CEO’s Message – May 2026
THE COOPERATIVE Advantage
Board approves $2.8 million refund. Check your May bill for your capital credit refund.
One of the things I enjoy most about this time of year is sharing good news that’s rooted in what makes URE different. Not just as an electric and natural gas provider, but as a cooperative that’s owned by the people we serve.
As we mark 90 years of service this year, it’s a good reminder that the cooperative advantage isn’t something we talk about occasionally. It’s something we’ve practiced, year after year, for nearly a century.
As a member-owned utility, URE is structured differently than a for-profit company. Any margins we earn don’t belong to outside investors. They belong to the members who use our electric and gas services. Those margins are assigned (allocated) to individual member capital credit accounts each year and then used, over time, to operate, maintain, and improve the electric and natural gas systems that serve our communities. Returning that capital to members is an important part of the cooperative model.
On a regular basis, our board of trustees reviews URE’s current financial condition, as well as the cooperative’s needs, including infrastructure investment and debt obligations, and considers the required financial strength to serve both current and future members. Our trustees are constantly balancing rates with reliability and safety, and they take that job seriously.
Each spring, after reviewing detailed financial information, the board determines whether the cooperative can responsibly give back a portion of previously allocated capital credits. When they do, that decision reflects years of careful planning and steady management, not just recent performance. That long-term perspective has guided URE since the very beginning, 90 years ago, not just for the members at the time but also for the benefit of members who would come later.
This year, at its March meeting, the board approved another retirement of capital credits, totaling more than $2.8 million between electric and natural gas operations. For electric, the refund will come from margins earned in 2006, 2007, and part of 2025. For gas, the refund will come from some of the margins earned in 2018 and 2025.
Your share of this cash back will appear as a bill credit on your May gas and/or electric bill. These credits represent a portion of the equity in URE, which you helped build over several years, being returned to you, while still ensuring the cooperative remains financially strong for the future.
This approach allows URE to strike the right balance. We’re able to invest in poles, wires, substations, pipelines, and technology that keep service reliable, while also fulfilling our responsibility to give back member capital when it makes sense to do so.
If you’ve moved off the URE system, you’re still entitled to receive that cash back for the years in which you were a member. If we don’t have a current address on file, we encourage you to contact us so we can make sure those funds find their way to you.
For investor-owned utilities, profits are a goal in themselves. For cooperatives, margins are a tool to deliver reliable service, stable rates, long-term operational sustainability, and eventually, cash back to the members who made it possible.
That’s the result of steady decisions made over time. For 90 years, URE has focused on purpose over profit, and giving back member capital when it makes sense is one of the clearest examples of the cooperative advantage in action.