Cover up / Giving up

CEO Column for the Electric Consumer Magazine
October, 1998

Cover up, giving up, and taking down

If you missed the front cover of this magazine, I’d really like you to back up and take a look at it.
Go ahead, I’ll wait…

In case you don’t understand why we’d be so proud to be on the cover of our own newsletter, let me let the cat out of the bag. This Electric Consumer magazine that you receive each month is delivered to every rural electric member consumer in the state of Indiana and, according to research, is read by more than a million people each month. However, each local cooperative has an insert that is identified by the pages with the blue edges. For example, these four pages in the middle of our local edition (along with the crossword puzzle on page one) are only sent to Jay County REMC customers, but the rest of the magazine is the same as that received by those hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers all over Indiana.

The program that is featured on this cover for all to see is our Electrical Education for Kids (EEK) project, developed right here by our own Cindy Denney. It has already been recognized by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the National Food and Energy Council, both of which awarded EEK top honors in community involvement competitions. It is now particularly pleasing that our own peers in Indiana have deemed the effort worth a cover story in a magazine that is itself a top award winner and considered one of the best such publications in the nation.

I am very proud of our employees that have taken part in EEK, often giving their own time to the children of our community. I hope you can share in my pride and express some sort of congratulations to any employees you
might come in contact with.

Giving up
Speaking of giving, this is the time of year in many of our communities when we are asked to give a little more. Here in Jay County, our local United Way drive has a very ambitious goal of raising $200,000 this year. I have been thinking a lot about the subject of giving lately and have reached a conclusion that may be right up there with some of my other hair-brained ideas, but I submit it for your consideration: Giving is as important to our emotional well-being as eating is to our physical well-being.

This really isn’t a new concept; Christ talked more about giving than he did about salvation or heaven or anything else recorded in the New Testament. I really don’t think He did that because He needed our money or time for Himself, but rather because He understood how important it is to our very nature that we give of ourselves. I’d compare it to the Dead Sea or the Great Salt Lake in Utah where water flows in but not out. The result is a poisoned body of water where nothing can grow. If we just take what comes, without giving back, I think we face a similar fate – an internal poisoning where happiness has trouble growing.

Finding someone to give to is easy, but if you’re looking for another option, consider the HEARTLITE program where you can help your fellow REMC members who may be down on their luck. Give us a call and we’ll tell you more about it. But, paraphrasing a TV commercial you may have seen, if you don’t give to us, give to somebody – for your sake.

One more thing
We’re often asked to compare our electric rates to those of AEP. While we can generalize, the whole ratemaking deal is so complicated that about the only way we can say for sure is to actually run a head-to-head comparison of a specific bill. Using a September billing of one of our employees who lives on AEP lines, the REMC is about 4% less, or about $4.00 lower, than the AEP charges on just under 1500 kilowatt hours.

$110	September residential rate comparison between REMC & AEP	AEP at 1492 KWH
$109		$108.80
$108
$107
$106	REMC at 1492 KWH
$105
$104	$104.47