By Pepper Fisher

What ever happened to Bird Scooters?

Last year, the e-scooter company reached out to both Sequim and Port Angeles, proposing they be allowed to bring there scooters to our towns. They presented their proposals to the city councils and both towns approved pilot programs to begin no later than this spring.

We reached out to Port Angeles City Manager Nathan West and Sequim City Manager Matt Huish to see if they had heard anything from the company, and both said their hasn’t been a word from them.

We emailed Bird Scooter’s press contact for information earlier this week and, so far, there’s been no reply.

What we can tell you is this; the company may have made promises they can’t keep.

Bird admitted in November in documents filed with federal regulators that it overstated its revenue for more than two years, saying that it might “need to scale back or discontinue certain or all of its operations in order to reduce costs or seek bankruptcy protection” if Bird can’t raise additional money.

The company’s $38.5 million in free cash flow on hand at the end of September would “not be sufficient to meet” its financial obligations within the next year, Bird said in a press release that same month.

Bird then announced on November 14 that the company’s financial statements from the first quarter of 2020 all the way through the second quarter of last year “should no longer be relied upon” after its auditors determined the company recorded unpaid funds on customer’s accounts as actual revenue during that time.