Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Welcome to the Buzz, a podcast by Boone Electra Cooperative. The Buzz is a monthly message to our community celebrating what it means to be a member owner of your local electric cooperative, Boone Electric Cooperative, your co op, our community.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Buzz. I'm Zach Smith, communications specialist at Boone Electric Cooperative and today we speaking with Boone Electric Cooperative Director Joel Bullard. Joel, welcome to the program again.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: Well, thank you, Zach. It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: So today we're doing something a little bit different than what we normally do where we're on here to discuss a topic. We're kind of taking listeners beyond the written pages of our plugged in pages in rural Missouri and talking a little bit about the directors themselves. So I know that's probably your least favorite topic of conversation is to talk.
[00:00:59] Speaker C: About yourselves most of the time. I don't like talking about myself, that's for sure.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: But it's also all about the co op too. So, you know, start at the beginning. Where are you from originally, sir, and how long have you been on the board?
[00:01:10] Speaker C: I was born in Jefferson City, Missouri and lived in Nashville, Missouri my whole entire life. And I've served on Boone Electric's board since 1993, which I guess I'm getting ready to wrap up my 32nd year here pretty soon. So it's been a very enjoyable trip. I've enjoyed every, every day that I've served Boon Electric membership. It's a great organization and I'm just entirely thankful that the members saw fit to elect me. So I'm proud of that.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Congratulations on 32 years. And congratulations on. You Were recently, was it last year inducted into the Missouri Institute of Cooperatives hall of Fame?
[00:01:47] Speaker C: Yes, I was. Yes.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: That's a pretty big honor.
[00:01:49] Speaker C: Well, I really appreciate it. It humbled me when I see all the names that preceded me. I don't know that I measure up to those people, but I feel that it's a feather in Ben Electricity's cap. I know there's two other directors that are on the Cooperative hall of Fame, Akee Snar and Jay Turner, and very good friends of mine. And I'm really proud to be on there with them. And I told them when I accepted the award that this is Spin Electric's award, not mine.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Tell me a little bit about. Obviously we've talked before. As a director, you are also a member of Boone Electric. So going back even before you were elected, how long have you been on Boone Electric Cooperative's lines?
[00:02:34] Speaker C: My family and myself have been on Boone Electric's line since I can remember. I guess I remember when I was about 10 or 11 years old or maybe earlier, tagging along beside my mom as she walked out to the meter and us read the meter and we'd come back in the house and get the kitchen table and she'd fill in the numbers across the line and subtract the previous number and she'd know how many kilowatt hours we'd use and multiply it out. And I watch her write the check. So I was familiar that we belong or got our electricity from being electric. When I was 10 years old and I was. My mom always came to the annual meeting so interested in getting the trinkets. And then when I got a little older, we were serviced by Ben Electric on the farm. I just. I've always loved Ben Electric, respected the people that worked at Boone Electric. When I was president of the school board back, we got ready to start building a new high school there in Ashland.
The property that we were purchasing was in the county and it was served by Boone Electric. And since I had maybe just a little influence, I encouraged the board to go get ahead and get Boon Electric service to that school property, to the new high school before we annexed it into the city. That guaranteed that the new high school would be served by Boone Electric and not hammering. And I'm happy about that.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: I'm sure they are too.
Why did you want to become more involved with Boon Electric? You seem to have had an understanding of it way younger than a lot of people I think do with your, like you said, your experience with your mom reading the meter. So at what point were you thinking, you know, I want to be more involved?
[00:04:19] Speaker C: I didn't have an expressed desire, I guess, a burning desire to do that. I knew my neighbor across the road was the director of Ben Electric, and I knew that she was getting close to retirement. But then I was approached by the nominating committee and asked if I would run. And I really had to stop and think about it because I was a young man at that point in time, still young in my mind, but maybe not the rest of me, but I had to really stop and think about that. Do I have the time to really devote to this? Because it is time expensive. It takes a lot of time to be a good director at Ben Electric. And finally, with my family's advice, we decided that I would put my name in to run for election. And I ran against two other people in that first year. And I was fortunate enough to get elected. And I've Had a love of Ben Electric all my life, but I guess when I got elected to the board it just intensified my love for Ben Electric.
When you see the internal working of the organization and all the people that work here for the betterment of the members, you can't do anything but love the organization.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: What were some of those first meetings like just in terms of you're sitting there with, I would assume, other directors who had been there probably for a while at that point. And did you know a lot about co ops before that experience or was it all brand new to you?
[00:05:42] Speaker C: No, I knew quite a bit about a co op through my experience with farm co ops with Farm Way Service Co Op in Columbia and MFA Incorporated. I knew how co ops worked. I didn't know the intricate workings of Boone Electric, but I knew all the co op, the dividends, the Patriot Capital member control, you know, all that stuff I was very familiar with. But I just, I didn't know the intricate workings of Ben Electric but didn't take too long to figure out that I got hooked up with a pretty neat organization.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: So you knew the business model, just the specifics of the electric utility side?
