Currents dec2017

Suwannee Valley

www.svec-coop.com

We’re here to serve

(8 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. • Monday - Friday, Lobby Hours)

Business Office: 800-447-4509 (8 a.m. - 5 p.m. • Monday - Friday)

Power Outage Reporting (Day, Night, Weekends & Holidays)

800-752-0025 SERVING THE SUWANNEE VALLEY OWNED BY THOSE WE SERVE

SVEC is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

11340 100th Street • Live Oak, FL 32060

facebook.com/sveccoop

@SVEC_COOP_FL

CEO’S COR NER

80 years of service Michael S. McWaters Executive V.P./CEO

This has been a big year for Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative. We weathered the impact of Hurricane Irma, we reached an incredible safety milestone of three years without a lost-time injury, and our employees raised more than $11,000 for the United Way. For me, it’s hard to look at those accomplishments and not see the pillars of this cooperative: dedication to serving our members, a commitment to the safety of our employees, and a willingness to help our community. It seems like the perfect way to mark SVEC’s 80th anniversary.

We’ve talked a lot about the history of the cooperative this year. You’ve heard how SVEC first brought electricity to our region from some of the people who were there, and you’ve learned how our system has grown and developed.

But as we close out this anniversary year, we wanted to take one last look at the dawn of electricity in this area through our members’ eyes. Many of us have never known life without the regular convenience of electric power, so I hope you’ll take some time to read about the impact its arrival had on people living in the Suwannee Valley in the cooperative’s early days.

And, of course, I want to take this opportunity to wish all of our members a merry Christmas and happy New Year from all of us here at SVEC. As proud as I am to celebrate this cooperative’s rich history, I’m even more excited at the bright future ahead of us. We look forward to lighting the way in 2018 and serving another 80 years in this wonderful community. 

currents December 2017

Spreading the Christmas spirit The holiday season can be a busy time of year, with some people overwhelmed by events with family and friends, shopping, and end-of-year workloads. But even with packed schedules, it’s also a time when people find ways to give back to their community.

The same is true for Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative, not just because giving is the right thing to do, but also because it’s one of our core cooperative values.

“SVEC’s dedication to great service doesn’t stop where the power lines end,” says SVEC Director of Communications Jon Little. “Our members and our employees live in this community, so we want to do our part to help make it an even better place to live.”

This Christmas, SVEC has been as busy as ever, taking part in several of our area’s most important holiday traditions and seeking new opportunities for our employees to help others who are in need.

Employees come together with their individual talents each year to build and decorate a float for community Christmas parades. This year, SVEC won the Suwannee County Chamber’s Grand Marshall Award for best float for the third year in a

Linemen hang Christmas lights and banners in downtown Live Oak.

Employees ride on this year’s Christmas on the Square Parade Grand Marshall Award winning float. row. Cooperative employees also helped hang the Christmas Festival banner for the Town of Branford and worked a little Christmas magic to make sure all of Live Oak’s Christmas lights went up overnight.

In addition, the cooperative supports and participates in many other community events. SVEC loaned a generator to the Suwannee County Chamber of Commerce for Christmas on the Square and is a sponsor of Altrusa International’s Christmas Tour of Homes, the Festival of Lights in White Springs, and Santa’s appearance at Breakfast with Santa, which benefits the United Way of Suwannee Valley. Employees also raised money to pay for Christmas gifts for less fortunate children through Love INC. The cooperative takes part in all of these activities because we believe in the importance of our core values and being a real contributor to our community. We are proud to live out these principles and to have the privilege of spreading the joy of Christmas to our neighbors. 

A bright outlook The early days of electricity in the Suwannee Valley Growing up in White Springs, Francis Dees remembers enjoying iced tea just once a week.

Many people in the town didn’t have electricity for refrigeration, so each Sunday, the local general store would get 100-pound blocks of ice.

“You could buy 25 pounds of ice for 25 cents, but the thing about it was when you got home, it was probably half-melted,” he says. “So usually on a Sunday everybody would have a block of ice and they’d have iced tea, but you couldn’t have it all during the week.”

The situation was the same for many families throughout the Suwannee Valley in the 1940s.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had signed the Rural Electrification Act into law in 1936, and by December 1937, the cooperative had rounded up enough members to sign its articles of incorporation.

