Key takeaways from MMUA Summer Conference

Useful insights prove beneficial to all Heartland customers

Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association (MMUA) held their annual Summer Conference in August.

This event provides an opportunity for networking and educational content for municipal utility leaders.

Heartland Energy Customer Relations Manager Kelly Dybdahl attended the conference in Fargo and brought back some key takeaways relevant to all Heartland customers.

Below, Dybdahl shares what he found most valuable about the conference.

Public power value

Industry wide, we need to do a better job bragging about ourselves and the value of public power. Municipal electric utilities provide great value to their communities, both financially and through services. We typically don’t quantify that value and present it to the public.

Ursula Schryver from the American Public Power Association gave a presentation titled: Protecting your Utility from a Buyout or Sellout.

Schryver serves as the staff liaison to APPA’s Buyout/Sellout working group, which is a group I wasn’t aware existed. She collects data and works to understand the issues that lead to buyouts and sellouts. This was a very insightful presentation and relevant to all utilities.

APPA offers a variety of beneficial resources to help utilities protect themselves from a buyout threat. While your utility may not be under a specific threat, these tools can help you show the utility’s value to the community and your elected officials.

I often present to city councils and utility commissions on the value of public power, and intend to utilize these tools myself to continue offering insight into all the benefits a municipal utility provides.

Pay equity

I attended a breakout session on pay equity. I know municipalities often struggle to keep pace with wages. This is usually seen mostly in electric line workers’ wages.

Municipal utilities must compare themselves not only to other municipalities, but to the entirety of the competitive job market, especially if an employee doesn’t have to move in order to gain a higher paying job at a neighboring cooperative or investor-owned utility.

I don’t have a solution to this problem, but I do see our customers struggle with it consistently. I will continue to educate myself on ways municipalities can be more competitive.

Heartland has assisted with this through our Workforce Development Program. While I see it being used successfully by customers, there is still work to be done.

Upcoming initiatives

MMUA has outlined several initiatives they are implementing:

• Provide materials and approach incoming commissioners and council members once they are elected to tell the public power story
• Encourage new commissioners to participate in APPA’s Public Power 101 webinars
• Develop a workforce development task force
• Explore the creation of a “mutual aid model” to assist small utilities with operations and maintenance of the electric system.

These initiatives directly align with goals Heartland has set. We will work with MMUA to find commonalities in our goals and share resources for the benefit of our customers.

Like any industry, public power faces challenges. MMUA did a great job at this conference of bringing in speakers relevant to current issues we are all facing and presenting resources and tools to face these challenges.

I look forward to visiting with you all about these takeaways in the coming weeks.