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SECONEWS SECO CHAMPIONS
SECO Energy is a company of Champions. Our employees are local people who wo r k hard and raise families in the communities SECO serves. When you call, email or visit a SECO location with a question or a service need, the employees who respond are right here in Central Florida. The Operations employees who come running – braving the wind, rain and lightning to restore power – are viewed as everyday superheroes when storms blow through or equipment fails. Our Champions live and work all across our service area for the quickest response time. Nights, weekends and holidays are regular business hours for these Champions who are committed to the highest quality, most reliable electric service possible. Serving your energy needs is personal for us, so we want you to get to know our employees. Whether you run into them in the grocery store, at a ball game or restoring service after an outage, I can assure you that SECO is a company of dedicated employees and upstanding citizens committed to the members we serve.
Jim Duncan, CEO
Meet our first two SECO Energy Champions – Paul Byrd and Aaron Vaughn. Paul is a Service Technician who works in the central part of our service territory. Aaron is a Crew Supervisor who works the second shift and covers all areas of SECO’s service territory. Read more about these gentlemen on the next page, and visit SECOEnergy. com and click on the Champions banner to watch Paul and Aaron’s videos as our very first featured Champions. 920601 Watch for next month’s SECO News, visit our website and engage on our social media platforms as we unveil a few more SECO Energy Champions every month. Each and every SECO employee works to provide you with affordable, reliable electric service. Our employees are the brightest and best in our industry, and I hope you enjoy learning more about them. Together, we are “StormReady.” It is our privilege to serve your family’s energy needs.
JIM DUNCAN, Chief Executive Officer
Meet two SECO Champions – Aaron and Paul – two examples of our 400+ SECO Champion 400010 employees. Aaron and Paul are dedicated to providing exceptional service to our members, co-workers and communities.
AARON VAUGHN TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION SUPERVISOR
LENGTH OF SERVICE: 6 YEARS
“I LOVE MY JOB.” Aaron Vaughn is a SECO Champion who supervises SECO’s two-man rapid response line crews who are on-call and ready to dispatch 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Aaron and his family have lived in Central Florida for ten years, and during leisure time they enjoy local church events, fishing, gardening and raising animals in Citrus County. During storm season, SECO crews – led by supervisors like Aaron – are staged throughout our service territory so they can respond quickly when lightning takes out a transformer, a tree falls on a line or winds bring down a pole. Aaron wants members to rest assured that “SECO has crews available at all times to restore power outages whether it’s during a weekend, at midnight or a holiday – SECO is here for you.”
PAUL BYRD SERVICE TECHNICIAN
LENGTH OF SERVICE: 14 YEARS
“IT’S AN ADVENTURE.” SECO Champion Paul Byrd is a Service Technician who is prepared to restore power any time – day or night. A lifelong resident of Lake County, Paul creates amazing works of art in his spare time, and he feels blessed to work for SECO while raising a wonderful family. In 2004, Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne blazed paths through Florida, and Paul remembers working 16-hour days for two weeks straight during each hurricane. He credits the challenge of three devastating storms as the reason he aspired to be a SECO Service Tech. Paul believes his commitment to keeping the lights on for SECO members has a positive impact on his own family and the community – recognizing teachers, firefighters, and law enforcement officers who serve the needs of the community as a whole.
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SECO CONTRIBUTES TO LOCAL
PUBLIC EDUCATION FOUNDATIONS
SECO Energy’s 2018 back-to-school program has contributed $10,500 to local school districts in Citrus, Lake, Marion and Sumter Counties. These four counties are home to over 200,000 homes and businesses across the SECO Energy service territory. 400010
CITRUS COUNTY The not-for-profit Citrus County Education Foundation has earmarked its $1,000 contribution to promote early literacy by supplementing its First Library Program. The program provides at-risk, lower-income students with books to create their own personal libraries at home.
