Power company Avista Corp. said Feb. 18 that its fourth quarter earnings rose 26 percent, driven by higher rates for customers in Washington and Idaho of the company’s utility operations.
Utilities and other power providers have seen some of their biggest customers cut back electricity and natural gas usage in the recession, which has also made it difficult to raise rates and recover costs.
Avista was not only able to raise rates in some regions, but reported growth in its customer base.
“Even in these challenging economic times this past year, the number of retail customers grew with net additions of over 2,000 natural gas customers and 1,800 electric customers,” Chairman and CEO Scott L. Morris said in a statement.
Morris said in November, the company lowered natural gas rates for customers in all service areas, ranging from 22 percent to 26 percent, because of a decline in wholesale prices.
“In Washington and Idaho, this was the third reduction in natural gas rates in 2009,” he said.
The purchased gas adjustments are designed to pass through changes in natural gas costs to our customers with no change in gross margin or net income.
Post Falls-based TriGeo Network Security, a provider of security information and event management (SIEM) solutions for mid-market enterprises, has signed 35 new credit unions to use its new security information management solution systems.
Evolving NCUA regulations continue to drive credit unions to adopt SIEM technology and TriGeo is the only vendor that turns log management into proactive network defense. Using patented, in-memory, technology, TriGeo automates log analysis and incident detection and provides active responses for real-time policy enforcement.
“Many credit unions have limited IT resources, and like most mid-market companies, they have to do more with less,” said Michelle Dickman, president and CEO of TriGeo Network Security. “We designed our technology to fit the needs of these businesses by making it easy to use, quick to deploy, and the only SIEM with active response capabilities.”
The Idaho Legislature’s budget-writing committee voted to approve an additional $188.7 million in cuts for the current fiscal year but used $140.6 million from reserves and other one-time sources to make up some of the difference.
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee finalized a $2.28 billion budget for the 2010 fiscal year during a hearing Feb. 19, down from the $2.51 billion originally appropriated for state agencies at the beginning of the fiscal year.
K-12 public schools will receive $86 million to prevent disruptive mid-year cuts, including $33 million in federal stimulus money that had originally been aside for the 2011 school year and $53 million that was set aside in reserves. School districts are now preparing dramatic measures to cope with tens of millions of dollars in expected cuts next year.
The committee also took another $20 million out of reserves, drew money from dedicated and federal funding sources, modified benefits to decrease costs and made adjustments in state funds to account for minimal inflation, among other changes.
“This allows us to have 2010 balanced, albeit tenuously, but it is balanced,” Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, co-chairman of the committee. “Now we can move forward to 2011.”
Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter said in a statement that he was “pleased that a workable solution has been found for Fiscal Year 2010.”
“The JFAC plan is an appropriate response to the latest economic news,” he said. “After consulting with locally elected school officials, I fully support the 18-month approach to budgeting for public schools in order to leave them without harm in the current budget year. I’m hopeful that it will provide more flexibility for schools in meeting their own budget needs.”
The committee voted 15-4 to make the cuts, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. The lawmakers voted unanimously to restore money to public schools.
“This gives me a lot of discomfort for what’s going to be coming down the pike,” said Rep. Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum.
The Better Business Bureau serving eastern Idaho and western Wyoming is joining forces with the Better Business Bureau serving southwest Idaho and eastern Oregon to combine into one organization, covering three states and 40-counties.
“This is an exciting time for the Better Business Bureau,” said Board Chair Donald Harris. “By combining our offices, we will be able to offer consumers and businesses better service, better information and better educational opportunities. Together, we are better able serve the people who turn to the BBB to find trustworthy businesses and valuable consumer information.”
Combining offices is a result of a vision among community business leaders in eastern and western Idaho who serve as board members for the respective Better Business Bureau offices. Southwest Idaho BBB Board chair Connie Murphy said: “By collaborating to build trust in the marketplace, we are all stronger. We have a unified community of businesses living up to the BBB Standards for Trust; consumers have better access to Reliability Reports as they seek out trustworthy businesses; and together we are better able to warn the public about scam artists working to rip-off the citizens of Idaho.”
The Better Business Bureau will maintain offices and personnel in eastern and western Idaho. “In fact, we anticipate opening additional locations this year,” President/CEO Dale Dixon said.
The BBB now extends its coverage to Ashton, Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Jackson Hole, Malad, Burley, Twin Falls, Nampa, Caldwell or Ontario, Oregon.”
All listed phone numbers and Web addresses for the Better Business Bureau remain the same.
