For more than 130 years, the residents of Waupun, Wisconsin, have had a city-owned water and power utility. The utility originally generated its own power to serve the city, but now mostly has capacity to provide some redundancy for its water operations and buys its power supply through long-term contracts and WPPI Energy.
| Population | 11,300 |
| Electric customers | 4,500 |
| Utility formed | 1894 |
| Utility employees | 20 |
Waupun Utilities isn’t the only part of the community with a long legacy — both Steve Brooks, the utility’s general manager, and Jen Benson, office & customer service supervisor for Waupun Utilities, are part of families that have lived and operated businesses in the city for generations. A fourth generation of Benson’s family continues to operate a prominent local business, and the storefront of the shoe seller Brooks’ grandfather started still bears the name.
“I feel like I know most of the community,” said Brooks. “There’s some trust there. When you are members of the community, they look to you when you’re outside of work as well.”
Benson added that can mean extending the utility’s service mindset to when utility employees are on their own time off duty, even in the grocery store. “We pride ourselves in that great customer service, reliability, and fast response times,” said Benson. “There’s a sense of pride in knowing who you’re helping and knowing you are going to provide the best possible service you can. The person isn’t just a number… when you see them at the baseball game one night, the next day you follow up with an answer.”
Even though there is already familiarity from living and working in the same community, Brooks said that the utility makes an effort to be visible and help out the city and community however it can. Whether volunteering to help hand out beverages at community events or taking part in projects with the chamber of commerce, Brooks said every effort helps in building and maintaining trust.
“It’s important that they see you, [that] you’re an actual person, and know they can reach out to you,” he said.
Utility lineworkers conduct safety demonstrations, read books to children at local schools and the library, and participate in local park programs. The team continuously looks for ways to make these types of programs engaging. For example, last year Benson said a demonstration involved putting a video camera into sewer lines so participants could see how the system worked.
Making utility work engaging for young community members is a reflection of how passionate members of the team are about what they do, and helps with a broader strategy of attracting new talent to the utility team.
The utility just started a youth apprenticeship program and has been offering scholarships to students at nearby schools, in addition to training younger staff to prepare them for future leadership.
“When you enjoy what you’re doing and serving the community, it makes it not just a job, it makes it fun,” said Benson, who has been part of the team for 17 years.
“It’s inspiring to see how passionate everyone is,” added Brooks, who has 26 years with the utility.
Benson and Brooks noted that this passion translates to quality work and care shown to their customers, such as during storm response efforts. The team also stays involved in local, state, and national advocacy for public power, participating in regular meetings with lawmakers and serving on various advisory boards.
The Waupun team is also focused on supporting economic growth and the additional capacity that comes with it. Brooks said the utility is in the planning phase for a new substation to provide additional redundancy.
Benson noted how in addition to robust preventative maintenance programs focused on extending the life of equipment, the utility has made sure to keep up with technology deployments such as advanced metering infrastructure and an outage management system.
“We take pride that our utility is forward thinking with our services,” said Benson. She said customers appreciate having access to usage data and rate comparisons and being able to sign up for alerts that can help them prevent getting unexpected high bills or know when the utility made a repair and how quickly service was restored.
Waupun continues to look at what kind of features it can offer its customers and has continued to evolve and improve through the years.
“We continue to update our infrastructure to try to become more efficient and more resilient,” said Brooks.
