WATT’S UP SUWANEE VALLEY ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE EMPLOYEE AND RETIREE NEWSLETTER | FALL 2017
from the ceo Each October, not-for-profit cooperatives celebrate National Co-op Month as a way to recognize the contributions of cooperatives and how they differ from for-profit utilities. This year, we have special reason to celebrate a couple of the principles that make electric cooperatives special. One of the those principles is our concern for community. As a cooperative, we have a special responsibility to support and improve the quality of life of our members and the region. We sponsor local high school teams, offer individual scholarships and raise money for local charities, to name a few of our activities. Our community commitment was never more evident than during the week following Hurricane Irma. All of our energy and resources went into restoring power quickly and safely to our members. At the same time, it became obvious to many people that large corporate utilities placed our region low on their priority list. Another defining principle is the cooperation among Continued on next page
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Safety Member Experience Outreach to Community Reliability Economic Viability
Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative’s board of trustees and employees are committed to operating Suwannee Valley Electric with five core values as its mission: Safety
Safety Improvement Plan »»
Reduce minor vehicle incidents/ liability
»»
Speak up, listen up
»»
Improve on the little things; they matter
3
years without a lost-time injury!!!
It is the earnest desire of the cooperative to conduct its operations with the utmost regard for the safety of its employees, its consumers and the public. For this reason, SVEC provides equipment, specifications and working conditions designed to promote efficient
operations, eliminate accidents and minimize hazards that may cause injuries.
Member Experience
Improving member experience is a continual process, often involving changes made in response to lessons learned. Last year, a lack of phone capacity limited our ability to take calls during Hurricane Hermine. Understandably, many members became frustrated when they couldn’t call our office or report their outage. To prevent a repeat of the situation, SVEC contracted with Minnesota-based Cooperative Response Center Inc. earlier this year to process overflow calls to our outage reporting number. CRC’s system handled over 23,000 calls during Hurricane Irma, resulting in a less frustrating storm experience for many of our members.
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Outreach to Community Calling all volunteers!
Reliability
Want to give back and feel good? SVEC has an opportunity to do just that. Our cooperative has been asked to plant shrubs and spread mulch at one of ARC of North Florida’s group homes in Live Oak. The event takes place on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 4. The more people who can help, the better. If you’re interested, let Jon Little know as soon as you can. Did you know research has shown that volunteering is good for your physical and mental health? It’s true. In a study of 3,351 adults commissioned by United Health Group, people who volunteered in the previous 12 months said that volunteering made them feel healthier, improved their mood, lowered their stress level, and helped them manage a chronic illness by keeping them active and taking their minds off their own problems. Volunteers also had better scores than non-volunteers on nine well-established measures of emotional well-being, including overall satisfaction with life and improved self-esteem.
From proactive tree trimming to installation of new communication and switching equipment, Engineering and Operations take a planned approach to improving the reliability of SVEC’s electric system. As a result, both the number of outages (measured by SAIFI) and the durations of outages (measured by SAIDI) are being reduced.
SAIFI: 2.27 interruptions
January-September 2017
2.69 interruptions
January-September 2016
SAIDI: 191.6 minutes 230.7 minutes
January-September 2017
January-September 2016
Economic Viability
SVEC’s lenders — RUS, CFC and CoBank — require us to maintain several financial ratios at or above specified minimums. A key ratio required by RUS, as well as directed by our Financial Management Plan, is the Times Interest Earned Ratio (TIER). TIER is a measure of our ability to generate sufficient margins (revenues less total expenses) to cover our interest expense on long-term debt. For 2016, SVEC’s TIER was 2.66, which was well above the required 1.25.
