Commissioners In Favor of Switch to REA

DAYTON - Columbia County Commissioners nearly settled the question of which power company to use for its two main facilities in Dayton during the regular board meeting last week.

For nearly a year the governing body has been considering a switch from Pacific Power & Light, which currently provides utilities to the Columbia County Courthouse and the Columbia County Public Works building, to Columbia Rural Electric Association.

The commissioners have argued that the change would not only save the county money but also cut back on the number of power outages the facilities have experienced lately.

The board voted unanimously in favor of switching to CREA last Wednesday, but the decision was later withdrawn. The board will make its final decision during a special meeting at 10 a.m. on Dec. 31.

Commissioner Chuck Reeves, who made the motion to vote in favor of the switch last week, asked the board to rescind its decision at the end of the day's meeting after realizing that Pacific Power's Regional Community Manager Bill Clemens had been unintentionally left off the invited guest list for the meeting.

"I'm not going to change my mind," Reeves said in an interview with The Times on Sunday. "But I felt this was the right thing to do. We had told Clemens we would inform him when our next meeting on this issue was going to be, so I thought we should follow through on that."

Dan Andrews, of Columbia REA, was present at the meeting. Both Reeves and Mike Talbot voted in favor or rescinding the decision. Dwight Robanske voted against.

Reeves, who is retiring at the end of this year, said on Sunday that the county has been considering this change in electricity providers for quite some time. The county has used Pacific Power for over 100 years, according to information provided by Clemens at the last meeting to discuss the change.

"We've sat on the issue, and sat on it," Reeves said. "Then I thought, 'You know. This really needs to get done.'"

Reeves was especially concerned following a power outage on Saturday, Dec. 6, when the county facilities were without power for approximately four hours. If it had been a weekday, Reeves said, it would have been a real problem for the county.

Columbia REA installed an underground power line in 2011 to serve its downtown Dayton office; that line runs adjacent to both county facilities. The commissioners believe this underground line would provide more reliable service to the county's facilities.

In addition, an analysis prepared by county Public Works Director Drew Woods has shown that if power usage at the Columbia County Courthouse had been billed at Columbia REA's rates from 2010 through 2014, the county would have saved more than $21,500, or an average of about $350 per month. That shows a potential cost savings of approximately 19 percent.