Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now.
I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA's news director.
Our guest on this episode is Todd Simmons, general manager of Oregon's Tillamook PUD.
Todd, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Todd Simmons
Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.
Paul Ciampoli
So Todd, for listeners who may not be familiar with the PUD, could you provide an overview of the utility, including a description of its customer base?
Todd Simmons
So Tillamook People's Utility District, in Oregon we call them People's Utility District, is on the north coast of Oregon.
We're about 1,250 square miles of service territory, but only about 23,000 customers. So we have more poles than customers.
And we've got a mix of dairy farms which make up the Tillamook Creamery.
Perhaps you've heard of Tillamook cheese and ice cream. That's here in our service territory.
We also have a few lumber mills and then fishing industry. But about 50% of our homes are second homes, so big tourism as well.
So sometimes that's a little bit of a challenge on how to set up rate structures and things like that to account for the diversity that we have in our area.
Lots of mountains, lots of coastlines with cliffs, beaches, etc.
So beautiful area, five different rivers come through our service territory and then into the ocean.
Paul Ciampoli
And in reference to second homes, has that been a long-term characteristic in terms of customers?
Todd Simmons
It's a combination of folks that have a couple of homes here.
Maybe they have something in a mountain or a valley and then something right there on the beach.
Or it could be people in Seattle and Portland and Eugene and even California that have beach homes. Some of those homes end up being just vacation homes, used sparingly, but others are vacation rentals.
And so we've got a big tourism industry here.
Paul Ciampoli
So Todd, one of the things that made me think of inviting you onto the podcast as a guest is recent news that we actually covered in our newsletter. And that's the fact that Tillamook was included among organizations recently recognized by The Oregonian for a 2026 Top Workplaces Award.
So I want to give you the opportunity to tell our listeners about the steps that the PUD has taken to earn this recognition.
Todd Simmons
We're real honored and proud to be recognized again.
This is an award that comes out annually and it's a great opportunity to kind of showcase who we are as a utility and really as a company in Oregon, because this is not just utilities that get recognized, but all companies in Oregon that are doing the right things.
What I really like about this recognition is the fact that it's completely based on feedback from employees and so employees are the ones who make this happen.
And it starts from caring about our employees, caring about our community, having our employees be thinking about customers and how we can take care of them, and then the rest of us providing that support for those employees to make that thing happen.
And then you go through the process of applying for the award, and then it's really just the feedback of the employees that is considered.
They ask a number of questions to employees. They provide that feedback and then make their selections based upon the answers that the employees are given.
So again, real proud of the fact that this has been happening for a few years now and that we're recognized as one of the top companies in Oregon.
Paul Ciampoli
And if you're another power utility executive who's listening to this episode, any kind of specific concrete steps you'd recommend he or she perhaps consider in terms of kind of reaching the level that you guys have achieved in terms of this recognition?
Todd Simmons
Well, it's not just one thing. It has to be your entire approach to how we do the work. We have a number of things that we do to make sure that our employees are recognized, that they are fulfilled in what they're doing.
We talk about safety, quality, and efficiency being our mantra here, that we do things safer than everybody else. We keep safety top of mind.
Quality is second, not only in the things that we build, but the interactions that we do in the community.
And then efficiency. We're using public dollars. And so we try to do things as efficiently as possible. We never sacrifice safety for quality. We never sacrifice quality for efficiency.
All three of those things are important.
And it's something that we use in our decision making every day.
Paul Ciampoli
You referenced the fact that the PUD was also recognized last year.
And I also wanted to note for our listeners that another Oregon public power utility, Northern Wasco County PUD was included in this year's list as well as the 2025 list.
So we've talked about, obviously, you guys are doing a great job in terms of your current workforce and all the good things that you guys are doing in terms of this recognition.
But I wanted to kind of leap from that into kind of looking at the future workforce and give you the chance to talk about the ways in which PUD is proactively working to recruit the next generation of workers.
For example, in preparing for this interview, I noticed there was reference and details on your website about a college work program.
Todd Simmons
So in addition to doing the things that all utilities think about, making sure that our compensation programs are competitive, making sure that we're recruiting in the right places, looking for those gems throughout the Northwest and the country -- we've got a beautiful area.
Sometimes it's a little difficult to find housing, so we do some additional work there. Beautiful area to live and a lot of outdoor activities, but we also do a lot of recruiting locally. And it starts with our high school program.
We hire three high school kids every year that work after school or when their schedule allows it in addition to the summer.
We have got one in the warehouse, one in our fleet shop, and one in our customer service area.
