PORT ANGELES — City staff members are recommending that Capacity Provisioning Inc. get another seven-year contract to provide its fiber-optic network.
The Port Angeles company is offering City Hall a 10 percent reduction in monthly connection charges and beats a competing proposal from Wave Broadband, according to a city staff memo in the Utility Advisory Committee’s agenda packet released Friday.
Port Angeles city staff members are recommending that the City Council approve the contract, which will be discussed at the advisory committee’s Tuesday meeting. The contract is scheduled to come before the council March 18.
Details on the proposal from Wave Broadband, which is based in Seattle but has a Port Angeles office, weren’t immediately available.
Staff reviewed both proposals last month and negotiated a draft contract with CPI.
Exceptionally affordable
Staff members recently have said that CPI’s current contract, which expires in September, was already exceptionally affordable.
A cost assessment provided to the city by its consultant, Columbia Telecommunications Corp., lists comparable services through Qwest costing about 10 times more in Seattle and Tacoma, according to the memo.
The memo lists Qwest as charging $1,775 per month per connection for a 100-megabit-per-second network per month while most connections in the city’s current contract cost $172 per month.
Certain connections for city utilities pay less or more, such as light operations, which pays $485 per month.
The network provides high-speed Internet access and connects computers at city-owned facilities at a speed of 100 Mbps, which allows large documents to be accessed nearly instantly by city employees at any office, according to city staff and CPI.
The 100-Mbps rate is also used for videoconferencing, utility and sewage overflow monitoring, surveillance and radio communications, according to the city.
The city pays a charge for each of its 35 network connections. Last month, its total bill was $5,679.
Connections include city buildings and other facilities, such as individual pump stations.
One connection was questioned at the Tuesday City Council meeting when Council member Cherie Kidd asked why the city is paying for the Museum at the Carnegie to be connected when the building doesn’t have a computer.
The building was included in the original 2002 contract because it was unknown how the building would be used after it was renovated, according to city staff.
The Clallam County Historical Society, which has operated the museum from the building since October 2004, was unaware of the connection until last week.
Craig Johnson, CPI partner, said not having the building connected to the network would have reduced the city’s total monthly bill to CPI.
But he said on Saturday that he couldn’t say if it would merely reduce the bill by $172, which is the monthly charge for that city-owned building to be connected to the network, because the city was given a discount based on how many connections were included in the contract.
The city has paid $14,792 for that connection since the network went live in January 2003.
Competitive environment
Johnson said CPI offered the city a 10 percent reduction in connection charges because it knew it was facing competition.
“It’s competitive out there . . . it’s just what we felt,” he said. “You just never know when you do a bid where everyone else is going to be.”
Based on the city’s monthly payment for February, it would pay about $5,111 per month, including taxes, for the connections under the proposed contract. Johnson said CPI can charge less than other companies like Qwest because its three partners — Bob Jensen, Bill Roberds — and himself, do a lot of the nonmanagement work themselves.
That includes placing the fiber wires on city-owned utility poles.
“When I say ourselves, I mean, literally, we worked for a solid year after work and weekends, kept regular jobs, went out on the trucks and we were just busting our butts,” he said.
Johnson said the city didn’t give the company any financial breaks with installing the fiber network. He said it pays the same rate as any other company to use the poles.
“There’s no favoritism there,” he said.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
