Pullman council criticizes Ziply Fiber

Ziply Fiber representatives attended Tuesday’s Pullman City Council meeting to respond to numerous complaints about the company’s construction work reported during the past year.

They were met with angry criticism from city council members.

According to Tuesday’s meeting documents, these complaints against Ziply involve a variety of issues including damage to homeowners’ yards, slow cleanup efforts and not giving property owners advanced notice of work.

A list of complaints can be found on the meeting’s agenda online.

“This is bad,” Councilor Nathan Weller told the Ziply representatives, Tom Murn and Rob Vigil. “This is really, really bad.”

Weller pointed to the large number of complaints and his personal experience with having seen damage in his parents’ Military Hill yard. Weller said the subcontractors working for Ziply have “ripped through the community.”

He added that the only notice he received is an advertisement to sign up for Ziply.

Ziply Fiber in the past year has been installing fiber internet infrastructure throughout the city. To date, Ziply has submitted 86 permit applications.

Pullman requires Ziply to provide 48 hours of advance notice to customers before construction and to restore the construction sites to their original conditions or better.

Pullman held some of those permits until Ziply addressed the complaints against the subcontractors performing this work.

Vigil said Ziply hired a consultant in May to oversee the subcontractors and address these problems. He said Ziply was able to win the city government’s confidence again and get a number of permits released in July.

Ziply has installed 128.9 miles of fiber and serviced more than 7,000 Pullman addresses.

Weller and the other councilors were not satisfied with how Ziply responded to residents’ complaints that were brought to the city’s attention.

Councilor Pat Wright shared her personal story of being out of internet, phone and TV service for three weeks and the frustration she experienced trying to get a response from Ziply’s representatives.

Wright said other community members have gone through similar experiences.

“I’m hoping that the reputation and your work can recover from this, but it’s going to be a hard hill to climb,” Wright said.

Councilor Eileen Macoll said the community needs an apology from Ziply’s responsibility for what she called a “hot mess.”

“I’m hearing a lot of bologna excuses here,” she said.

Both Vigil and Murn apologized Tuesday night.

“We’re here for the long-term to earn that trust back with the community,”

Murn said Ziply owns these mistakes and promised that Pullman will see a difference in the future.

“We own the situation, and we’re going to remedy as we go forward,” he said.

Ziply invites customers to provide feedback on construction on their website.

Edward Ranck-Copher, a Pullman city engineer, told the council in a memo that a third of his work hours since September 2020 have been spent handling right-of-way disturbance permits. The majority of these permits are related to the Ziply Fiber project. By comparison, he only spent 10 percent of his time on right-of-way disturbances in 2019.

Mayor Glenn Johnson noted the large number of hours city staff have devoted to fielding complaints about Ziply.

In other business, the city council selected Michigan-based consulting agency Place + Main and the urban planning firm Arnett Muldrow to produce a tourism study for Pullman.

The city requested proposals from agencies for a tourism plan as part of its response to economic hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal is to grow and improve the local hospitality and travel industry. Four agencies responded with proposals and Place + Main scored the highest.

The budget for the plan is $50,000 and it is expected to be completed in June.

Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.