The following is a transcript of the July 7, 2025, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now. I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA News Director.
Our guest on this episode is John Horner, President and CEO of Maryland public power utility Easton Utilities.
John has served in the role of President and CEO of Easton Utilities since July 2024. Prior to that, he served in several other roles at the utility, most recently as Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer.
John and his team at Easton Utilities recently hosted a visit by APPA staff to the utility, so on behalf of APPA, John, I wanted to thank you and your team again for giving us the opportunity to learn more about Easton utilities.
John Horner
Thanks, Paul. We were thrilled to host a great partner like APPA and show off the amazing team that we have and give the APPA team a chance to get some practical hands on experience with a utility.
Paul Ciampoli
Great. Well, thanks again, John. We really appreciate your hosting us.
So John, just to get our conversation started in preparing for this interview, one of the things that jumped out at me in terms of your accomplishments at the utility is the fact that you were instrumental in securing substantial grant funding of approximately $30 million needed for the Connect Talbot project to extend broadband to all unserved residents in Talbot County, Maryland.
So could you describe the process for securing that funding and provide additional details on the project and also how has the utility communicated with its customers in relation to the project, including the benefits that will flow from it?
John Horner
Great question, Paul. I really need to start by saying that as a rural municipal utility, our community struggles at times to have the same access and availability to what urban communities see as just the normal utility infrastructure and it relates to the fact that the rural communities are not as dense and therefore there just isn't as much of a customer base to attract utilities to invest in those areas.
And so in the mid 80s, Easton Utilities decided to put together an Internet and cable TV business for the community because our customers didn't have access to it from any of the larger players in the marketplace.
And when you fast forward to the time period just before the pandemic, there were a lot of customers in Talbot County in even more rural areas that didn't have any access to broadband and as a result, they didn't have the same availability to do school work at home, to connect with medical providers at home, to work from home. And it also harmed their real estate values, when they would go to sell or resell their homes.
And so we started to look into how those rural, unserved areas could get access to broadband in the same way that urban and suburban communities and even our town of Easton had access and it really turned out to be a financial pro forma issue. Without having a large enough group of customers per linear mile, it didn't make financial sense to invest in putting all of that fiber in the ground or in the air to serve them, and so we needed to find other sources of funding.
And the USDA at the time had a program called Reconnect, and it was a pretty rigorous program to apply for and we pulled together a team of partners here at Talbot County, the town of Easton, Easton Utilities, and some help from the state of Maryland and their Office of Rural Broadband at the time.
We did go through an application process and fortunately in 2019, we were awarded what I'll call the first chunk of grant funding needed to get to the unserved areas of Talbot County. This is not something that was a stretch for Easton utilities.
We already are a municipal electric utility, as APPA knows, so we're familiar with installing poles and underground conduit and cables and wires, and so being in the Internet and broadband business was a pretty easy extension for us to consider doing. It certainly aligned with the municipal utility and public power mission of serving customers and we also wanted to make sure that in doing this project that our existing Internet cable TV customers were not going to have to subsidize the extension of this broadband utility into the county.
And so in 2019, we received a $13 million grant from the USDA and that really was an enormous kickstart for us to eventually then receive funding from the FCC and five different grant funding programs through the state of Maryland to be able to get out to about a little over 4,000 unserved properties in Talbot County.
It's a team effort. It really took a partnership with the federal government and our state government, a partnership with Talbot County and certainly support from the town of Easton…and as far as how we communicated it, I'd have to give a lot of credit to our marketing and communications team.
As we started moving forward, we put together a name for the project. The name of the project is Connect Talbot and built a website and also did a lot of direct mailers because as you can imagine those without Internet and access to Internet accessing an Internet website from home doesn't necessarily make sense, but we did have a website available.
That website had an interactive map, and that interactive map enabled customers to go in and plug in their address to see if service would be available to them and if so, when it was forecasted to be available. And that website has regularly been updated and we also have had an e-mail address and a phone line that customers could call to get themselves in the direct mailer communications for the project so that they could remain in the loop on the progress of the schedule. So really a significant undertaking.
All of those grants together and all of those partnerships have led to about a $40 to $50 million project within Talbot County and we hope to have everything wrapped up and completed and be the first county within the state to have ubiquitous broadband available to everyone, hopefully by the end of next year.
Paul Ciampoli
Just a couple of quick follow up questions. It sounds like in terms of rural public power utilities, if a rural utility was going to pursue something similar to what you guys did, I'd imagine there would have to be at least some element of government funding, similar to what Easton Utilities received – would you say that's fair to say?
John Horner
That's very fair to say. In fact, the pandemic really created a windfall of funding for this type of effort all across the United States and many rural areas found it an opportunity, especially if there were local Internet service providers to pursue that funding for those rural areas.
One way to look at it is it was in the early 1900s when the goal was to have a light bulb in every home and in every farm, and then eventually it was to have a phone line in every home and now the goal really is to make sure that everyone in the country has access to the Internet and to broadband -- it really has gone from being a luxury to being a necessity.
