Mergers and acquisitions are common occurrences in the electric industry, and the recent acquisitions of CIPS and Illinois Power by out of state corporations have left your Cooperative as the only locally owned power supplier in the southeastern corner of the State.

One typical disadvantage resulting from mergers and acquisitions is the loss of local purchasing and local offices.  Multi-state corporations almost always centralize purchasing to reduce costs and close local offices to improve their bottom line.  While those practices can increase profits for the corporation, they are usually detrimental to the local community.

The founders of Southeastern recognized the importance of customer service and configured the Cooperative to provide the quickest response possible to construction and maintenance issues, including power outages.  More specifically, Southeastern has a central headquarters located in Eldorado and stations eight linemen there for construction and maintenance purposes.

The Cooperative maintains a duplicate arrangement at its Marion District Operations Center, and also has two line crews and two utility servicemen at the Benton District Operations Center.  Because the utility servicemen in those headquarters have staggered work weeks, the Cooperative is able to provide certain services there from Monday through Saturday.

The Cooperative also has small district offices located in Golconda and Rosiclare.  Currently, four linemen work out of each of those district offices, and service is available on a Monday through Friday basis.

Both the Golconda and Rosiclare district offices have limited space available for accommodating the equipment and materials necessary to provide quality service, and since they are only 15 miles apart, there are several advantages in constructing a new District Operations Center approximately midway between the two.  The new building will be known as the "Shawnee Hills" District Operations Center and will house eleven employees, including two line crews, one forestry crew, two utility service personnel and one engineering technician.

Although Southeastern's configuration of a central headquarters surrounded by three District Operations Centers results in a somewhat greater expense than a single central headquarters, our bottom line at the end of the year is not how much money we made, but how well we served our members.