As the holiday season approaches, it’s a good time to reflect on the past year and my first year at Farmers RECC.
Reflecting on 2023, I first want to recognize Farmers RECC’s team of highly qualified employees. It’s a privilege to work alongside each of these individuals who work together to benefit you, our members.
In 2023, we accomplished several goals and met new challenges while remaining focused on power at competitive rates to improve the quality of life for our members and the communities we serve.
As the CEO, I’m responsible for our co-op’s performance and I want you to know we’re working hard for you every day of the year to provide safe, affordable, reliable and sustainable electricity.
As we close the book on 2023, here are some highlights from the year:
- This year, our cooperative faced two historic storms, one in March and another in June, that caused significant damage to our system. Our team of dedicated employees worked around the clock to restore service to our members in both outage events.
- Despite this year’s storm-related outages, Farmers RECC employees worked diligently and kept safety a priority. Our employees recorded zero lost-time accidents in 2023, all while driving thousands of miles and working thousands of hours to ensure power reliability.
- We cleared 277 miles of our service territory, known as rights-of-way, to keep power lines free of tree limbs, restore power outages more quickly and reduce unexpected costs for repairs.
- In July, Farmers RECC held its annual member meeting, an essential component of a member-owned and member–controlled cooperative.
- Farmers RECC worked alongside fellow Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives to make necessary investments to offer reliable, sustainable electricity at competitive electric rates— factors essential for attracting new businesses and new jobs to our region.
- This year, the Farmers RECC board of directors authorized the distribution of $98,455 in capital credit refunds. The money being refunded this year represents the balance of net margins in 1998.
- These are just a few of our achievements from 2023. I am confident that each project, program and initiative undertaken this year aligned with the mission of improving the lives of our members.
Thank you for being a consumer-member of Farmers RECC. Best wishes to each of you for a wonderful holiday season and in the coming new year.
- Toby Moss, President and CEO