Clay News-continued

Our Strategic Plan helps us stay focused on providing affordable and reliable electricity
By Bill Phillips GM/CEO

We recently conducted our annual strategic planning session. This effort helps us look
at progress made on our strategic goals and objectives for 2008, and it helps us establish some goals and objectives for next year and beyond.

Of course, the bottom line on this effort is to keep all of us here at Clay Electric focused
on two very important objectives - providing competitive rates and excellent service to our
members.

Although portions of our strategic plan remain somewhat the same each year due to
our ongoing emphasis on areas like competitive rates and excellent service, there are new areas that help us address changes in the industry, legislative activity, new regulations, and so forth. I’d like to share some of the key points of our 2009 plan with you.

We changed our mission statement to reflect our need to balance the cost of providing affordable electrical service with protecting the environment. We believe in being good stewards of the environment, but we also recognize the need to provide affordable and reliable power. It’s critical that there is a balance between these two elements. In our vision statement, we added the word “innovative” which helps highlight our task of trying harder and digging a little deeper as we face some very complex issues.

We’ve seen a slowdown in the economy. We’ve had fewer new connects, while the cost
of materials and fuel, for example, has gone up. Financial conditions could change more rapidly in the future, so one of our goals next year is to review our financial conditions more frequently, to ensure that your cooperative remains financially sound.

There have been several energy plans proposed for Florida and our nation. I’ve been critical of some of these plans because they could send your electricity bills through the roof. A goal of ours for 2009 is to be a strong advocate for a sensible energy policy for our state. Energy policies that force utilities to depend on inefficient and expensive forms of energy generation and push utility bills ever higher is not sound policy. We intend to discuss these issues with our elected officials.

For some of you, Clay Electric is just another utility. We keep the lights on and respond if the
power goes off. But we’re different. Clay Electric is owned by those it serves. We’re non-profit, so any margins left over at the end of the year after we pay our bills are set aside as Capital Credits. We refunded $6.25 million in Capital Credits earlier this year. Our employees frequently help out in their communities, as volunteer firefighters, T-ball coaches or members of civic clubs. How we operate is unique among utilities. We plan to communicate our unique qualities to our members more often next year.

Our employees are one of the key reasons why we’ve been successful over the years. We intend to assist our employees with information that will help them respond appropriately to your questions when they come up.

We face some challenging issues: the economy, energy policies, concerns over protecting
the environment, keeping electricity affordable. I believe we’re aptly prepared to meet these
challenges. As always, we’re thankful for your support.