But still, many local residents weren’t convinced of the need for electricity.

“It may seem surprising that some people would not put up the money for membership, but it cost $5 to become a member, and back then that was

hard to come by,” says Bill Hart, an SVEC board member since 1989.

However reluctant some residents may have been to sign up, Christine Evans-Rieg couldn’t wait for her family’s electric service. As a girl of about 10, she remembers the excitement of seeing cooperative trucks arriving to set electric poles.

“I guess we thought we were going to have electricity right away,” she says. “There were five of us going to school and doing our homework by lamplight. When we first got the electricity in our house and had light bulbs that were 40 watts, we could hardly believe how bright it was.”

A past life Moments like the one Evans-Rieg remembers would have been a long time coming for rural areas if not for the rise of cooperatives in the late ’30s and early ’40s. In fact, large cities had already begun building out electric systems decades earlier.

The first central station electric system was built

by Thomas Edison in lower Manhattan in 1882.

While electric power spread to many cities soon after, extending lines to rural areas with less dense populations wasn’t considered cost-effective for major utilities.

“If you lived along a big highway, if you lived in Mayo or Branford, they would drop a line to you,” Hart says. “But if you were over a certain distance away, they wouldn’t bother with you because it was too expensive.”

During that period, Evans-Rieg tricts to its service area, requiring two more board remembers the everyday inconve- members to represent them. In 1950, 10 years after SVEC had energized its first lines, the cooperative niences common on a farm without electricity. Washing clothes meant provided electric service to more than 2,900 rural farms and homes. a time-consuming process during Evans-Rieg’s home was among those. After she which her mother had to boil water, had grown accustomed to the brilliance of electric use a rub board to clean them, and light, the first electric appliance she remembers hang them on a line to dry. her family getting was a washing machine. It even Her own chores were a hassle, too, came equipped with a ringer that helped them get particularly pumping water for baths, as Cakes lined up in a cake competition during an well as pumping water for the cows, hogs clothes from the wash to the line faster. annual meeting. Electric Next came the electric stove, a convenience her and chickens her family kept. Even keepovens and mixers were ing the stove on was sometimes dependent mother in particular wished she could have had a luxury during the earlier while raising her family, and an electric on the weather. introduction of electric refrigerator to replace the older kerosene model.

“We had a wood stove first, and then we power.

“We didn’t have to worry about the wind blowing got a little kerosene stove, but we had to be careful of the wind blowing through the win- or anything,” Evans-Rieg says. “It was just amazing cake, and my mom said that’s because she had the to us and mind-boggling to think we could have all electric mixer,” Evans-Rieg says. “So in time we had dows or it would blow the burner out,” she these luxuries because we were just poor farmers.” to go get an electric mixer, too.” says.

After the novelty of electric power had worn off, Dees recalls the lengths his family and their neighbors would go to avoid wasting food before SVEC continued to play an important role in her family’s life. Her parents rarely missed an opporelectric refrigeration. In particular, he remembers Today, as SVEC celebrates its 80th anniversary, working with his father to carry a electricity no longer inspires the load of beef to the local canning same kind of awe in most memplant, where they could preserve bers that it once did. But Dees and the entire thing for a penny a Evans-Rieg still believe the cooperaThat first time we turned on the light to can. The Dees family ate a lot of tive is every bit as important as it stewed beef that year. was in those early days. read, it just brightened up the page and “If you couldn’t do that when Dees currently lives with his wife, made the whole house brighter. And I guess you butchered hogs or cattle, Anne, on her uncle’s property, which people would go around to the first got electric power in 1943. Since our outlook on life was much brighter, too. neighbors and share the extras they moved there in 1962, he has because you couldn’t keep it,” he seen tremendous improvements in says. the cooperative’s reliability and out– Christine Evans-Rieg, SVEC member age responses.

“When we first moved out here, lines just ran wherever, usually folAll that changed after SVEC started running electric lines throughout the tunity to see friends and neighbors at the annual lowing dirt roads,” he says. “If a good strong thunSuwannee Valley. Once people began seeing the meeting. Along the way, they even won an elec- derstorm came along, we’d probably go without benefits of electric power from their neighbors, tric bun warmer, which Evans-Rieg still uses, and electricity for a day or two.” even those who were skeptical signed up.