LAKE COUNTY The Educational Foundation of Lake County is a not-for-profit that serves as the connection between the community and public education. SECO’s $3,500 contribution can provide much-needed funds to support the Apple-Mart, where teachers can shop for school supplies for free.
As your local not-for-profit electric cooperative, SECO Energy believes in bolstering the communities we serve by contributing financial support to local schools, dedicated educators and students.
MARION COUNTY
SUMTER COUNTY
In Marion County, SECO’s $3,000 contribution benefits the Public Education Foundation of Marion County’s Tools 4 Teaching program. Tools 4 Teaching accepts donations of unused office supplies and monetary contributions from local businesses and puts them to good use in schools.
SECO contributed $3,000 to the Sumter County Schools Enhancement Foundation. Through its partnership with the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations (CFEF), it maximizes the individual and collective strength of Florida’s local education foundations to support partners and schools.
“HIDDEN” ACCOUNT NUMBERS
590012
Don’t forget to look for the last six digits of your account number in this month’s SECO News. You can email us at customerservice@secoenergy.com or call if your number appears. Six winners will be drawn at random from all submissions. Winners receive a $25 restaurant gift card.
BUTTERFLIES
NATURE’S
THE GRACEFUL, CROWNING TOUCH TO ANY GARDEN
Some are as big as your hand, while others could fit on the head of a tack. Regardless of size, butterflies are creatures of beauty that are a joy to watch. According to entomologists, there are 200 species of butterflies and moths with breeding populations in Florida. Many others visit or migrate through our State. The most successful butterfly habitat includes plants which meet the needs of butterflies during all four stages of their life cycle: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and adult. After mating, female butterflies search for the perfect host plant on which to lay their eggs. Not just any plant will do, and native plants are favorites. Females must find a plant that will provide food for their young who emerge as caterpillars with voracious appetites and survive on leaves of the host plant. Most caterpillars have defenses other than coloration. Some hide in curled leaves or silk webbing, while others emit an odor that is repulsive to an enemy. A caterpillar’s best defense is quick growth, escaping would-be predators by shedding skin to change into a chrysalis. It quickly attaches to plant stems protected by surrounding vegetation. Inside the chrysalis, the adult butterfly is formed by metamorphosis and emerges to sip the sweet nectar from Florida’s flowers.
Time from egg to adult is five weeks. Adults lead a life of leisure, eating, mating, laying eggs, sleeping, and of course, escaping predators. Enemies of these gorgeous, day-flying insects are primarily human creations – vehicles, pesticides and parking lots. Others fall prey to disease and natural predators. Ants, particularly fire ants, along with other insects, arachnids (spiders) and birds are among the major predators of butterfly eggs and caterpillars.
504700 Adult butterflies are capable of traveling considerable distances. During the fall, monarchs travel from southern Canada to central Mexico. In Florida, the monarch is not the only long-distance traveler. From August to mid-October, huge numbers of cloudless sulphurs, long-tailed skippers, common buckeyes, gulf fritillaries, clouded skippers and others come south with the rest of the snowbirds to spend the winter in Florida. CHECKERED WHITE
COLUMN & PHOTOS BY SANDI STATON SANDI.STATON@GMAIL.COM
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
496801 Jerry D. Hatfield
Richard J. Belles
President District 9
District 3
Richard Dennison
Ray Vick
Vice President District 4
District 5
Bill James
Earl Muffett
Secretary-Treasurer District 8
District 6
Scott D. Boyatt
Vacant
District 1
District 7
Dillard B. Boyatt District 2
The Board of Trustees will meet on Monday, October 22, 2018 at 2:30 p.m. in the Corporate Offices at 330 South US HWY 301 in Sumterville. A Trustees’ meeting will also be held on Monday, November 19, 2018. 24/7 Job Hotline: (855) 483-2673 www.secoenergyjobs.com Report an Outage: (800) 732-6141 www.secostormcenter.com
SECO Energy.com SECO Energy is an equal opportunity provider and employer.