Annual Meeting

Rate increase announced, high speed fiber internet project update, and board member re-elections announced during annual meeting April 27

Over 660 members, guests, and employees attended our annual meeting at Millett Hall in April. All enjoyed a delicious buffet meal, learned about Butler Rural Electric Cooperative’s upcoming projects, received giveaways, and had a chance to win door prizes. Members also viewed the meeting through Facebook Live.

Jay Hasbrook, member of the board of trustees, gave a prayer at the beginning of the meeting. 2022 Youth Tour delegates Abigail Hill, Adeline Perry, and Nathaniel Schulte led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Members approved the 2022 annual meeting minutes and the 2024 nominating committee members. The nominating committee will choose candidates for next year’s board of trustees election.

2023 Rate Increase

In his report to members, general manager Tom Wolfenbarger announced the cooperative’s first distribution rate increase in six years. “The cost of goods needed to deliver electricity to your home has risen over the last six years,” said Tom. “As a not-for-profit utility, we must pass along rising costs to members.” Learn more about the rate increase on pages 18F and 18G.

Planning for the future

Over the winter, the board of trustees and cooperative staff worked to develop and update the cooperative’s strategic plan. We do this every two to three years to evaluate and determine the focus of activities for the organization. Our latest efforts have resulted in seven goals for the cooperative to incorporate into daily tasks. These goals include positioning the cooperative for improved resilience and preparedness for cybersecurity threats, implementing programs and initiatives to improve or maintain reliability, further developing succession plans within the cooperative, and more. Milestones achieved to meet this set of goals will position the cooperative well as we face the unknowns and uncertainty the future has in store.

Improved reliability

The cooperative staff works hard to make sure your lights come on when you want them to. Your board of trustees supports these efforts by approving budgets and work plans for projects to enhance reliability. But, not all outages occur on cooperative lines. When outages occur on the transmission grid, distribution facilities attached to those transmission lines also experience outages, often at multiple substations.

“For many years, the cooperative’s outage statistics have been significantly impacted by outages on the transmission grid, especially on the western side of our system between Fairfield and Oxford,” said Wolfenberger. Engineering and operations employees from Buckeye Power, our generation and transmission cooperative, conduct annual planning meetings with personnel from Duke Energy to discuss projects and reliability issues. Duke Energy has plans for improvements to the transmission system between Fairfield and Oxford. If successfully completed, these projects will provide a significant improvement to the reliability of the transmission grid on the western side of Butler County, and subsequently to our substations attached to these facilities.

2023 Legislative Conference

Wolfenbarger reported that he attended NRECA’s Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., in April with board members Dave Evans and Mike Tilton. The conference is a national cooperative event where representatives from cooperatives across the country converge on Washington in a combined effort to talk to our congressional leaders about issues important to cooperatives and their members. Number one on the agenda this year was to discuss the need for reliability and affordability to be key components of energy policy and the energy transition away from traditional sources of power generation. Ohio cooperative leaders met with the offices of several of Ohio’s congressional leaders to voice our thoughts. Political advocacy is an ongoing effort, and we will continue to participate with belief in the old adage, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

Fiber internet project update

Board of Trustees President Dave Evans updated members on the cooperative’s partnership with altafiber. In 2021, Butler Rural Electric Cooperative completed a partnership project with altafiber to bring fiber access to over 2,000 member locations where high-speed internet was not available. The project also provided fiber service to the cooperative’s substations and switching equipment. The project was a huge success, bringing greater operational flexibility to enhance reliability while improving the quality of life for members. We have received tremendously positive feedback from members because of this project.

After the 2021 project was completed, we still had 2,800 members who did not have adequate and reliable access to high-speed internet, which is a quality of life issue. altafiber continues to expand its fiber network in our area, and members continue to gain access to fiber

Continued on page 18B