Tombigbee Electric Cooperative Board of Trustees Jim McRae Chair
David Collins Vice-Chair
Curt Morris
Manager’s Comments
No general or kwh rate increase Steve Foshee Manager of Tombigbee EC
Secretary Treasurer
Terry Gosa Dennis Harbor William T. Hulsey Chad Williams Sheila Gunter Warren Williford
Visit our website www.tombigbee.org
Headquarters: P.O. Box 610 Guin, AL 35563 205.468.3325
For the time being, there will be no general or kwh rate increase. That does not mean your Cooperative does not need one, it does. However, the Board approved a budget that we knew was going to be some $300,000 in losses for the year. The reason for this recommendation and approval is simple; times are tough, your cooperative has put back some funds for a “rainy” day and your Board rightly believes this is a “rainy day.” We have been very tight with our funds to create this “rainy” day fund and we plan on looking for any way we can to reduce the loss for the year. There are several significant factors going on to create this fiscal environment which include wholesale power cost increases, labor cost increases and materials cost increases. In thirty years I have never submitted a budget with a loss going into the year, but all agreed we just had to do it this year. We certainly understand we are not the Federal Government and can’t just print money and spend more than we make. We cannot do that at home and we can’t do that here. But we can do it for this year. Throughout the year we are going to find additional cost savings. How much we find I don’t know at this point. Some argue I have already cut to the bone but I think we can find additional savings. The Board did approve a $1 per month increase in the customer
service charge and 50 cent increase per month in the security light or night light costs. It had been some time since we had increases to either. One thing we did not cut is our maintenance programs. We are going to cinspect our poles, change out bad poles, cut trees from the right of ways and spray the small ones. All of this is costly but these are necessary expenses to keep the lights on. Just recently Hunter Miles, one of our foremen, spent two weeks at night riding with a contractor to use an infrared camera on many of our power lines and substations looking for problems that could not be seen with the human eye. Many of you tell me we keep the lights on better than it was some years ago. There are still problems that occur and we cannot prevent them all. But we are working hard to prevent and restore power as much as possible. These are challenging times we live in. At this writing, the weather has been cooler than last year, so I expect our bills to rise some 10 to 15% due to higher usage. Last year was unusually mild almost year round, except in June. Last year’s weather was not normal and we anticipate a more normal weather pattern in 2013. So, if your bill goes up, and it is likely to -- most of it will be due to weather. A sfoshee@tombigbee.org
4 FEBRUARY 2013
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1/18/13 11:12 AM