Dees credits much of that improvement to betengaged in some friendly rivalry with the neighbor In 1940, SVEC served just 69 members. By 1947, who won an electric mixer. ter tree-trimming, having seen limbs growing over the cooperative had added two additional dis“That neighbor always won the prizes for best and around power lines through the years in a way that is less common today. Even when service is interrupted, Evans-Rieg sees it more as an opportunity to be reminded of all the modern conveniences she enjoys today than a frustration.

“Everything is electric: the air conditioning, the heating. It would be hard to live without it now,” she says. “When the power goes out, it makes us appreciate all that we have.”

Even more important than the simple conveniences electricity provided is the way it impacted her quality of life. With less time dedicated to the task of simply getting by, families had more time to spend with each other, to learn, and to plan for the future.

“That first time we turned on the light to read, it just brightened up the page and made the whole house brighter,” Evans-Rieg says. “And I guess our outlook on life was much brighter, too.”  SVEC employees in front of the co-op’s first substation.

A brighter future

“

Modern convenience

”

SCAMS

Don’t be a victim

Scams are an ongoing threat — and get more sophisticated every day. SVEC wants to help protect you by making you aware of some common ones:

Pay-now-or-else scheme

You receive a call from someone telling you that your power will be cut off that day (sometimes within the hour) if you don’t pay now. SVEC will never ask members who have delinquent accounts to pay immediately “or else.” Members with delinquent accounts will receive notices in the mail well in advance — never just a single notification right before disconnection.

Personal information requests

The caller asks for personal information, like a social security number. SVEC never calls members asking for this type of information.

Pay over the phone

They ask you to pay with a prepaid debit card or your personal bank card over the phone.

SVEC will never call and demand payment over the phone, nor will they ask for prepaid debit cards.

Visits to your home

Scammers call or show up on your doorstep and offer a service on behalf of SVEC or ask for personal information or payment. SVEC employees will never call or come to your home to promote a service or ask for personal information or payment. Also, keep in mind that all SVEC employees carry a cooperative-issued photo ID card.

myCHOICE PREPAY

Your Power, Your Plan, Your Choice Tired of monthly electric bills?

MyChoice Prepay makes it easy to keep track of your account balance and pay for energy as you use it. Visit svec-coop.com/mychoice or call 800-447-4509 to sign up today.

Follow us!

Be aware that some scammers can make an SVEC number appear on your caller ID; don’t let that fool you.

Stay up to date on what’s happening at SVEC by following us on Facebook and Twitter.

If you suspect a scammer is on the phone or at your door, call SVEC’s Member Service Department at 800-447-4509.

Apply now for Tallahassee tour

For the 40th consecutive year, SVEC is sponsoring a tour of Tallahassee for high school juniors. While in Tallahassee, the students will be introduced to the cooperative business model and Florida’s legislative process. Possible activities include a tour of the state Capitol, participation in a mock bill debate on the floor of the Senate or House of Representatives, and visits to the governor’s mansion and the Florida Supreme Court.

To be eligible for the tour which takes place Feb. 7-8, the student must be enrolled in the 11th grade of a high school or home-school in SVEC’s service territory and have a grade point average of at least 3.0. The student must also be a dependent of an SVEC member but cannot be a child or grandchild of a current SVEC employee or trustee.

Nine students will be chosen for the tour based on a 250- to 500-word essay they submit titled “Why I want to represent Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative on the Tallahassee Youth Tour.”

More information and a tour application form can be obtained from junior-class guidance counselors or on our website at svec-coop.com/youth-tour.

facebook.com/sveccoop @SVEC_COOP_FL

Christmas Electric Safety Tips As you decorate your home for the holidays, don’t forget to keep fire safety in mind!

SVECares

Employees recently volunteered to landscape the front yard of The ARC of North Florida’s Live Oak residential group home. We are grateful to Nobles Greenhouse & Nursery and Beaver Dump Truck Service for providing us with materials at a reduced cost.

SVEC is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

Don’t let your tree get dry; water it daily.

Check your electrical cords, including extension cords, for exposed wires.

Never leave a candle burning out of view.

Don’t overload outlets with decorations.