In 2024, WEC set to return $278,833 to members active in 1999
When your electric cooperative takes in more money than it costs to run the utility, where does that money go? Have you ever noticed a credit on your November electric bill? As a member of an electric cooperative, excess revenue is returned to you and your fellow member-owners. This is a significant difference between shareholder-owned utilities and cooperatively-owned utilities. When for-profit utilities collect excess revenue, those profits enrich their shareholders. In contrast, members of cooperative utilities get excess revenue back over time in the form of capital credit refunds. There is a pool of funds allocated for every year the Co-op collected excess revenue; the amounts are different year to year. According to WEC Board Treasurer Don Douglas, WEC has returned $9,697,000 in capital credit refunds to Co-op members since 1998.
In recent years, the WEC Board usually chose to refund members from both decades past and the previous year, so that both longtime and very new members realized the benefit of belonging to an electric co-op. This year, the Board will refund a total of $278,833 to eligible members who were on the Co-op’s lines in 1999. This distribution, which pushes WEC’s total refunds to the brink of $10 million, means that all members with active accounts before the year 2000 will be fully refunded for excess revenue collected before the millennium.
Refunds to some individuals may be reduced by any uncollected or delinquent amounts owed to the Co-op. Refunds will appear as a credit on current members’ November 2024 bills. Former members are also entitled to receive refunds if they have remaining capital credits after they leave WEC’s lines. To be eligible, former members must have a minimum $50 capital credit distribution and submit an authorization form to the Co-op. For this reason, it’s important to keep WEC informed of your current address even after you’re no longer a member. In July, WEC mailed Capital Credit Patronage Refund Authorization forms to former members. Those forms are due back by September 27, 2024.
The Co-op has recently begun offering conditional early retirements to the estates of deceased members or their heirs. Contact Dawn Johnson for more information at 802-224-2332.
Listed below are the names of people or accounts from 1999 whose authorization forms were returned as undeliverable. A note about the way names are organized: for accounts that had joint membership by members with two different last names, first names are not tied to their correct last names. Instead, the first names are paired and the last names are paired. Please excuse this system quirk.
If you know anyone on this list or their rightful heirs, please have the former member or beneficiary contact Washington Electric Cooperative directly at 802-223-5245 or 1-800-WEC-5245.
WEC’s Community Fund
Approximately 14% of WEC members currently choose to donate their refunds to WEC’s Community Fund. Any current or former member may direct their capital credit refund to the Community Fund as a one-time or ongoing gift. The Community Fund supports small not-for-profits serving Central Vermont communities. The people served by these organizations are often WEC members. The full recipient list is published on page [[[X]]]. A report on 2024 Community Fund activities will be published in Co-op Currents in 2025.