And then we have a college work program that you alluded to that hires a student each year that is coming from one of the three high schools here in our community that is going on to a four-year college or perhaps a two-year college.
And we hire them to work in the summertime and anytime they have breaks and they'd like to come back and work for us for the entire time while they're in school.
So it gives them an opportunity to see everything at the utility. We move them around to different spots within the utility.
We're working outside, inside, learning about engineering, IT operations, including some of our vegetation management.
So great opportunity for either an engineering student or another student that's looking to get into understanding what utilities are all about. And that program is very successful.
We have students come and end up staying the whole four years and really creating it as an opportunity to earn some money while they're going to school.
But they always have a job. They don't have to hustle for one every time.
And we're pretty flexible about allowing travel overseas to do some of their learning overseas if they need to or working around athletics, et cetera.
But it's just a great opportunity for us to create a relationship with a student that eventually we might hire.
And we've done that a number of times in the past.
This has been going on for quite a long time now, started by a board member, Barbara Trout, about 30 years ago, and it's been very successful.
Paul Ciampoli
And a quick follow-up, if I could. Is there any specific department or segment of your workforce that is particularly challenging in terms of planning for the future workforce?
Todd Simmons
Any of our technical positions, it's always difficult. And anyone who has IT departments knows that kind of work and that type of employee has a lot of opportunity, especially in the Northwest.
And so it's critical for us to think about how we keep those employees motivated, how we provide all the latest training for everything that is happening currently, and at the same time making sure that we find ways to recruit those folks when we need it.
But that's always a challenge. It's a challenge to get and retain engineers as well.
And so we do a lot of work with the universities in the Northwest to set up internships and to continue to develop our relationships with engineering programs.
Because as you know, most utilities are heavy operations and engineering.
We've also done something that some of the larger utilities have done and we started a women in energy group that allows all of the women that work here, in addition to some men, additional training opportunities, opportunities for mentorship, and a way to get women introduced into non-traditional roles or in roles that maybe they haven't been exposed to, and a great chance for them to move into leadership positions as well.
Paul Ciampoli
And in terms of preparing for this interview, one of the things that jumped out at me is the PUD's website provides some details on some transmission projects.
One is the Neskowin transmission line and then the Tillamook Oceanside Transmission Line.
So I want to give you the opportunity to provide additional details on these two projects as well as elaborate on why the PUD's pursuing these transmission projects.
Todd Simmons
The Tillamook to Oceanside transmission line has been installed now. We started the process about 17 years ago. It was actually identified as a need back in the 60s.
But this goes from Highway 101 and our substation that's co-owned with Bonneville Power Administration all the way out to the beach about 9 miles and up and over mountain range and into the Oceanside substation.
So we're able to feed a couple of thousand customers out of that substation that used to be fed with a 20 plus mile long radial distribution line.
So great opportunity to provide additional service that will allow us then to when we do have outages, reroute power relatively quickly. So we're excited about that.
We just today started serving load out of that substation to Oceanside. So excited about that. Long process. Anytime you're building a linear project like that through multiple different land use zones -- difficult.
But I am part of a Western governor's program…we're doing a workshop tomorrow to try to find ways to streamline transmission projects.
And that project is being used as one that was difficult to traverse through. The permitting took a long time, but we were able to build that. We're excited about having that installed.
The Neskowin transmission line is an opportunity to provide an additional transmission feed from the southern part of our district.
Currently, we have two transmission lines that are in part of the southern area of our district, but they both come from the same Bonneville substation.
So should they have an issue with that substation, we would be out of power there in the south. And so that's still in the planning stage. We're starting to acquire easements, etc.
But that will take some time, but that will be the next step in providing reliable service in our district.
Paul Ciampoli
Any even rough approximation in terms of when that might be completed or is it too early to say?
Todd Simmons
Yeah, I gave up on giving those estimates based on what happened with our last one, but we believe that it's going to be another probably 8 to 10 year process.
Paul Ciampoli
Okay. And all of these are above ground in entirety, right, in terms of the overall projects?
Todd Simmons
Yeah, you know, we find that we've got a lot of trees and forest land to deal with, but we also have shifting sandy soil, so it might work in some cases to put in transmission underground, but for us, we've been most successful.
We get a lot of 80 mile an hour winds. It does affect our overhead stuff, but we build things to allow for that here on the coast and so the idea is that we'll install them above ground our Tillamook to Oceanside transmission line.
It's all above ground, but our distribution feeders are underground, so we did do some underground as part of those projects. We did put in some larger poles. This is a 115 KV line.
We did put in some larger poles as we were traversing dairy farms so that we could put the poles on the fence lines and span the properties so that we wouldn't affect the dairy farming.
