Good morning NIECI!
This is a special time of the year without a doubt. My daughters and I are up north for the MEA youth deer hunt this weekend.
The weather doesn’t sound very good. I believe we are going to see rain most of the day. I asked the girls what they wanted to do this morning, the deer stand wasn’t on the list. We have plenty of time to go sit when the rain isn’t falling, today will be a day to visit friends and family. Once again, this weekend isn’t about hunting for me, rather a time to slow down and enjoy.
Our board approved the capital credit spend for 2025 at the September meeting. We will be paying roughly $250,000 to members that had service in 2003 and a portion of 2004.
There was a good debate that I need your help with. Over the years we have had many checks sent out to members that were far below $5.00. I have even heard from many of these members! Why would you go through the expense of sending me such a small check? I want to put the capital credits on your bill if you have an active account this year. We can set a threshold, if the credit is above $100, we will send a physical check. This would speed up the process and save the Member-Owners significant money. Not mailing over 4,000 physical checks, in turn not having to process the checks later is a huge savings. What are your thoughts? Please let me know if you strongly oppose getting your capital credits on a bill credit in December.
Our Operation Round-Up board recently met to review applications and pass funding along. Thank you to all our Member-Owners who contribute to Operation Round-Up. The ORU board passed roughly $12,000 out to non-profits from across the service territory. This is another great example of how we continue to serve the communities that built us many years ago.
We are still working hard on the 2026 budget. Once again, GRE has a rate increase of roughly 3%. Because GRE is about half our expenses I expect to recommend passing this increase onto the Member-Owners’ bills, this will be a 1.5% increase to your bill. We are looking at the expenses on our end to see what we can do to keep costs at bay. I do not expect large rate increases for 2026.
I want to give a huge thank you to our linemen. We experienced a wind event a couple of weeks ago that had them running all day Sunday and into Monday. We have a crew of eight linemen. At one point during the storm, we had 2500 accounts out of power. The crew safely got the power restored to everyone by Monday morning.
We need to be patient during these events. These linemen literally have their lives on the line for all of us. I need them to be careful; we limit the hours they can work during these events to 18 hours straight. We will call for mutual aid when necessary, most often our talented crew can handle these situations without assistance.
Thank you for your patience and thank you to our crew for all the hard work.
By your side! Miigwech
Brad