Boise airport terminal could benefit from the amendment proposal. Photo courtesy Boise Airport
A proposed amendment to the state constitution would free airports and other political subdivisions to go into long-term debt without putting the measure before voters, as is required under a 2006 State Supreme Court ruling.
The amendment, proposed by Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley, and Sen. Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston, circumvents the so-called Frazier Rule, which requires a two-thirds majority vote to approve bond financing using local tax dollars. The Idaho House State Affairs Committee approved it on Feb. 18. The full House is expected to debate the measure (HJR 005) on Feb. 22.
Under the proposal, no vote would be necessary if entities leverage financing through revenue bonds or special facility bonds which are repaid by revenue from services, rather than tax dollars.
Richard McConnell, manager of the Boise Airport, testified in favor of the measure. He said in an interview that allowing entities like the airport to leverage bonds using their revenue allows them to invest in infrastructure without burdening tax payers. The current rules, he added, have ham-strung economic development projects at the airport for years.
“The position we’re in here is unique to the state of Idaho,” he said. “We’re cut off from access to these financial markets and, as a result, we cannot meet the mayor and governor’s goals for new job growth. … Under today’s standards and law it’s highly unlikely that we would have been able to construct the current terminal building, for instance.”
Other examples of how restricted bonding authority hampers investment at the airport: several hundred acres of airport-owned land which it can’t pursue for industrial or economic development, and the inability to invest in expanded cargo facilities.
“As we grow from the cargo standpoint, we need to be able to accommodate those demands,” McConnell said, adding that carriers like FedEx and UPS will someday run out of room and may need to relocate to larger facilities.
“They’re coming to us with the scenario,” he said. “It’s a community partnership thing. We don’t want to be the part of a proposal for some new company that can’t meet their needs.”
The Boise Airport, a separate enterprise fund of the city of Boise, currently operates entirely on revenue generated at the facility. McConnell said those revenue streams come from a range of services, including federal aviation grants, passenger and customer facility charges, and rates, rents and ground leases. It even contributes to the city’s general fund by purchasing services like police, fire, legal counsel, human resources and IT.
“We are a money maker,” he said. “Almost everything we do is catered toward being as self-sustaining as possible.”
With non-local tax revenue sources paying for 100 percent of the airport’s operations, McConnell sees no reason why the facility shouldn’t be able to incur long-term debt leveraged by its own money. He also chafes at the voter approval requirement under the current rules because it restricts the vote to the city of Boise, effectively shutting out other airport users from having a say in whether improvements are funded.
“Upwards of 70 percent of our users aren’t Boise residents,” he said. “The airport is a regional and statewide entity. Our impact area is five states: Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah and Idaho. It’s not just the boundary of the city of Boise.”
The College of Idaho, together with the city of Caldwell, has launched a recycling program. It is one of the largest efforts across Canyon County. College of Idaho President Marvin Henberg is dedicated to supporting a greener campus, and together with allied waste and the city, it is just the first step.
Student run programs such as terra, the environmental resource and recreation association have been very instrumental in getting this program up and running.
The College of Idaho hopes to recycle about 33 percent of its waste going forward. Along with the city, it’s estimated nearly two tons of waste can be diverted over from the landfill each week.
By offering comingled recycling in city buildings and departments city officials said they hope to divert more than two tons of garbage each week from the landfill. The efforts are expected to be extended Caldwell residents.
Allied Waste will provide complimentary recycling dumpsters on campus.
I recently talked with President Henberg about the program on Business at its Best.
The great thing about ideas is there isn’t a finite supply of them. As long as people can dream, create and innovate, the idea pipeline should just keep flowing.
A Boise company called MobileDN Inc. had an idea to invent real-time social networking technology. But ideas alone are mere mind fluff without the skill set to make something of them. Fortunately the founder of MobileDN, Dave Brown, is also the founder of former Internet service provider Cyberhighway, and Brown and four other developers had the know-how to turn the idea for MobileDN into a straightforward, useable technology.
MobileDN went from an idea to an official company in March 2009, and Brown filed for intellectual property rights last June.
It’s easiest to explain the concept behind MobileDN by citing an example. Let’s say a person named Jeff is sitting in a coffee shop with a smartphone or laptop. WiFi is available and Jeff has visited www.mobiledn.com and signed up for its free basic service.
Jeff can then search the immediate vicinity for people similarly connected and, with luck, find an individual or individuals in the coffee shop with a mutual desire to get to know each other. MobileDN allows them to establish an initial contact without the awkwardness – and obtrusiveness – of getting up from the table and introducing themselves to strangers.
There are business applications to the technology as well, and Brown referred to MobileDN as “a salesperson’s dream.”
