Celebrating our membership

Fall is a busy time, and Octo­ber is a par­tic­u­lar­ly event­ful month with school, com­mu­ni­ty events and sports activ­i­ties in full swing. It’s also when all coop­er­a­tives cel­e­brate Nation­al Co-op Month. When I say York Elec­tric cel­e­brates Co-op Month, I real­ly mean we are cel­e­brat­ing you! After all, our co-op wouldn’t exist with­out you, our loy­al mem­bers.

Our core pur­pose is to serve as your pow­er provider and trust­ed ener­gy advi­sor, but we strive to do much more. At YEC, we go beyond the call of duty to help make the com­mu­ni­ties we share bet­ter places to work, live and play. Sim­i­lar to how our wires run through our ser­vice ter­ri­to­ry, our con­cern for com­mu­ni­ty flows through all of our decisions—because being a co-op means being a respon­si­ble part­ner and a good neigh­bor.

As mem­bers of York Elec­tric, you help us accom­plish the goal of help­ing our com­mu­ni­ties thrive, too. In fact, through our Oper­a­tion Round Up pro­gram, you’ve helped us return over $3.7 mil­lion since 2000 to those in need and to local agen­cies work­ing to help oth­ers in our area. Over 75% of our mem­ber­ship elects to round their elec­tric bills to the next high­est dol­lar to con­tribute to the Oper­a­tion Round Up Trust. These funds are man­aged by a sep­a­rate Board of Trustees made up of mem­bers like you and are dis­persed to local help orga­ni­za­tions doing impor­tant work in our com­mu­ni­ty.

This Co-op Month, I am excit­ed to share that we are bring­ing our Oper­a­tion Round Up sup­port to a new, large project! We’ve rec­og­nized a need in our com­mu­ni­ty that has the poten­tial to affect each one of us at some point and are work­ing togeth­er with local offi­cials to fill that need.

This year, we are plan­ning to sup­port the York Coun­ty and Lan­cast­er Coun­ty Emer­gency Man­age­ment offices by restock­ing their emer­gency sup­plies used dur­ing dis­as­ters and major emer­gen­cies. After the last major storm requir­ing emer­gency shel­ter of South Car­oli­na cit­i­zens in York Coun­ty, many of the nec­es­sary sup­plies such as cots, blan­kets, non-per­ish­able foods and med­ical sup­plies were deplet­ed. Oper­a­tion Round Up is step­ping in to help ensure our mem­bers— and oth­ers who may need to call our area home in a disaster—are safe and pro­tect­ed should an emer­gency occur. Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion on this excit­ing project.

Being part of a coop­er­a­tive means work­ing togeth­er towards a com­mon goal—mutually ben­e­fit­ing one anoth­er and the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty. That’s the essence of the coop­er­a­tive spir­it. Our employ­ees and mem­ber-elect­ed board mem­bers are invest­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty in which they live and serve along­side you. Thank you for allow­ing us the priv­i­lege to serve you and thank you for being a mem­ber of York Elec­tric.

 

Paul Basha
Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer