Cullman Electric Cooperative President and CEO Grady Smith said he has “all the admiration in the world” for teachers. After earning a bachelors degree in education from St. Bernard College and a masters degree in business administration from Troy State University, he was offered a job as a teacher at a Florida junior college, but chose to take a job at an electric cooperative instead.

Q: How long have you worked with Cullman Electric Cooperative?

A: Currently I’ve been here since Dec. 1997, but I started to work here in May of 1972, cutting right of way. I worked here through ’85, then I worked in Florida at a co-op, Choctawachee Electric Co-op, from ’85’ until ’94, and from ’94 until ’97 I was at Cherokee Electric Co-op over in Center, Alabama. Then, I came back here as CEO in ’97.”

Q: What are some of the challenges you and your company face?

A: A challenge, I guess, would have to be growth. We have a lot of growth going on, and it takes a lot of labor and materials and dollars and time to manage growth, and growth is not a bad thing. We’re doing quite well growingwise here at the co-op. We have over 41,000 member accounts over a four county area, Cullman Winston, Lawrence and Morgan, about 1,300 square miles of territory over about 3,500 miles of electric line, so that in itself is a challenge every day.

Q: How many people do you employ?

A: We have about 96 employees here now.

Q: What kind of new technology is in use at Cullman Electric?

A: In the last five or six years we’ve really taken advantage of technology with our new outage management system. If you have an outage you can call in and report it by leaving your phone number. The outages literally show up on a map board downstairs where we can see what’s out of power, so we utilize technology a lot to manage the outages that we have. We utilize technology to track our crews for safety purposes through vehicle tracking systems so we can direct our crews in an efficient manor.

We also have the annual meeting coming up, the annual meeting of the membership of Cullman Electric Cooperative, which will take place on Sept. 16, at the Cullman High School auditorium. It will commemorate our 70th anniversary. There will be entertainment, food, a health fair, hot air balloon rides, bucket truck rides, games and rides for the kids. There will be something there for everyone. We will also be electing three trustees for the board of directors. We have a nine-member board and we elect three of those each year.