Paul Ciampoli
If you're a rural power utility executive who's listening to this podcast episode, any advice you would give him or her in terms of making sure your ducks are in a row before you head down the path of pursuing something similar to what your utility did?
John Horner
There are regulatory issues associated with getting into this business if you're literally just entering the business. My suggestion would be to verify what the state and local regulatory issues are…and then also to find partners.
This really doesn't happen without a really strong public partner, public and private partnerships, and working together with other partners leads to much stronger applications and a much higher likelihood of an award of a grant because they see those partnerships as a really strong way to guarantee that the work will get done.
Paul Ciampoli
So obviously this is one of your significant projects that the utility is pursuing now. But I wanted to give you the opportunity, John, on this podcast to discuss other projects the utility is pursuing that's either underway or recently completed that you'd like to highlight.
John Horner
Up until a couple of years ago, the Connect Talbot project was the most important project that we were focused on.
But a couple of years ago, the University of Maryland Medical System decided to build a brand new hospital here in Easton, the Shore Regional Medical Center. It's a $550 million project -- a six-story hospital that'll serve over 200,000 people on the Eastern Shore and in five different counties and it really is going to be a legacy project for anyone who's involved in it.
Once again, it's another partnership that Easton Utilities has with the town of Easton and Talbot County, as well as the University of Maryland Medical system. It's a project that's going to take four years to complete and an enormous amount of coordination and a lot of complex technical aspects associated with it.
And as a multifaceted municipal utility, not only will we be building a brand new electric substation to help support this new hospital, we’ll also be providing the water and sewer, natural gas and fiber communications to the new Regional Medical Center. Our team is really gung ho about it. It's something that we're excited about and certainly the community and even our state legislators are paying very close attention to.
Paul Ciampoli
So you mentioned the new substation element to this project. Any issues right now as it relates to supply chain?
John Horner
I think we see intermittently different issues across all of our utilities with supply chain -- most of them right now tend to center around the availability of raw materials…especially metals, whether it be steel or copper. And so we are working very hard to increase our inventory to accommodate for the fact that some of those supply chain issues may exist down the road.
We spent a lot of time working with vendors to ensure that we wouldn't have any supply chain issues for not only the new Regional Medical Center, but for all of our existing electric distribution customers. And that's an ongoing effort working with our warehouse team and our technical staff to make sure that we're paying attention to what we're seeing in the market and I think that's going to be a continuing problem and it certainly surfaced with the pandemic and is something that we have to pay a lot of attention to as tariff changes are underway at the federal level.
Paul Ciampoli
And with respect to the substations in general, are there any other substations the utility is looking to construct at this point or is that it?
John Horner
This is the only new substation we're looking to build, but we do have some additional transmission and distribution circuits that we're putting in place as a result of the new substation.
Paul Ciampoli
Switching gears here a little bit -- Easton Utilities in April noted that it earned APPA’s Safety Award of Excellence for Safe Operating Practices in 2024 and received national recognition for achieving exceptional electric reliability in 2024. I want to give you the chance to tell our listeners what steps specifically the utility has taken to earn this recognition.
John Horner
Safety is the foundation of everything we do at Easton Utilities. Without working safely, none of the other important key performance areas or key performance indicators that we have for reliability and customer service and cost management really matter if we're hurting ourselves or hurting someone in the public. So we do have a very deliberate and intentional focus on safety.
We've stood up a safety and training department. We work together with, again, partners in the community, such as surrounding utilities and the local community colleges, among others, to provide hands on training for our team. We hold regular stand downs and have also implemented an annual safety rodeo, so that not only our field employees, but all of our employees get a chance to understand what it takes to be safe and to work safe in what is a dangerous business.
We also have mandatory training for all of our employees and that training is specific to the role that they have here at Easton Utilities and we do some positive recognition programs as well, such as a safety champion. That's something that we award on a monthly basis and it is through peer recognition and nomination that those safety champions are awarded.
So that's really what I would talk about from a safety perspective and we really tried to live to a leadership motto that is you have our permission to take your time to do the job safely. We don't want any of our employees to feel whether it's self-imposed or through some other means that there's pressure to take shortcuts and to avoid doing the job safely in order to get it done faster. All of the customers do eventually get restored. All of the work does eventually get done. What's most important is that once the work is completed that everyone gets to go home in the same or better condition as they did when they came to work.
We also have corporate scorecard goals associated with safety and our top two goals are related to training and also safe driving. We are professional utility workers, but when we take off that hat of the specific role that we play at the utility and we get behind the wheel, we need to make sure that we realize now we're professional drivers and it's a different role when you're behind the wheel than when you're on the job site.
As far as reliability, yes, we're real excited about our reliability performance. We do pay very close attention to our worst performing feeders and taps. We pay attention to how many splices we have on any of our underground cables and we focus on pole renewals and our pole replacement programs as well as vegetation management.
And we're constantly looking at those programs and those metrics to make sure that we're staying on top of them and very excited about our reliability and I think our customers are very happy with the service level that they receive from Easton utilities in that area.
Paul Ciampoli
One thing that intrigued me about when you talked about safety is this annual safety rodeo. Could you provide additional details on that?