[00:06:19] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely, yes.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: Did anything stand out to you or surprise you about those early meetings, either about serving on the board itself or about the co op here?
[00:06:30] Speaker C: I think the one thing that really hit my heart and still does to this day is one of the basic tenets of the cooperative and that is concern for community. One of the striving things that we strive to do is concern for community. I think you can see it here today with Ben Electric with our four and a half million dollar community center. The cooperative built this for the community and I think that's one of the big differences between the co ops and the other utilities. It's just we are community, we are who we are and that's very important to me.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: And I want to go back to something that you said earlier because you mentioned obviously being on the board, being part of the co op is a big time commitment, but it's not your full time job. Tell us a little bit about who you are outside of the boardroom.
[00:07:18] Speaker C: I've farmed my entire life. I've recently retired and turned it over to our kids. They're running operation now, although I still work almost every day or every day that they'll let me. But we have a seed conditioning business in Ashland, Missouri and I'm fully engaged in helping them do that. So they let me off to come to these meetings. But I still enjoy working and as long as my health will let me do that, I'll keep working. I feel that God's really blessed me in my life. I've never had a day that I really. I've never hated going to work. And I mean, that's a really a blessing when you have that. And on top of that, I get to work with my kids every day. So how can you beat that?
[00:08:02] Speaker A: Yeah, there's nothing better than that. I was talking with another one of Moon Electric Cooperative's directors, Andrew Stanton, not long ago, and he mentioned sort of the same thing. I'm sure for you guys, it's must feel so gratifying to be able to kind of pass on, you know, your life's work to your kids.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: Well, it is gratifying, but it's also got its challenges, like everything, you know, and sometimes I look back at all the hard work and that Janet and I have done and you just wonder if the kids have made the right choice. You know, agriculture is tough. It's a commodity business, not guaranteed any profits. Weather's against you, the market's against you. But I guess it's a lifestyle, you know, and you get used to it. You get your freedom and your own boss and you gotta either get out there and produce or else. So it's good.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Makes it difficult to actually retire.
[00:09:01] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know, you know, I've spent.
My mom used to tell me, don't get so busy working that you don't do anything else. And sometimes I don't think I've heeded my mom's advice because I don't have a lot of hobbies that I enjoy doing, a lot of people. So I guess continuing to work is. Is my hobby.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: During your time on the board, what are some of the, in your opinion, some of the most important things that the membership has accomplished or that the board has kind of steered the ship towards over the years.
[00:09:34] Speaker C: One of the main things, I think looking back on it, Zach, that and I mentioned it today in a board meeting, is back when the board decided to purchase and install the automated meter readers system. At that time, it was the largest capital investment that Ben Electric had made in its history. It was about a 7 and a half to 8 million dollar investment. And it was only topped by the headquarters building that we just finished building a few years ago. But with that new AMI system, it gave us, and I mean us as Ben Electric, it gave us the ability to see where the outages were, give us faster restoration times. We could do remote disconnects. Which freed up labor. We could also read our meters remotely, which saved labor and costs. So in the end, that technology has brought huge savings to Ben Electric over time and it continues to this day. I mean, there's just lots of information that Ben Electric can get from those automatic meter readers that really helped us be efficient, organized. And the betterment of pun Electric, it didn't come without a cost and you know, it was a tough decision for the board, as I recall, and $8 million is a lot of money to lay out, but it's paid itself back.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: As the representatives of the membership as a whole sitting at that board of directors table, you guys are tasked primarily with keeping the electricity affordable and reliable for the members. So you want to be good stewards of the money, obviously.
[00:11:06] Speaker C: Absolutely. You know, you have to take some risks, but you have to take calculated and reasonable risks. And with that, all those decisions that you make, you want to make sure that it helps the cooperative operate more efficiently, more productive, cleaner, and also be a better steward to the community. And you can't. If you don't take some of those risks, you're not going to accomplish any of those goals. You're going to be stagnant or going backwards. So you have to be willing to take a few risks in life or, you know, or else you're not going to go anyplace.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: What are some of the other topics or some of the emerging trends that everyone on the board is focusing on addressing for the future of the co op?
[00:11:52] Speaker C: Right now, I think the biggest thing facing co ops in every utility for that matter right now is the need for more generation and transmission. And with that comes a lot of ifs, you know, but we've got more electric vehicles coming on the market, we got data centers, we got crypto mining.
All of these new things use more electricity, more electricity, more electricity. But at the same time, we are decommissioning a lot of our old existing coal plants. Some of the gas plants are being decommissioned, but yet we need more energy. So the real crucial factor facing everybody in this industry is where's that energy going to come from? And associated our GNT that generates for all the electric co ops in Missouri, we're working on putting new picker plants in now because all these storms that are coming through summer and winter, we're hitting new all time peaks.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Seems like we do it every six months or so.