If a businessman or woman is attending a tradeshow and hundreds of others are there also, he or she can utilize MobileDN to locate like-minded businesspeople. It’s the targeted digital answer to the traditional indiscriminate trading of business cards. In fact, that particular module on MobileDN is called “Business Cards.”
There are in all, so far, five modules, according to Brown: Dating, RV Parks, Marinas, Business Cards and WiFi Friends. Brown said plans are in the works to eventually add Sports and Animal modules.
Though the basic service is free and fully functional, there are upgrades such as Stealth, available for $1.99 a month, and a VIP upgrade available for $4.99 a month. Brown said the company will make money on upgrades, as well as advertising.
Prior to launching MobileDN, Brown and the other developers conducted six months of polling and research on hundreds of men and women. “We wanted to make sure we got things right and gave people what they wanted,” Brown said.
For instance, there are built-in safety measures. MobileDN users provide profile information but control access to it. Because the technology is generally utilized in open settings, once the user leaves the WiFi network, he or she cannot be tracked – particularly handy for the Dating module.
But Brown believes the biggest success in store for MobileDN is its Business Card function. “This tool allows you to send messages and set up meetings, introduce products and services to qualified people,” in whatever current business setting you’re in, he explained – from conventions to seminars.
“The (old-style) business card is going to go away,” Brown predicted. “This is a virtual business card.”
He is working with venues in Boise and other areas, such as Las Vegas, to promote MobileDN as part of what they offer attendees at their events. He is presently in talks with Boise Centre Facilities Manager George Langdon.
“They have the existing infrastructure, and it doesn’t cost them money,” Brown said. All that’s necessary is a WiFi connection.
“We look at everything that’s a possible benefit to our customers, an added experience,” said Langdon. “We chatted with Dave for quite a while. … I’ve known Dave for a long time. He’s just a genius geek.”
Drawing comparisons with Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, Brown said MobileDN is different. “I haven’t met any new friends on Facebook. It’s all people I know,” he said.
He stated criticisms that social networking distances people and minimizes face-to-face contact aren’t valid with MobileDN. “It’s not hiding behind the computer. It’s an enabler,” he said, meaning it enables communication.
He made references to “the seventh grade dance – boys on one side, girls on the other.” Technology such as MobileDN closes the gap, he said, and allows people to be digitally extroverted.
“I’m pretty social. I can talk to anybody. But a lot of people can’t,” Brown said. “This breaks the ice. This is a tool to help you.”
JJ Hayes, an AT&T account executive, signed up for MobileDN when it was initially launched and uses it on his iPhone. “There’s a lot of flexibility, whether you’re out of town on a business trip or into the social networking scene. I can meet people on the go. A lot of people use Facebook. With MobileDN, I can have a conversation in real time with somebody rather than just shooting them an e-mail or a message online,” Hayes said. “Because it works on WiFi, you can use it in coffee shops or clubs, hotels or motels.”
Brown stated modern society is increasingly digital – “and it’s not going to slow down,” he said.
While Qwest Communications, the nation’s fourth largest phone company, on Feb. 16, showed a drop in its fourth-quarter earnings of 39 percent as customers disconnected traditional landline phones in favor of cell phones, company officials are assuring customers there is plenty of service to come.
Unemployment, a poor business climate and weak housing also shifted some of the move from landlines, a staple for Qwest, the company said. Qwest operates in 14 states, mostly in the West, where the collapse of the housing market has been acute.
Qwest, based in Denver, said consumers and small businesses disconnected more than 12 percent of landlines (6.8 million) and larger businesses cut 9 percent (2.4 million).
Phone companies have been losing customers to cable’s discounted bundle of TV, Internet phone and broadband services. They’ve also seen customers cut ties to land lines completely.
And DSL Internet service provided by phone companies has fallen out of favor as the appetite for online video has grown. Online video requires faster hookups, which cable has delivered. Still, Qwest has upgraded its fiber-optics network to offer faster speeds to more households. In the quarter, it added 4.5 percent more high-speed Internet customers for a total of 3 million.
Video customers, a service Qwest offers in partnership with DirecTV Inc., rose by 10 percent to 880,000.
Cell phone subscriptions rose by 18.5 percent to 850,000. Qwest said it has completed its shift from Sprint Nextel Corp.’s cell phone service – but branded as Qwest – to Verizon Wireless.
The real driver is the economy, Qwest Director of Product Management Martin Capurro told Connected Planet. Seeking cost savings, some customers are opting to move equipment from their own data centers into Qwest-operated centers, while others are relying on equipment owned and operated by Qwest, he said.
Among cloud-based offerings, operating systems and database and Web services tend to be the most popular, Capurro said.
