March 2010
Be Part of the Annual Meeting Process
by Keven Groenewold
Late March signals the beginning of the cooperative annual meeting season in New Mexico. It begins in Artesia and ends in Chama in late September.
If you were to attend all 16 cooperative annual meetings you would have to travel over 5,000 miles. These meetings take you from Lovington to Chama; and Clayton to Animas, as well as many points in between.
Along the way, you would watch members elect trustees to govern their cooperatives, and listen to reports from the cooperative’s manager and board officers. You would meet youth tour delegates and scholarship winners, and maybe even win a door prize if you’re lucky. You would also get to see first-hand the difference between cooperatives and all other businesses.
Consumers—regular folks with work-a-day jobs, children, medical bills, and not-so-new cars—will fill high school gyms around the state to provide direction for their electric company. Cooperative annual meetings are for everyone interested in the future of their energy needs.
Electric cooperatives began when a previous generation had the courage to dream big. Scattered around New Mexico’s desert plains and snow-capped peaks, they dreamt of electricity in their homes. They survived the Great Depression and won the biggest war in history; stringing electric lines over thousands of miles of New Mexico countryside was just another task that needed to be done.
They built their cooperative, elected trustees, hired managers, employed workers, and brought electricity to their homes.
They didn’t stop there, however. They got their neighbors to join the cooperative and bring power across the state. As they grew older, they passed the mission on to the next generation of members. Since the 1930s each generation has built on the successes of the previous one until cooperatives today serve 80 percent of the area in New Mexico.
It has not been easy. We are the fifth largest state and one of the poorest. Our predecessors could have said the state was too big and its people too poor to get this enormous job done. They could have let electricity slip away from them, only to fall further behind our nation.
They didn’t then and we won’t today. This year when you get your notice of the annual membership meeting—save the date. Get involved and be part of the process.
Your cooperative needs enough members to show up to form a quorum and conduct business. This sometimes includes changing the organization’s bylaws, which is its governing document.
You can vote for board members and participate in decisions on other issues. Cooperative leadership is dynamic and ever changing. Ten years ago we had 147 cooperative trustees in New Mexico. Today we have 142. Of these, 73 were not trustees 10 years ago. As many of today’s leaders turn the reins over to future trustees, you can play a role. Remember, you may some day be called on to serve.