a phone call; and the expert left for the winner. Every link above opens the District's own words.
Seven questions the District has yet to answer — at a board meeting, in a records request, or in print:
- Where is the written decision — any memo, analysis, or minutes — for ending wireless investment?
- Why was a provider told the board turned it down, when no vote appears in any record — and why did no one correct it?
- Under what written authority — policy, resolution, or delegation — was $78,373 of public hardware sent to auction on a phone call?
- Why did a 3.5-year wireless payback die while a 46-month backbone payback passed the same month?
- The rationale relayed to vendors cited 10–15 losses a week; the District's own sheet says 6.7 — half of it the BEAD winner moving customers to its own network. Which number did the decision rest on?
- Staff had a vendor's written notice that proven 100/20 coverage blocks BEAD overbuild. Was that ever evaluated?
- What exactly does the $717,900 PWB grant fund?