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Interview with Joe Pakootas of Colville Tribes business arm





Joe Pakootas, the CEO of the Colville Tribal Federal Corp., explains how the Colville Confederated Tribes in Washington are turning around their economic development enterprise:
S-R: What was the corporation’s financial situation when you took over in January 2010?

Pakootas: The Colville tribal council activated the federal corporation two months before I started. The previous corporation, which also included the tribes’ two lumber mills and the Lake Roosevelt houseboat concession, was $8.1 million in the red. By the end of the fiscal year in September 2010, we were $2.3 million in the black.

S-R: What caused the turnaround?

Pakootas: When they closed down the mills (in 2009), they sent home the production workers, but they kept all the managers on the payroll, and it was costing us $200,000 a month. We couldn’t fire them, so I closed both businesses completely and laid everybody off.

S-R: Where else did you save money?

Pakootas: The houseboat operation on Lake Roosevelt had lost an average of $250,000 a year for 20 years. The council kept it going because of jurisdictional issues on Lake Roosevelt. I closed that down, too.

S-R: How did you generate more revenue?

Pakootas: We refinanced $28 million in debt. Also, we’d just completed a new casino at Lake Chelan and made some improvements in our other two casinos, and that increased our revenue quite a bit. Since then, gaming revenue has gone up 15 to 20 percent a year.

S-R: How would you characterize the corporation’s health today?

Pakootas: Revenue-wise, we’re very successful. The first year we replaced the business structure, we had $49 million in total gross revenue. Last year, we had $86 million and, this year, we hope to be up around $120 million to $140 million. But we still have a long way to go. We have 55 to 60 percent unemployment on the reservation.

Get the Story:
Joe Pakootas steers Colvilles in positive direction (The Spokesman Review 1/5)

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