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.
Racine is an unincorporated community in Newton County, Missouri, United States. It is located along the Frisco RR tracks between Neosho and Seneca, Mo in Lost Creek Valley. Racine is on Route 86 about 6 miles west of Neosho and ten miles south of Joplin and about 5 miles northeast of Seneca and the Oklahoma state line. Some homes, a post office, a fire station, and a couple of businesses are located here. Many of the original settlers who arrived before the Civil War are buried in Burkhardt Cemetery just northeast of town at the junction of what is now known as Juniper and Jasmine Drives. Due to its proximity to many of the back-roads into the "dry state" of Oklahoma, illegal alcohol and low-tax tobacco was bootlegged through this part of Missouri up to the 1960s. There are several churches despite the small size of the town: one Apostolic Church and two Christian churches. The community is part of the Joplin, Missouri Metropolitan Statistical Area.