Numerous utilities projects planned for 2024

The Wahkiakum PUD Board of Commissioners spent most of the morning going over the proposed budget for 2024 before attending to reports and adoption of a resolution regarding the district’s policy for capital assets.

Revenue for the proposed $8,471,027 budget includes $186,100 in interest income, $333,700 from advance for upcoming construction, and six grants ranging from $50,000 for a feasibility study to a $435,000 grant/loan for a Puget Island Water Service looping project.

Miscellaneous income totals $208,600 and comes from things like pole attachments, conservation dollars, no cost allowances, low carbon fuel standard credits, and FEMA dollars, auditor Erin Wilson said.

“We have a lot of projects coming up next year,” she said.

This includes more tree trimming, a long hoped-for replacement of a small bucket truck that has been slowed by supply issues, office building security updates, meeting room updates, a Clean Energy Transformation Act study, mapping PUD systems, pipe replacement in the Western Wahkiakum Water System, a 4,000 foot mainline project for the WWWS, a mainline project for the Skamokawa Water System, and more.

“We put $330,000 in there based on an engineer’s estimate to drill a well on Puget Island,” Wilson said. “Dan [Kay] and I are really trying to find funding for that. So before we go out and hire someone to drill a well, we are going exhaust everything trying to get money to do that. We’ve had a lot of really good conversations with a number of organizations in the last week. I think we are going to do well on that.”

There are no rate increases built in the budget, Wilson told the commissioners.

A budget hearing will be scheduled for November.

“It wasn’t so long ago we were worried about our reserves being so low, but now we are doing good,” Commissioner Dennis Reid said.

General Manager Dan Kay said that recent outages were vegetation related, but none of them occurred in areas cleared by the contractor hired by the PUD to do tree trimming.

He talked about ongoing water and electric projects, and what the PUD is learning in their continued search to find funding for projects around the county.