John Horner
It's an opportunity for our team that works in the field to put together a demonstration of what it is they do and how they do it safely for all of our employees.
So each employee, whether you're in customer service or in finance and accounting or in engineering or in administration, gets the chance to participate in a two hour rodeo that we have in the middle of the day and we'll have stations set up much the same as we did when APPA came for a tour, and it'll give employees the opportunity to interact, get to know each other a little bit better, create some bonds and also…really get a deeper appreciation for how our field employees do the job safely, whether it be working in a bucket or working while climbing a pole, working on live electric lines or how they actually go through the process of deenergizing and grounding the lines to make sure that they're working between two open points.
All of that is an opportunity for each of our employees to get a better understanding of what we need to do in order to work safely.
Paul Ciampoli
And another quick follow up if I could. With respect to the higher marks you received with respect to safety and reliability, any additional details with respect to how you tout that or maybe perhaps a better way of saying it is letting customers know that you've achieved these higher marks?
John Horner
We certainly do share that information on social media and put out press releases related to it and I do think that gains us some goodwill in the community.
We're certainly by no means perfect at what we do, and so it does give us an opportunity to share a little bit more about our team and in doing so we'll try very hard to provide some faces and names from each of our teams as part of that communication to our customers, because in our world as a municipal utility, we really do get to know our customers almost on a first name basis and they get to know our employees on a first name basis and it gives our team an opportunity to feel recognized and valued when we show off the great work that they've been doing whether it be safety, whether it be reliability or customer service or even a focus on controlling costs.
Paul Ciampoli
John, the wrap up question I had for you is I wanted to give you the opportunity to provide details and articulate your long-term goals for the utility.
John Horner
I have to tell you, Paul, I was handed the keys to a pretty well run utility a year ago when I took over as President and CEO. We were already doing really well with respect to those traditional utility metrics of safety and reliability and customer service and cost.
I think for me it's about making sure that we continue to do well in those areas and find opportunities to continue to improve in those areas. Easton Utilities is a pretty special utility, a pretty unique utility. As I mentioned earlier in how many different services we provide to the community on one utility bill.
For me it does also boil down to we have some data that shows we can expect quite a bit of retirements over the next five years to seven years. Looks like maybe about half our workforce will be eligible for retirement.
So really the most important legacy I think I'll have and the biggest long term goal I have is to make sure that our wonderful culture continues to thrive, employees continue to feel valued and that as we transition our employees into well deserved retirement that those who are coming in to replace them have an opportunity to overlap with them for a little while and get themselves dipped and dunked in that thriving culture and understand what our mission and our vision are all about with respect to serving customers and providing that safe workplace and work environment, while also providing high reliability and great cost controls.
Paul Ciampoli
To your point, workforce and pending retirements is obviously a big deal nationwide in terms of not just public power utilities, but probably it's fair to say all types of utilities. Against the backdrop of what you just discussed, any elaboration you could provide with respect to, for example, maybe going into local high schools and other options in terms of touting the fact that Easton Utilities is a great place to work.
John Horner
We are very well networked with local nonprofits as well as the Talbot County Public School system. We also spend time going to recruiting fairs at the universities on the shore as well as in other parts of Maryland looking to recruit employees.
We also do work even at the middle school level by having our utility employees spend time in the classrooms as well as on their parking lots doing similar things like the rodeo and the tour we mentioned earlier on this podcast, so that those students get a chance to see what kind of a career they can have in the trades.
They don't necessarily need to go to a four year program. They can actually find an opportunity right out of high school to come to work for a great place like Easton Utilities and have a very long career. We also have a very robust internship program, both with high school students and college students that gives them the opportunity to get some real world experience.
And it's not just making coffee and making copies. We do give them very specific projects to work on and very specific assignments so that they actually have their fingerprints on some real work at the end of the summer or the end of their internship program. And then finally, I would share our HR team is really good at hiring for attitudes and behavior. We want to make sure we're getting people who understand how to provide great customer service.
We can teach a lot of the technical aspects of what we do and that HR team works on a lot of deliberate development programs. Things such as mentor/mentee programs and emerging leaders programs so that we can continue to build a really strong bench of employees because it's not just turnover at the entry level positions at Easton Utilities.
Our management team is going to see a lot of turnover and we want to make sure that we're growing ourselves from within and have folks that are ready to take on those management team roles going forward, so that succession planning program and those deliberate development programs are a big part of what we think it takes to make sure that we'll continue to have that thriving culture and employees feeling valued for the roles that they have at Easton Utilities and continue to have folks here who want to have a long career.
Paul Ciampoli
John, thanks again so much for taking the time to speak with us and I would just reiterate how valuable it was for APPA staff to be able to visit Easton Utilities and as we were discussing prior to the start of this interview, I personally felt like it's a great opportunity to learn first hand all the great things that you guys are doing, so thanks again for hosting us.
John Horner
Anytime. Thanks Paul.
Paul Ciampoli
And thanks again obviously for participating as a guest on the podcast.
John Horner
You're welcome.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, Graphic and Digital Designer at APPA. I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.
