By DENNIS BEARD
Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative Executive Vice President and General Manager
It seems hard to believe that in slightly over one month, Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative will hold its 2005 Annual Meeting.
The date of the event is Saturday, Aug. 13, and the place will again be at Buckeye Hills Career Center, just off U.S. 35 near Rio Grande. Based on the success of last year’s Annual Meeting, we will continue the morning breakfast format, followed by a call to order and business session, concluding with adjournment and prize drawings before noon.
No trustee election or bylaw balloting will take place this year. This doesn’t mean, however, that the 2005 Annual Meeting lacks significance. For 65 years, BREC members have gathered annually to demonstrate their solidarity and make decisions affecting the governance of this electric distribution utility.
Some past annual meetings have been marked by controversy; other meetings have brought member-owners together to face challenges and threats to the cooperative business model. I have no doubt that there are residents of our nine-county service area who’ve seldom missed a meeting. Every year, we see new folks attending for the first time.
In this day and time, the tradition of people with a common bond gathering in-person at a designated time and place to conduct cooperative business might seem strange to big city dwellers more used to impersonal Internet and cell phone communications. “Why,” they might ask, “is this necessary?”
The first answer is because rural electrics and other types of cooperative businesses – whether telephone, financial, agricultural, etc. – exist to serve the people who also have an ownership stake in them. No single individual owns the majority of a cooperative business; therefore, we are governed by a local Board of Trustees elected by the membership based on leadership ability and trust, not the amount of investment they control. These trustees are your neighbors: farmers, teachers, rural business people, retirees, common working folks. They aren’t remote and inaccessible.
Second, your concerns about electric service, rates, and the operation of your cooperative business direct these trustees in their exercise of fiscal responsibility. For example, do you know the names of the individuals on the Board of Directors of your cell phone company? Would it make any difference to them if you objected to rates or wanted to complain about reliability? Would they put all the “profit” from the business back into the system for improvement or to accrue patronage capital?
Such are the main reasons that cooperatives continue to exist and why member-owners continue the tradition of coming together at an annual business meeting. There is much more to BREC’s Annual Meeting, of course. Fellowship and a renewing of bonds are important themes. Whether we argue or agree about the conduct of our cooperative’s business, our responsibility as member-owners is to take part in the governance process by becoming informed, being active, and staying connected.
Annual Meeting is also a time to celebrate and have fun. We’ll have plenty of food and door prizes this year, plus a few new twists to the program to make things interesting and informative.
Next month’s local section in “Country Living” will contain more detailed information about the meeting; BREC’s 2004 financial recap; reports from various co-op departments; and a look back at the progress and challenges faced by the co-op since last August.
I hope you will join us on Saturday, Aug. 13, as BREC members renew a 65-year-old tradition.
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