By Duane Wolbrink & Ken Schlimgen
Join us on Tuesday, September 14, at the Mitchell Corn Palace for Central Electric Cooperative’s 21st Annual Meeting.
Your cooperative is planning a traditional meeting, complete with a buffet catered by Central Catering of Hawarden, Iowa. This issue of the Cooperative Connections serves as the official annual report.
Your cooperative operates on founding principles including democratic member control, involvement in our communities and furthering the education of our employees and members. This year’s annual meeting will follow those principles.
At our meeting, you will elect a new director-at-large. Jim Headley is retiring after giving the cooperative 25 years of dedicated service. Earlier this year, Darwin Butch Morrison also announced his retirement as the Davison County director. We will miss both Jim and Butch for their leadership, knowledge and guidance.
Our employees have been getting a lot of questions on electric vehicles. As a result, we are inviting a guest speaker who has experience with electric vehicles and we will have a couple of electric vehicles on display inside the Corn Palace.
The annual meeting gives us the opportunity to report to our members on the activities from the previous year. When 2020 began, our plans were different than what unfolded. Our hearts go out to all our members who became ill, who were financially impacted, and especially to those who lost a loved one. The pandemic has and still is changing our world. We, like everyone, struggled to get masks, hand sanitizer and other supplies. We closed our offices to the public, asked employees to work remotely or in isolated groups, and utilized quarantines in an effort to keep everyone safe. Despite these challenges, your employees did a great job of meeting the needs of our membership.
Financially, 2020 was a good year for your cooperative, although revenues were below budget. Our employees and our power supplier, East River Electric, took extra steps to control expenses throughout the pandemic. Because of these efforts and lower costs for fuel, interest, etc., our operating expenses were also below budget. This allowed Central Electric to help our members by returning $930,000 in the form of capital credit retirements and issuing a power cost refund of $650,000. A Grand total of $1.58 million went back to our members and the cooperative ended the year with margins of over $720,000.
Central Electric’s rates have not changed since January 2019. Your cooperative adopted a long-range plan in 2018 to replace 2,000 miles of aging distribution lines. Today we have less than 1,700 miles yet to replace. The replacement of almost 60 miles annually has helped our crews make significant progress. This work improves reliability and prepares our system for the future.
We have a goal to finish the replacement of our metering system by the end of 2022. The new meters communicate using cellular technology and promise to increase efficiency, eliminate equipment installed on our system and provide more data.
In 2020, almost $18,000 was awarded to local causes making an impact in our local communities through Operation Round-Up, and more than $130,000 has been awarded since the program’s initiation in 2015.
Your cooperative participates in the Rural Electric Economic Development (REED) Loan Fund, which provides low interest financing for economic development activities. Since inception, the REED Fund has made over $6.4 million available to business and community ventures in Central Electric’s service area.
The service department is available around the clock and on weekends to help with an emergency or a new project. They continue to assist members with their electrical, heating, air conditioning and appliance needs.
The safety of our employees, members and the general public has always been a priority. We continue to use advertising and social media to remind everyone how to work safely around electricity. We also enjoy visiting our schools to educate children about electricity and how to safely use it.
As we look ahead, our industry is seeing delays, cost increases and unavailability in some of the materials we need to provide service to you. We will continue to do our best to avoid delays to your projects. We encourage you to contact us early with projects that involve your cooperative and ask for your patience while we work through these industry issues.
Grab your neighbor and attend your Annual Meeting. We look forward to seeing all of you there!