2016 TIER = 2.66
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cooperatives. Electric co-ops have a long history of helping each other in times of need. Irma was no exception. We felt privileged to work with employees from other cooperatives. They helped us restore power to our members, and we will always be grateful to them. We could celebrate many things this
month. However, I’m especially proud of the way we all worked together despite the challenges of Hurricane Irma. Whether they were wading through high water, climbing up poles infested with fire ants, answering phones or making sandwiches, each of our employees did their part to restore power to nearly
25,000 of our members’ accounts in just seven days. It was truly a team effort, and I am grateful to have been a part of it. Best wishes, Mike
service anniversaries
James Bell Oct. 6, 37 years
Jerry Yunes Oct. 9, 5 years
Christy Tuckey Oct. 20, 3 years
Mike Guillery Oct. 24, 29 years
Randy Snipes Oct. 24, 6 years
Kurt Miller Nov. 4, 21 years
Bill Roberts Nov. 14, 27 years
Danny Collins Nov. 14, 25 years
Evan Skeen Nov. 26, 10 years
Bryan Gamble Dec. 12, 27 years
Kelli McKinley Dec. 15, 3 years
Leon Edwards Dec. 17, 27 years
Kathy Hals Dec. 28, 28 years
Irma by the numbers
230
1,500
Poles replaced
226 Hotel room nights for guest crews (number of rooms times number of nights occupied)
900
Fuses replaced
Lunches packed
38,599 Calls taken from members
83
Gallons of milk consumed
pounds of laundry cleaned for guest crews
25,000
Transformers replaced
28
636
2,200 Sleeves used to splice broken lines
Feet of lines replaced
43
Gallons of orange juice consumed
130
Gallons of tea consumed
1,820
Sandwiches made
Happy Birthday Jon Little ............................Oct. 1
Kenneth Bryant..............Nov. 10
Jared Clark......................Nov. 24
Dale Turman....................Oct. 12
Bryan Gamble.................Nov. 19
Brent Cothern................... Dec. 8
Jerry Yunes......................Oct. 12
Kevin Hines.....................Nov. 19
Bruce Spradley.............. Dec. 14
Anthony Thompkins........Oct. 17
De NesSmith...................Nov. 22
Brad Boswell ................. Dec. 23
Brenda Pryce.................. Oct. 20
Joe Barclay......................Nov. 24
Gabe Carver.................... Dec. 26
Craig Ragan..................... Nov. 4
Jason Carroll...................Nov. 24
Braxton Hicks................. Dec. 29
Farewell
Welcome...
Member Service Representative Maria Suarez comes to us from Glades Electric Cooperative, where she worked for 12 years. Maria loves everything outdoors, including fishing, hunting and kayaking. She’s married to Frank and has two sons, Joel and Frankie, and a stepdaughter, Cassandra.
Good riddance, Irma. Although you brought us closer together and introduced us to new friends, we don’t miss you at all!
Congratulations Jerry Yunes has been promoted to energy control center supervisor. Jerry began his career at SVEC in 2012 as a member service representative. He became a GIS mapping specialist in 2013 and has frequently filled in as a dispatcher.
Family News
Cashier Cathy Erixton is excited to announce that she’s going to be a grammy for the first time. Her daughter, Kelly, and son-in-law, Brandon, who live in Alachua, are expecting their baby to arrive in March.
Jimmie Taylor III, son of Construction Foreman Jimmie Taylor, is averaging 22 points a game for Vrijednosnice Osijek, a professional basketball team in Osijek, Croatia.
Accountant Jessica Graham welcomed a new nephew, Weston Joseph Graham, on Sept. 9. Weston weighed 6 pounds, 13 ounces.
SVEC Chief Financial Officer Christine Moor an her husband, David, welcomed their son Maddox Edward into their family Oct. 11. He weighed 8 pounds, 9 ounces and was 20.75 inches long. He is the little brother of Savannah.
What I did this summer By Jessica Graham
My eclipse experience By Christy Tuckey
This summer I attended the 2017 Tax, Finance and Accounting Conference for Cooperatives, which was held in Salt Lake City, Utah. Since I had never traveled to Utah, my husband and I decided to go early and explore the beautiful city. We cheered on Real Salt Lake (the local soccer team), went indoor go-kart racing with speeds up to 40 mph, and toured the city on Segways. It was an exciting, fun and educational experience.
