Five Questions: Joel Alexander

Q: What does your job entail?

A: I’m the point-of-contact person for any inquiries. That can be the general public – if someone calls in and the switchboard operator doesn’t know who to go to, it goes to me – or the media. It’s also not just media from our part of the world. We also produce in-house audio-video for training – taping seminars and providing audio-visual support. In the last year, we’ve also taken on a bigger role in energy conservation, informing people what’s available to them.

Q: What’s your professional background, and how does it help in your current job?

A: I spent 20 years in TV. I was the chief photographer for KY3 for about 14 years, and right out of college I was in the engineering department at KOLR 10. Dealing with the public is the main thing. In my (former) role, (I was) in the field and supervising a group of photographers and dealing with the general public in many ways. We did stories from small businesses in Harrison, Ark., to presidential visits and even the untimely death of a governor. It gives you all sorts of different levels of experience dealing with people.

Q: What is the most unusual media inquiry that you have received?

A: (CU bus driver) Chris Leslie risked his own life to run out in traffic and save a little girl was in the middle of the street. We’re blessed to have a highly caring and motivated group of people working here. Court TV, through other media outlets, heard about it and for the last couple of months they’ve been inquiring about seeing what they could do to cover it.

Q: Were there any positives to come from the recent ice storm?

A: For us, and for everybody, it was a learning experience. We’re trying to educate people. People see a power line above and they think, ‘OK, my power’s going to be coming in.’ It’s hard to understand that at some point it comes from a power plant and a feeder line, and if there’s a disruption in that line, just because you have a line to your home doesn’t mean you’re going to get power. We had people working 16-hour shifts for about 19 days – it’s the longest outage in the history of City Utilities. We learned what our people can do, what people expect from us and what we can do to meet those expectations.

Q: What are the biggest challenges facing utilities, both local and national?

A: Demand is the biggest issue. You see people using more on a daily and annual basis. The growth in Springfield has not slowed down at all, so our main objective is to make sure we have enough power to supply our customers, and with Southwest 2, we feel like we’ll be in good shape. The other thing is water. So many outlying areas are looking at the way we positioned ourselves to supply Springfield with adequate, safe drinking water. Will we become a regional water supplier? It’s too early to tell that, but we are getting inquiries from outlying areas as to what will go on.[[In-content Ad]]