CEO’s Message: Guiding Principles

March 2025

Have you ever considered how the cooperative principles would look if we all applied them in our day-to-day lives? The world would certainly be a better place if everyone made it a priority to find ways to better serve the people around us. What if we made a real effort to help the people closest to us understand the work we do, or if we made serving the community a central part of our lives?

We all know how important a commitment to open communication can be to our relationships, and that is another one of the principles guiding everything Suwannee Valley Electric does as a cooperative. As important as it is for our consumer-members to know what is going on with their system, it isn’t just about transparency. It’s also about being answerable to the people we serve.

That sense of responsibility to our consumer-members is one of the many reasons I’m proud to work for an electric co-op. At SVEC, we aren’t accountable to a group of shareholders living somewhere across the country — we answer to you alone.

It’s also one of the reasons our annual meeting is so important. Each year, we have the chance to come together, reflect on the past year, and share our plans for the year to come. It’s also an important opportunity for consumer-members to talk to SVEC’s leaders face-to-face about the business of our cooperative.

This year, we have a lot to be proud of, even as we navigated significant challenges. In the following pages, you can find SVEC’s financial statements for 2024, along with the minutes of last year’s annual meeting. Through resilience and adaptability, we remain committed to ensuring safe and reliable electric service for our members now and into the future.

But we were also able to achieve so much more over the last year. Together, we raised money to support our local students and ensure they have the materials they need in the classroom. We also continued to provide opportunities for high school students with our Youth Tour and scholarship programs

Through popular events like the Suwannee Valley Cornhole Tournament and the Touch-a-Truck event, we were also able to give back to the United Way of Suwannee Valley. All that while weathering one of the toughest strings of major storms our system has ever seen.

In all, 2024 was a year of resilience for SVEC, and I hope each of you will set aside some time to join us at this year’s annual meeting.

We look forward to seeing all of you there.