Public utilities provide electric, gas, water or telephone service to customers in a specified area. Utilities have a duty to provide safe and adequate service on reasonable terms to anyone who lives within the service area on without discriminating between customers. Because most utilities operate in near monopolistic conditions, they can be heavily regulated by local, state, and federal authorities. Generally, the local and state agencies are called Public Service Commissions (PSC) or Public Utility Commissions (PUC). Municipal Utilities and Rural Electric Cooperatives may be unregulated though.
Joes is an unincorporated town and a U.S. Post Office in Yuma County, Colorado, United States. The Joes Post Office has the ZIP Code 80822. In 1929, the Joes High School basketball team won the Colorado state basketball championship, defeating teams from much larger Colorado towns such as Fort Collins and Denver. The Joes team then traveled to Chicago to participate in a national championship. The smallest school in the tournament, the "Wonder Boys" advanced to the semifinals before losing to Classen High School of Oklahoma City. The success was notable given the small size of the school. Author Nell Propst, in The Boys From Joes (1988) noted that the ten-man basketball team represented half of the male enrollment in the school, which in 1929 numbered 20 boys and 16 girls. Their 1921 high school lacked a gymnasium, forcing the team to practice on a gravel court outside. The school's coach, Lane Sullivan, knew little about the sport of basketball and gained most of his knowledge from a book he obtained from a college basketball coach in Kansas. Joes returned in 1930 to win a second state championship.