Loyal readers of this column may remember last year when I had to notify you that the cooperative would be ending the year with a loss and was unable to retire capital credits. Not the easiest message to deliver during your first year on the job.

That’s why it brings me a tremendous amount of pride to tell you that we are on track to end this year with positive margins, and our board recently approved a capital credit retirement that is just shy of $570,000. You’ll see your portion of that retirement on your December electric bill.

With this retirement, we have returned over $32 million to our members since 2007. To put this in perspective for you, Cherryland has retired 46% of our total patronage capital, compared to the national median of 30%. We continue to be very proud of our commitment to returning your patronage capital to you.

This number is even more astounding when you consider that our equity position is the best in the state at almost 40%, compared to the statewide median of 28%. Retiring capital credits decreases our equity, and holding on to capital credits increases it. It says a lot about our financial integrity and our commitment to the cooperative model that we’ve managed to balance those two dynamics so well.

As we look back on our year, there are a few other points of pride that I want to share with you.

We continue to deliver industry leading reliability. As of the writing of this column, we are still tracking at the gold standard four 9s of electric reliability. How quickly we restore power is another interesting stat I watch closely. This year, the average outage on our system was 83 minutes. Across the state, the average is 340 minutes. What this tells me is that we not only do an excellent job of keeping the lights on, but we also do a good job of getting them back on when the power goes out.

We deliver this industry-leading reliability while running a very lean ship. We serve 633 members per employee, compared to the national median of 350 members per employee. Our leanness means we can deliver excellent service at a lower cost to you. The average amount an electric cooperative consumer pays per year for electric service nationally is $2,300, and statewide, is about $1,800. The average amount a Cherryland member pays is $1,500.

I don’t want to make the picture sound too rosy; we still face significant cost challenges related to inflation on the materials we use to keep your lights on, regulatory and legislative mandates, interest rates, and general inflation. We are leveraging our leanness and our strong finances to spread our rapidly increasing costs out over smaller rate increases for you.

We are better off than most as we navigate these challenges because of the work we’ve put into improving our system, because of our leanness, and because of our employees’ abiding commitment to you all. While utilities continue to face tough times, it’s still a good day to be a Cherryland member.