[00:12:55] Speaker C: And I guess with that, you know, years ago it used to be if the outages were, if you were out for a couple minutes, it was no Big deal. But any more people, if we have a blink on the line, it's considered an outage because of all the new technology out there. And that's something that we don't want to happen. And nobody. But I think that's probably the single biggest issue that's facing all of us in this industry now is where's this. Where's this generation going to come from? How are we going to get it to meet all of our needs? Because, boy, I just can't imagine life without electricity. It's. I mean, I think I read there's six or six and a half billion people in the world and a third of them don't have electricity. Can you believe that today, in 2025?
[00:13:42] Speaker A: I've never lived without it personally, so I really, truly cannot imagine that scenario. And speaking with Clay when he came back from Guatemala, you know, some of the things he describes, it's just so outside of my frame of reference. It's hard to imagine that.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: And with us talking about that, that's one thing that we want to make sure that never happens in this country is that we don't ever run out of electricity, that we always have that supply of electricity to keep our food in the refrigerator or heater homes or run our cars or whatever. It's just a basic necessity of life, and we have to make sure that or do our best to keep that supply coming.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: How would you describe if someone asked you what. What is the cooperative difference to you, Zach?
[00:14:28] Speaker C: I. I mentioned a while ago, and I think basically I just would boil it down as a community. We are who we are. We live here, we work here, employ here. We're community. We care about the community. We're not spread out over three or four states, five states. We serve the people that own us, and we listen to the people that own us. And I mean, as a director, I listen to our members. I'm a member just like everybody else. I'm just trying to carry their voice to the board table.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: So as a member, why should other members like yourself care that they are part and owners of the cooperative?
[00:15:10] Speaker C: Well, I think it's. I think they should care because it's just part of who they are. It's an extension of their home. I would just like to think that the members think that Ben Electric is their business, which it is. Us directors are just there once a month or twice a month, you know, having a meeting to discuss issues that concern their business. And I want all the members to feel like they. It's theirs. And I Hope they do.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: You know, that's one of the things that I think maybe people, whether they're new to the cooperative world or they just haven't engaged with their electric cooperative much, it probably seems a little too good to be true these days to be told that your voice matters and you have a say in how things are run. And obviously that's what the annual meeting is about every year, is the members literally casting their vote for how they want their business to be running. And I know that you all take that responsibility very seriously.
[00:16:04] Speaker C: We went upstairs today and Jimmy showed us a new. Well, you were up there and looked at the new display for linemen, and I think it would be good for every member of Boone Electric. I thought that the day when we were up there, if every member of Boone Electric could see this display of how safety and how faults are recognized and how they're. How our team out in the field fixes problems, it would be really great. But I know that probably can't ever happen, but it would be really good.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Well, you know, we need to figure out some way to make a video or something that we can put online so people can see it, because it is really. It is really interesting. And not just from the historical perspective. I mean, you really. Some of those displays, you can really see how the industry changed from a technological standpoint over the years, but just all the different things that line workers have to know how to do. And yeah, I'm glad that we have a way for them to practice it because obviously, as Jimmy said during part of that tour today, there's a lot of that stuff you can't really recreate while you're out, and you wouldn't want to mass outages and things like that, but knowing how to work on those things and practice them so that when you get in that situation, you're not panicked. You just kind of revert to your flowchart of what comes next and work your way through it. Yeah, it was. It was impressive. I hadn't been up there yet.
[00:17:28] Speaker C: Oh, that was. That was really, really neat. And I think. Well, that's been one of the big.
One of the. I guess if you have a top 10 list of board priorities, I'd say number one probably is safety.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:17:41] Speaker C: The board is very, very concerned about safety. We talk about it every meeting and I guess about anything that the co op needs that would help provide more safety for our linemen. We're probably pretty willing to listen to that.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: We talk a lot about reliability and affordability, but that doesn't mean much if it's not safe first.
[00:18:05] Speaker C: No, that's the number one goal of our directors is safe working conditions for our linemen and our members out there too, because we don't want them touching the line or getting out of their carve a down line or whatever. So electricity is really cool, but it's pretty deadly too.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Well, Joel, thank you for coming back on the show today. I really appreciate you making time and I'm sure this won't be the last time that you're in here.
[00:18:28] Speaker C: Well, thanks Zach. Pleasure to be here and thank you.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: For tuning into the Buzz. Be sure to come back next month and until then, we'll see you somewhere down the line.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Thank you for tuning in to the Buzz, a podcast by Boone Electric Cooperative. To subscribe or for more information, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube X and LinkedIn. And of course, you can always visit us 24 7@ Boonelectric co op. Boone Electric Cooperative, your co op, our community.
