One of my job functions at North Itasca Electric Co-op., Inc. is overseeing our Merchandising Department. This department provides a value added service for our members. We have a unique opportnity to provide these services due to our location. Bigfork is about 40 miles from Grand Rapids; that’s just far enough for us to be able to offer appliance and EWS (Electric Wiring Supplies) sales. I check the sales flyers each week and we are pretty competitive with our pricing. Obviously we are not going to have the best price all the time. After all, the “Big Box Stores” have a distinct advantage over us in that they buy in huge quantities and distribute to their stores, whereas we only buy for our store. We offer the convenience of being local and we have affordable financing options for our members.

Our appliance department also enhances our government mandates for conservation in energy. We offer a good line of Energy Star appliances and offer rebates to our members that purchase these. This spring we started offering GE appliances again, as we have found a service person to work on them. AA Appliance Repair out of Hibbing (888-840-9625) is certified in repairing Frigidaire and GE appliances and is in our area often, and new to our area is Five Star Mechanical (218-743-6145) out of Effie which is now certified to repair Frigidaire appliances and is working on certification for GE appliances.

We carry the GE top-load Energy Star washing machines along with their front-load line-up, and of course Frigidaire, which been a leader in Energy Star front-loads for some time. Energy Star appliances are sometimes a little more expensive, but adding in the rebates and energy conservation, they are right in line with the others. Please consider an Energy Star appliance when making your next purchase.

Jerry Loney has mentioned our CFL programs in his article and I encourage you to take advantage of these programs as well. We have all heard about energy conservation and it will only become a bigger topic in the future. By providing the Energy Star products and rebates North Itasca Electric Cooperative is doing its part to achieve the conservation requirements.

Another topic I’m sure you’ve heard about is HDTV (High Definition TV). North Itasca Electric Cooperative rebroadcasts analog TV signals from its towers in Bigfork, Max and Orth. We have applied for and received grants from the Federal Government to buy equipment that will allow us to capture the new HD digital signals and convert them to analog, providing we don’t interfere with others or some other entity has not purchased the license to operate on the channels we rebroadcast at. What this means is that if you are watching TV through an antenna and receiving it on one of our re-broadcasted channels, we have bought some time before we have to upgrade fully to HDTV, and that you will still be able to watch TV as you do now without having to upgrade your TV or using a converter box. If you have satellite or cable TV, this will have no effect on you unless you pick up the local channels using a conventional antenna. Sometime this year we will be doing a survey to see how many people actually watch the local TV stations which we re-broadcast and to see if it is worthwhile to invest the necessary dollars to upgrade to HDTV. Remember, we provide this service to you right now at no cost to you, and we don’t receive payment from anyone to rebroadcast these signals. So far the rental space we have available on our towers pays the bills, but is not enough to cover the investment cost to upgrade to HDTV.

We also provide Long Distance Telephone Service and satellite internet through Northland Connect LLC., which is one of the largest providers in the country.

If you have any questions on any of these services please feel free to call our office. We will be happy to discuss our answer any our questions.

We look forward to seeing you at our Annual Meeting on June 14.