Archive for category: General Information

We Want to hear What is Happening in Your City!

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Through our weekly blogs, we have an opportunity to feature you and your city and keep everyone up to date on what’s going on within our member cities.  We sincerely appreciate those members who contribute and invite everyone to participate.  We want to continue to spotlight cities and city employees, whether it is city accolades or recognizing city employee promotions, awards, or retirements.

If you have news to share, capital improvements underway, exciting things going on in your city or information you believe can benefit the membership, please don’t keep it to yourself.  We want to hear from you!  Please email Patrick Ryan at ryan@kmea.com

Ed Truelove on the Move

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Ed Truelove Photo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We want to extend our congratulations to Ed Truelove on his recent appointment as City Administrator for the City of Neodesha.  Ed was selected from a pool of 23 candidates and appointed by the Neodesha City Commission by unanimous vote.

Ed began his new assignment earlier this month, after serving as City Administrator for the City of Greensburg for the past three years.  Ed brings a wealth of talent and experience with 17 years of public service with local governments in Kansas.  Before his time in Greensburg, he was a Wichita police officer.  He completed a mid-career master’s degree in public administration and then took over the position as Sterling’s Police Chief.

Among his more notable contributions while at Greensburg was the leadership he provided toward the community’s continuing recovery from a devastating 2007 tornado.  His contributions included recommending financing and overseeing construction of a new municipal swimming pool and water treatment plant, reestablishing a police department and working as part of a community team to recruit new industry.

Please join us in congratulating and extending our best wishes to Ed as he embarks on this next exciting chapter.

 

Thank you Dave Howard

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Left to right, KMEA Interim General Manager, Sam Mills, and KMEA President, Dave Howard.

Left to right, KMEA Interim General Manager, Sam Mills, and KMEA President, Dave Howard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the May 6th KMEA Board meeting, we were pleased to recognize KMEA President, Dave Howard, City Manager for the City of Pratt, for his leadership and many years of dedicated service on the KMEA Executive Committee.

Dave faithfully served on the Executive Committee from 2007 to 2015, completing eight years of consecutive service, the maximum term, cited by KMEA Bylaws.  He was first voted onto the Executive Committee in 2007 and then as an officer, beginning in 2009.  It was in 2009 that he was elected to Vice President.   Dave continued as Vice President until a vacancy earlier this year, when he became President of KMEA, navigating the agency through the past several months.  Dave joins a short and distinguished list of Executive Committee members who have served full term limits.

Please join us in recognizing and thanking Dave for his dedication and many years of service on the KMEA Executive Committee.

KMEA launches a new, mobile friendly website!

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KMEA BannerWe are proud to announce that we’ve launched the new KMEA website!  The last time we refreshed our website was about three years ago.  We wanted our site to be mobile friendly and we needed better control over the content.  We were able to accomplish all of this and more.

We’ve worked hard to make sure that it’s easier to find the content and resources that you’re looking for. Be sure to check out the various areas of the new site, including Services, Members, Projects, Resources, News and Events.

We are starting the process of blogging.  (This story is one of our first blog posts!)  Our goal is to keep you up to date on what is happening with KMEA as we continue to work with our electric and gas member cities to deliver reliable and cost effective energy to their communities.  We’ll be talking about city visits, energy management project meetings, staff and member profiles and more.

ShareFile

We’re also in the middle of a project to implement a secure, web based file storage system called ShareFile that allows us to share meeting minutes, project documents, agendas, billing and more.  Each city will have their own secure area in our system.

Our Web Development Company

We partnered with our friends Jason and Mic over at Blue Gurus to create our new site.  The primary reason that we chose Blue Gurus was because they did the work on site, side by side with our team.  They’re the only company in town that does web development this way.  We loved it because it made the process incredibly efficient.  We were able to adjust things on the fly as we created the new site instead of having to send emails or do conference calls.

We hope that you enjoy our new site!

Progress In Baldwin City

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Congratulations to Baldwin City on recently completing a large scale project at their power plant #2.

Both Universal Silencer and Fairbanks Morse Engine were on site last month replacing the exhaust stacks on units 7 & 8.

Baldwin City 2Severe vibration issues made the project necessary. The new silencers, once again, have built in catalyst with ground access, but with a more robust external shell and interior baffles to redirect the exhaust flow.

After the installation was complete, both units were started, and tested great; free of vibration. The catalyst bricks were reused from the original stacks, and pre-tested as well. Both units achieved 80% + carbon monoxide reduction.

Baldwin City plans to bring out Aeromet Engineering in early June to compliance test and recertify them. The good news is that Universal Silencer and FME covered the entire cost of the project under warranty!

Thanks to Chris Lowe, Rob Culley and the staff in Baldwin City for doing great things for public power.

KMEA Rolls into Altamont

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KMEA began serving electricity to Altamont on April 1st. Before the service commencement date KMEA staff visits the new cities for “onboarding.” This is the time when the city learns about their invoice, dashboard, and various other aspects of receiving power from KMEA. As you can see, Liz and the staff at Altamont are listening to all the details.

The KMEA staff has a number of tasks to perform and many items to attend to when bringing on a new city. Load projections, developing the resource portfolio, operating agreement, notifications, metering, communication links, and many others. It is an exciting process and the KMEA staff always welcomes the challenge.