Co-op’s virtual meeting lets all WRVEC members vote, not just in-person attendees
The White River Valley Electric Cooperative is powering through the current pandemic challenge by holding this year’s annual meeting virtually rather than in person.
Because of concerns about the contagious COVID-19 virus, the co-op is inviting members in its Ozark, Christian, Douglas, Stone and Taney county service area to sign onto whiterivermeeting.com at 9 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, to “attend” the annual meeting and hear board member and amendment election results as well as other co-op updates. The meeting will be recorded and viewable on the website beginning Monday, Sept. 14.
A call-in option (833-491-0328) will allow those without internet connection to listen to the live proceedings.
Only White River staff participating in the meeting, the board of directors and board nominees and the cooperative’s attorney will be in physical, socially distanced attendance, a co-op announcement said.
Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative, which includes the eastern edge of Ozark County, also canceled its in-person annual meeting and instead held a “drive-thru meeting” July 18 in West Plains. The co-op’s website site said afterward that a typical annual meeting has about 500 attendees, but nearly 3,000 members turned out for the drive-thru event. Many were drawn by the chance to win dozens of attractive door prizes, ranging from a kayak and Bass Pro gift cards to Samsung tablet and Sony PlayStation4.
A different kind of co-op election
At each year’s WRVEC annual meeting in the past, co-op members elected members to the nine-person board of directors and voted on other important issues such as amendments to the bylaws. No matter where they lived, all members of the co-op voted for the board members representing each of five specific districts. Three are elected each year to three-year terms. Usually that election came at the end of the in-person annual meeting held in the Branson area. But this year, with the in-person meeting canceled, members are asked to vote online at WhiteRiver.AMECVote.com during August. Those without internet connection may call 800-949-2591 to request a mail-in ballot. Each member must provide his or her WRVEC account number to be eligible to vote.
Gainesville residents Jimmy Kyle and Pat Funk currently serve on the board of directors as representatives of District E, which includes Ozark County members. Funk is running for re-election to the board with Thornfield resident Anita Scott challenging him for the position. Four candidates are running for the District A (Stone County) seat, and two candidates are running for the District C (Christian County) position.
White River board members who are familiar to many Ozark Countians but represent other districts include Jeff Hyatt of Christian County, who recently retired as Gainesville Schools superintendent and is running for re-election to District C, and Lyle Rowland of Cedarcreek, retired state representative of the 155th House District, which included Ozark County, who now represents WRVEC District B.
The co-op is giving each member who votes a $10 bill credit, and, like Howell-Oregon, it will offer dozens of appealing door prizes that will be awarded, by drawings, to those who vote during the monthlong election window that continues through Aug. 31.
Members who want to send questions to be addressed during the annual meeting may submit them at bit.ly/SubmitQuestionstoWRVEC.
What’s the appeal of serving on the board?
Some residents here have been surprised to see campaign advertisements published by WRVEC incumbent board members and their challengers in area newspapers, including the Ozark County Times. These ads that ask readers for their vote in the contest to elect
the Ozark County Times. These ads that ask readers for their vote in the contest to elect board members have been rare in past years, especially when the candidates aren’t from Ozark County’s District E and won’t be directly representing it.
Others have wondered what motivates residents to serve on the board – besides an obvious spirit of community service and an interest in the area’s electricity supply – and why some of them want the job enough to spend money on campaign advertising.
Lyle Rowland, the former state representative, said that, for him, serving on the board is another way to influence and serve, not just his community, but a wider area of southern Missouri. As a representative of the 155th House District, he said, he had a constituency of about 38,000 people. In contrast, the co-op has 45,000 memberships, he said.
He likes that serving on the board also lets him see the good works the co-op does through its Operation Roundup program, which asks members to “round up” their monthly electric bills to the next whole dollar and uses the collected funds for student scholarships and grants to teachers and local agencies such as volunteer fire departments, as well as assistance to families experiencing exceptional hardships.
(The Operation Roundup program is managed by a separate, nine-member WRVE Trust Board of Directors. Ozark Countian Rhonda Suter currently serves as that board’s president; Theodosia resident Jo Stehle serves as secretary.)
Co-op communications manager Cassie Cunningham said, in an email to the Times, that serving on the White River board of directors is “a very time-consuming role with multi-million-dollar decisions on your shoulders.”
In normal times, the job requires in-person attendance at least one to two days per month, she said. “Typically, board members spend 25-30 hours per month preparing for meetings, speaking to members, attending committee meetings, as well as other cooperative functions,” Cunningham said.
Also, “board members travel a couple of times per year to association meetings, usually a few days in length,” she said, adding that new directors are also “encouraged to attend several days of training/classes per year.”
Rowland said he attended a Rural Electric Cooperative Association meeting in New Orleans in February, before the pandemic started. But he spent nearly the whole time he was there in the hospital, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia – followed by a round of blood clots in his lungs.
Another association meeting was scheduled this year for Salt Lake City, he said, but it was canceled due to COVID.
Cunningham said board members have participated in both “seated” and virtual meetings during the pandemic.
Board members aren’t paid a salary, but they’re given a “per diem,” or daily compensation, for the time they spend traveling to and attending meetings and training, plus compensation for meeting-related expenses. All expenses are also paid when they attend out-of-state events. If spouses or other family members accompany them, they must pay their own expenses, Rowland said.
Members are also given a $700/month stipend to be used toward health insurance, Rowland said. If a board member serves the maximum two terms (six years total), then that monthly stipend continues for six years after the board member leaves the board. If a board member serves only one three-year term, the stipend ends when the member’s time on the board ends.
Three proposed amendments
Members are voting this month on three amendments to the cooperative’s bylaws, as well as electing board members. An article in the co-op’s Current Times magazine says the amendments “will prepare our co-op for the future and help us to be more transparent and inclusive to all members.”
Amendment 1 asks voters if they’re in favor of “utilizing secure electronic voting to improve member participation in the voting process.” Currently members must attend the annual meeting in person to vote for board members. But “those in-person votes represent less than five percent of the total membership,” the Current Times article said.
Amendment 2 “will make it easier to run for the board” and will give members “an opportunity to learn about all potential candidates before the meeting,” according to the article. The amendment specifies that candidates will file for election 60 days prior to the annual meeting rather than the current 25, and nominations will no longer be accepted “from the floor” of the annual meeting. Candidates who choose to file by petition, rather than going through the nominating committee, will need 15 co-op members’ signatures on their petitions, rather than the current 5 percent of the district.
Amendment 3 clarifies “what constitutes membership and who can vote in cooperative elections,” the article says.
Record participation expected
Cunningham said some co-ops around the state have responded to the pandemic by canceling annual meetings or holding them as virtual, call-in or drive-thru events. “We’re expecting record setting participation in the election with the changes this year,” she said. “It’s exciting to see so many people interested in their cooperative!”