(JEFFERSON, GA., September 21, 2012)—At the 73rd Jackson Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) Annual Meeting on September 20, the Board of Directors announced that in December 2012 the cooperative will mail $5 million in refunds to nearly 180,000 members who received electric service in 1988 and 2011.

“Because we are a not-for-profit cooperative, the board of directors is able to return a portion of the revenue left over after all the bills are paid, funds which we refer to as ‘margins’, to our members at the end of each year,” noted board Chairman Otis Jones. “After this December’s refund, Jackson EMC will have returned $90 million in margin refunds to its owner/members since the cooperative was founded in 1939.”

The meeting was also a celebration of 2012’s United Nations’ International Year of Cooperatives. Jones pointed out to attendees that in America today, more than twenty-nine thousand cooperatives are responsible for two million jobs and produce annual sales of six hundred fifty-two billion dollars. “That makes us a major economic force,” he said.

Cooperatives are in such diverse businesses as electricity and day care, telecommunications and finance, health care and agriculture, but all cooperatives are member-owned and bring people together to do what they can’t do as individuals.

During the meeting, Jackson EMC President/CEO Randall Pugh told the audience that while the cooperative may be waiting for the economy to turn around, it’s not standing still. “One of our most significant accomplishments this year was the completion of our three-year, twenty-five million dollar deployment of Advanced Metering Infrastructure or AMI. This was one of the single largest capital upgrades in Jackson EMC’s history. We installed more than two hundred thousand automated Sensus smart meters and eighteen transmission towers to create a system that remotely reads our members’ meters. AMI saves time, manpower and transportation costs, as well as works with our other systems to help more quickly pinpoint the cause of outages.”

Pugh told members that J.D. Power and Associates named Jackson EMC a Customer Service Champion earlier in the year, one of only 50 companies to earn that distinction out of 800 companies evaluated nationwide. “We do not give good customer service because we receive these awards,” he told the crowd, “we receive the recognition because we give great customer service. And we give good service because our employees are totally dedicated and committed to serving you, our members. They go far beyond what most other companies do to meet the expectations of customers. “

# # #