So we did put it in some larger steel poles and some big structures underground to support them so that we can withstand some of those winds.
But we found that it's best to do overhead in our area.
Paul Ciampoli
And maybe this is too simplistic to say on my part, but my sense is that undergrounding typically comes with some added costs. Is that fair to say?
Todd Simmons
Yeah, generally you'll have some additional costs.
It's [also] kind of a transition for linemen to go to underground transmission.
You'll need different maintenance tools, different training, et cetera, and so for our size utility, that makes it a jump -- that's a little bit too much for us right now, but it's something that we looked at with this project and we'll continue to look at that as we try to change the characteristics of our system to mitigate possible wildfires, etc.
We've got both state and national forests in our service territory. We get 80 inches of rain every year, so we've got quite a bit of growth that happens every year. So we're always taking a look at that.
But at this point with those transmission lines, big right of ways and easements, we feel pretty confident that we're in a good place.
Paul Ciampoli
And you read my mind in terms of wildfires.
Can you characterize the current threat level from those as it relates to your utility?
Todd Simmons
Yeah, generally we're not in what's considered red flag areas where generally -- even though we have a lot of growth because of the rain that we get, we've got a shorter hot period in the summertime.
Where we get hit is the easterly winds, happens up and down the West Coast late into September and October when we haven't had a lot of rainfall.
We had a fire here that lasted a number of days, burned a couple 100 acres four years ago.
So it's not out of the question. The Tillamook State Forest has had a couple of major burns in the past.
So it doesn't take too long to get up into some of our valleys where you get a lot of elevated temperatures and they're real susceptible to those easterly winds.
But this year was relatively mild, so we kind of dodged it even though the rest of Oregon had record wildfires as far as the number of acres burned.
We were relatively safe this summer, but it's something that we continue to work on not only with our vegetation management practices, but our capital dollars undergrounding areas of our district that may be more susceptible to wildfire and that's our canyons that go up into the coast range mountains.
Paul Ciampoli
The last question I have for you -- I don’t have to tell you, obviously data centers are the hot topic these days. So I wanted to talk about that with you in greater detail.
And specifically wanted to ask you if the PUD’s developed a strategy to respond to data center proposals that may occur in its service territory.
Todd Simmons
Yes, we have and we get inquiries, you know, every year.
It's a little bit difficult to site one here just because we're kind of the end of the line for transmission and there isn't a lot of capacity on the transmission lines that come from Bonneville.
So we would need to do some things to make that happen. There is land available at the Port of Tillamook Bay.
I know that they've been interested in recruiting, I think, data centers that come with a strategy around power and water end up being really good load for utilities as far as this relatively constant, not real difficult to serve.
And so should there be an opportunity, we would certainly welcome it and find ways to work with them.
We just don't have the transmission capacity at this time, but it is part of Bonneville's overall strategy.
So we anticipate that will happen at some point.
Amazon built a distribution center here recently that just came on about a year ago.
So there is space and there are opportunities.
The dairy farms, there's about eight of them make up the co-op that is the Tillamook Creamery. And they continue to consolidate and get more efficient as well. And so I think there are going to be more opportunities here. We just need to get some more transmission capacity first.
Paul Ciampoli
And putting aside data centers, you mentioned Amazon -- I would assume it's safe to say that you guys have some pretty appealing things to offer in terms of economic development.
Todd Simmons
Yeah, I would say, and there's still a lot of opportunity here, but at the same time, it's a community that, you know, works together well.
It's one of the areas that I've seen the most charitable organizations whether it's scholarships for kids or helping some of the other businesses that haven't been as successful lately.
And so this is an area that has a great workforce, just beautiful scenery and a real opportunity for others to come.
It's just going to be a little bit slow because we haven't spent a lot of money on infrastructure from a water, sewer and transmission perspective.
So it's happening, but it's more of a slow growth.
We look on our commercial and residential, we look at about a 1 to 1 1/2 percent increase in load annually.
So it's a slow burn and it's happening, but we're definitely going to need some more transmission capacity if we're going to land anything big.
Paul Ciampoli
Okay, great.
Well, Todd, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
It's been a really informative conversation and I would love to have you back at some point in the future.
So I just want to extend that invitation to you right now.
Todd Simmons
Yeah, that would be great. I would love to come and speak again maybe about mutual aid sometime.
I'm involved with both the APPA Mutual Aid Committee and the Western Regional Mutual Aid Group out here.
And I'm always interested in what's happening with wildfires as well.
Thanks so much for having me.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, graphic and digital designer at APPA.
I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back with more from the world of Public Power next week.