Watching the eclipse in its totality was indescribably amazing. No Google image comes close to the beauty of seeing it in person, and I’m so thankful to have had the opportunity to witness it. In the moments leading up to the eclipse, breezes picked up and temps dropped into the ’80s. The sun rays no longer kissed at our skin. Sunlight shifted from a glaring brightness to an almost incandescent light, and finally, near darkness. The crickets sang, I cried (ha-ha), and as the sun returned to its normal glory, the shadows of the partial eclipse crept through the canopy of trees.
Our mission to Ecuador By Denny Tompkins
In August, my daughter Madyson and I went to Ecuador on a mission trip with nine others from our church. We stayed for a week. Although the elevation — 14,000 feet above sea level — was hard to get used to, we did backyard Bible studies with the children and visited a lot of places, including Inca Empire. It was great seeing what God is doing in the lives of the Ecuadorians and the missionaries. Ecuador is such a pretty place, and the weather was amazing.
From our retirees Clarence Crowe This year is Canada’s 150th anniversary. To celebrate, they offer free admission to all their national parks, and we decided to take them up on it. After spending time with our daughter in Minnesota, we traveled north to Riding Mountain National Park in the province of Manitoba. One tip we can offer is if you are traveling to our northern states or Canada, go before Labor Day! Several of the programs and events we planned to see on this trip were closed for the season. We saw our first buffalo at this park; in fact, we saw one up close and personal — too close for our comfort. We continued west from there into Saskatchewan and visited both units of the Grasslands National Park. The unexpected highlight of this park was the chance to see a Dark Sky. We saw BILLIONS of stars, the space station and the incredible Milky Way. If you ever get a chance to visit a dark-sky preserve, do not pass it up. It is awesome! Going west to the province of Alberta, we made it to Banff National Park and Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Snow fell every day, but were still able to walk on a glacier, hike to some incredibly turquoise lakes fed by glacier runof, and see gorgeous mountain waterfalls. Our last day in Canada ended on a sad note as we drove into Waterton Lakes National Park. Much of the park had been decimated by wildfire two weeks before. The trees on the blackened mountains looked like black toothpicks from below. We saw several crews of linemen rebuilding power lines that had burned during the wildfire. So, while Florida was flooding, Canada was burning. We thank Canada for letting us visit their parks for free this year. They are quite spectacular whether you are looking at lakes, waterfalls, mountains, prairies or grasslands.
Larry Musgrove Just thankful to know all of the SVEC team came through Hurricane Irma safely, and we were all blessed by how quickly everyone got their electricity restored. We are fortunate to be served by SVEC as opposed to the corporate power companies, which, in my mind, do not have common unity (community) that rural co-ops are blessed with. Thanks again, SVEC!! Eph. 4:13
Employee health fair
FAVORITE RECIPE
Dr. Michael Wood, D.C. – Information about chiropractic services
Buffalo Chicken Dip
This year’s employee health fair features a variety of health care providers. Come take advantage of free services and learn how you can be healthier. Walmart Vision – Vision screenings Paz Kent – Nutrition information Suwannee County Health Department – Information on their services, especially smoking cessation Dr. Ashley Dunn. A.P., C.H. – Information about simple pressure points acupuncture Airport Clinic – Flu and tetanus shots and full-panel blood draws Skinner’s Body and Fitness – Information about their fitness center and memberships
When: Thursday, Nov. 2, 7 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Where: Operations Building Lunch will be catered by The Dixie Grill
From Cathy Erixton 2 cups cooked shredded chicken (You can also use canned chicken, just drain cans.)
1 package cream cheese ¼ cup your favorite hot sauce ½ cup ranch dressing 2 cups cheddar cheese
Put all ingredients in a baking dish and bake at 375° for 20 minutes. After that, put the dip in a slow cooker set on “warm,” and bring on the chips!
Electric CEOs lead breakout session in Chattanooga SVEC CEO Mike McWaters and Seminole Electric Cooperative CEO Lisa John were the focus of a breakout session on “The evolving G&T/ distribution cooperative relationship” during the NRECA Region 2 and 3 meetings in Chattanooga. McWaters and Johnson discussed the ways cooperatives work together to provide value to members.
Stay connected with SVEC facebook.com/sveccoop @SVEC_COOP_FL