Citizens Electric conducts virtual shareholder meeting

PERRYVILLE, Mo. — Citizens Electric Corp., the Perryville, Missouri-based utility cooperative serving all of Perry and Ste. Genevieve counties along with eastern St. Francois and northern Cape Girardeau counties, held its annual shareholder's meeting Thursday.

The meeting took place online because of the COVID-19 pandemic and member-owners elected CEC board members via a secured third-party online platform.

Rex Meyr Sr. of Jackson was elected to the CEC board to represent Cape Girardeau County. Reelected to the board were Mark Wengert , representing Perry County, and William Odneal , representing Ste. Genevieve and St. Francois counties.

During the meeting, the company reported the return of $4 million of capital credit refunds to members during 2020, which was the highest capital credit retirement in the utility co-op's history. CEC also reported the co-op's members experienced the lowest number of outage minutes in the company's history last year.

The co-op has not had a rate increase since May 2015 and the company does not expect to increase rates this year.

According to the company website, CEC has approximately 27,600 members, 48 substations, more than 2,800 miles of overhead lines and 156 miles of underground lines in its four-county service area.

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