June 1st marks my 9th year here at the Co-op. when I look back at the technologies that we have in incorporated in this business, we have come a long way. Nine years ago you had to go out and read your own meter calculate your usage look up your charges figure out the tax and fill out your own statement and send it to us with your check. Once we got your statement we had to manually enter your reading into the software then enter your payment. That was pretty time consuming for all of us. Now with the AMR (Automatic Meter Reading) it has allowed us to get your meter reading automatically, which in turn automatically gets entered into our billing software, and generates a statement for you. With this system it allows you to see your bill on-line at our website. Not only will you see your current bill but you will have a one year history of your account to look at so you can compare how your usage has or has not changed from a year ago. You can also pay your bill online using our secure online pay feature. Talk about saving time and money. You don’t need to write out a check and send it in to us, and when you pay online, it automatically gets entered into our billing software, saving us time from manually entering it. Another option we have implemented for you is the ability to pay your account with either a credit or debit card, or with ACH. ACH is a secure method of paying your bill by having the funds deducted from either your checking or savings account. We have been starting to get requests to have electric bills emailed to customers rather than being mailed, this is something that we will be looking at in the future. Another technology we are implementing is issuing laptop computers to our line crews, by doing so the linemen will have the whole customer list and their locations at their fingertips, rather than having to page through literally hundreds of pages of names and maps to find a location. Previously we had to print customer lists and location lists every month, for each of the trucks, that was close to 50,000 sheets of paper printed every year. Now we will have the opportunity to update their customer list in just a matter of seconds everyday if we want to. There are many other uses for these computers as well.

These are just a few things that we have implemented, and we are always studying new technologies weighing the cost/benefit. We are pretty conservative when it comes to spending your money, so we like to make sure the technology or process we are looking at is the most cost effective way to get the job done.

Anytime you have questions or suggestions we would like to hear from you. We welcome your visit into our office or call us (218) 743-3131 or Toll Free 1 (800) 762-4048, or email us at support@nieci.com, or log onto our web site www.northitascaelectric.com and there is a link to contact us there as well.

See you at the Annual Meeting!!!! June 9, 2007 9 a.m. here at the Coop Headquarters in Bigfork.