By General Manager Ryan Mueller
Thank you to everyone who came to Central Electric Cooperative’s Annual Meeting. It was great to see so many members gather for a meal, to visit and to learn about your cooperative’s activities over the last year. Annual Meetings are a good reminder that Central Electric is not just another power company. This cooperative belongs to the people it serves.
October is also National Cooperative Month, which makes this a good time to talk about why cooperatives still matter. We hear the word “cooperative” so often that it can start to feel like just another name. But it’s more than a name. It’s a way of doing business, and it is built around people working together.
That is what makes a cooperative different.
A cooperative starts with a simple idea. People working together to meet a need. For electric cooperatives, that need was bringing power to rural homes, farms, schools, and small towns. Years ago, many rural areas were told it didn’t make sense to build power lines out into the country. The houses were too far apart, the miles were too long, and there was not enough money to be made.
Thankfully, rural people didn’t wait around for someone else to fix the problem.
They organized, talked to their neighbors, signed up members and held meetings around kitchen tables, in community halls and anywhere people would gather. Step by step, they found a way to bring electricity to places that had been left behind.
That same kind of determination helped create the Rural Electrification Act, which celebrates its 90th anniversary this year. The REA helped change rural America, but it still took local people to make it happen. It took people willing to step up, serve on boards, sign papers, build lines, set poles and believe that rural families deserved the same chance as everyone else.
It’s hard to imagine what rural America would look like today without the REA. I know my own life would have been different. Without rural electricity, I probably would not have had the farm and rural upbringing that I loved. Like a lot of families, we may have ended up living in town instead. That is something worth thinking about. The REA didn’t just bring lights to the countryside, it helped make rural life possible for generations of families.
That is still the heart of what we do.
Central Electric is owned by you, our members. We are not owned by outside investors. We do not exist to make money for shareholders somewhere else. We are here to provide safe, reliable electricity to the people at the end of our lines.
When the cooperative has margins, those dollars are eventually returned to members through capital credits. When decisions are made, they are made by a local board of directors elected by the membership. Those directors are members, too. They live here. They work here. They know the roads, the towns, the farms, the businesses and the people we serve.
Electricity is not just another bill. It keeps the water running, the bins working, the house warm, the shop lights on, the livestock cared for and the business moving. It powers churches, schools, main streets and homes across our service territory. When you live and work in rural areas, reliable electricity is not a luxury. It is part of everyday life.
Cooperative principles may sound formal, but they really come down to common sense. Members have a voice, people are treated fairly, communities matter and cooperatives help each other.
This year also gives us a good reason to look back and think about where we came from. America is celebrating its 250th anniversary, and the Rural Electrification Act is celebrating its 90th. Those are big milestones, and they are good reminders of what can happen when people work together for something bigger than themselves.
A lot has changed since the first electric lines were built across rural America. The equipment is different, the grid is more complicated, costs are going up and technology keeps moving faster. But the reason cooperatives exist has not changed. We are still here to serve our members.
Central Electric has a strong history, but our job is not just to talk about the past. Our job is to take those same values and use them to meet the challenges in front of us. The energy industry will keep changing. If we stay focused on our members, our employees and our communities, we will keep moving in the right direction.
A cooperative is local, member-owned and built on service. At its best, it is neighbors working together to take care of the places we call home. That’s why a cooperative matters as much today as it ever has.