PORT ANGELES — City Hall has spent nearly $15,000 over the past seven years for Internet service in a building devoid of computers.
Since January 2003, the city of Port Angeles has paid a monthly charge to connect the Museum at the Carnegie at 207 S. Lincoln St. with what was then the new fiber-optic network, which provides high-speed Internet and connects the computers at 22-plus city-owned facilities.
The museum has never hosted a single computer, and yet the city has been on the hook for the $172 per month payment to Capacity Provisioning Inc. to have the building connected to the network.
The payments will continue until the contract expires this September. The city will pay an additional $1,032 to have the network connected to the museum by then.
City Council member Cherie Kidd voiced concern over the charge at the council’s Tuesday meeting after noticing it on the city’s monthly list of expenditures.
“I kind of did a double-take today because I’ve been in the Carnegie many times and there is no computer in the Museum at the Carnegie since I’ve been,” said Kidd, who is a board member of the Clallam County Historical Society, which runs the museum in the city-owned building at 207 S. Lincoln St.
No other council members commented on the monthly payment at the meeting.
Kathy Monds, historical society executive director, told the Peninsula Daily News that the city never mentioned the network to the organization, which has operated the museum since October 2004.
“I had no idea that we had it,” she said.
Monds said it would be up to the board to decide if the organization would have a use for the network.
City Engineer Steve Sperr told Kidd on Tuesday that the City Council anticipated before the contract was signed in September 2002 that the building might need to be connected to the network in the future, which was why it was included in the contract, but it wasn’t fully explained why it remained unused at that location.
Sperr told the council that although the network is available at the location, “it just never has been enjoyed or connected to any computers.”
Sperr — who is the top Public Works staff member while Director Glenn Cutler is out of the office — and City Manager Kent Myers couldn’t be reached for further comment Wednesday.
City Deputy Power Systems Director Larry Dunbar said he didn’t know why the museum had not been connected.
‘Availability fee’
Myers referred to the monthly payment at the council meeting as an “availability fee,” which he said is not uncommon.
He said the city can’t recoup those expenses since it was agreed to in the contract.
Myers added that the city can’t get out of that arrangement until the contract expires and is renegotiated.
He also said he could not comment on whether the museum will remain a facility connected to the network in the new contract, because negotiations have not been completed.
The contract was originally to expire in 2009, but the City Council extended it by a year to allow other companies to submit bids.
Dunbar said the city’s Utility Advisory Committee will review bids at its Tuesday meeting. He said he couldn’t comment on whether anyone is seeking the contract other than CPI.
The city spent $5,679 in February to CPI for the network, Dunbar said.
That includes a $500 monthly charge for Internet; the rest is for using the high-speed 100 megabit per second fiber line that allows city employees at offices across Port Angeles to access the same documents nearly instantly, he said.
CPI also provides fiber networks to Clallam County government, Port Angeles School District, Olympic Medical Center, Peninsula College, and several businesses, including the PDN, said company partner Craig Johnson.
CPI charges the city for each facility that is on its network, typically at $172 per month. Certain utilities pay more, such as light operations, which pays $485 per month.
Clallam County Information Technology Director Dan Flynn said the county pays $220 per month for most of its facilities. It pays a total of $1,873 per month to CPI.
Johnson said the city gets a break for having more facilities on its network.
Dunbar said the city pays much less for its network with CPI than other companies outside of the North Olympic Peninsula charge their customers, but this could not be immediately verified.
“This is an extremely competitively-priced service,” he said. “When we signed this contract several years ago, and we surveyed what they pay in other areas, the average was we were paying a tenth of the expected cost.”
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