Cloud-based services initially were most popular with smaller companies, Capurro said, but the answer now has shifted and can be any size business, he said. Cloud-based refers to services delivered via the Internet.
Wireless data traffic on the AT&T’s network has grown more than 5,000 percent over the past three years, largely attributed to today’s advanced smartphones that are generating dramatically increasing volumes of network traffic. In fact, roughly 40 percent of AT&T’s customer base uses a smartphone today, representing twice the number of smartphone customers than any other U.S. provider has, according to a release.
Fred Devereux, regional president, AT&T West, said, “We’re seeing advanced smartphones driving up to 10 times the amount of usage of other devices on average.”
Businesses, large and small, are feeling the crunch of bandwidth as well. Verizon plans to launch Long Term Evolution in 25 to 30 markets across the United States in 2010, initially supporting USB dongles, not voice devices.
Market analyst Gary Kim, writing for OOMA blog, said there are a number of reasons for that move. Verizon remains a big supporter of the “One Voice Initiative” for voice and text messaging services delivered over LTE networks, but for reasons of simplicity, the company is defaulting to voice services on its LTE network to its legacy CDMA network.
“The standards for voice-over LTE still are evolving, and the entire ecosystem might not be working off the same version Verizon has selected,” he writes. “Roaming between LTE and CDMA, which Verizon will have to support as its entire 4G network is built out, also adds an element of complexity Verizon apparently wishes to avoid, at least for the moment.”
While the service industry continues to evolve, the benefit to the small business consumer continues to expand.
The Idaho Business Review collects news items from real estate companies and other sources about business moves, expansions, downsizes, property purchases and business sales; the items are then ranked by square footage, where applicable, and placed in the Roundup column to provide businesses with tips and leads.
Scentsy Inc., which manufactures scented candles, leased 47,972 square feet of industrial space at 12040 W Executive Drive, Boise. Greg Thueson Quest & Co. represented the tenant. Thornton Oliver Keller’s Dan Minnaert, Devin Pierce and Jerry Van Engen represented the property owner.
High Country Fusion Inc. leased 5,670 square feet of industrial space at 6439 Gowen Road, Boise. The company provides custom fabrication and distribution of high-density polyethylene pipe. Scott Nicholson of Boise Valley Commercial Real Estate LLC represented the tenant. Dan Minnaert and Devin Pierce of Thornton Oliver Keller represented the property owner.
Bliss Events leased 5,498 square feet at 1522 River St., Boise. Michener Investments handled the transaction and has additional space in the building listed for lease. The Studio Corp. occupied the building previously.
ReMax West leased 3,740 square feet of office space in Explorer Campus B, 12501 W. Explorer Drive, Boise. Al and Greg Gaddis of Thornton Oliver Keller handled the transaction.
Keely’s Drywall Inc. leased 2,728 square feet of industrial space in Franklin Business Center, 1604-1648 E. Plaza, Nampa. The company provides drywall construction throughout the Treasure Valley. Jake Tucker of Colliers International represented the tenant. Dan Minnaert and Devin Pierce of Thornton Oliver Keller represented the property owner.
Boise Small Engine LLC leased 2,500 square feet of industrial space in Pacific Plaza located at 11473 Fairview Avenue in Boise, ID. Boise Small Engine, LLC provides small engine repair for lawn mowers, leaf blowers, edge trimmers, and other small engine equipment. Dan Minnaert and Devin Pierce of Thornton Oliver Keller handled the transaction.
Abbots Vacuum Center, which offers retail sales and service of vacuums and related accessories, leased 1,555 square feet in Canyon Plaza, Nampa. Move-in is expected in March. Nancy Throngard of White-Leasure Development Co. Property Management Services handled the transaction.
Progressive Behavior Services leased 3,950 square feet of office space at 847 Park Centre, Nampa, in Park Centre Business Park. Colliers International’s Lincoln Hagood, Bryant Jones and Rod Wolfe handled the transaction.
United Hospice LLC leased 2,200 square feet of office space at 35 E. Bower St., Meridian. Bryant Jones of Colliers International represented the tenant. Colliers’ office team of Mike Greene, Lew Manglos, Karen Warner and Scott Feighner represented the property owner.
Clear Rock Capital leased 2,043 square feet of office space at 401 W. Idaho St., Boise. Colliers International’s office team of Mike Greene, Lew Manglos, Karen Warner and Scott Feighner handled the transaction.
Trinity Property Management leased 407 square feet of office space at 16 12th Ave. S., Nampa, in Longbranch Station. Bryant Jones of Colliers International handled the transaction.
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