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Thursday, May 01, 2008

Quorum Missing at CNME Meeting

By Laura Nesbitt /
Mountain View Telegraph
      The 150 members present at the Central New Mexico Electric Cooperative annual meeting at the Estancia High School gymnasium on Saturday were not enough to call the meeting to order, but many questions were still answered by the co-op's general manager.
       John Wheeler, CEO and general manager, said last week in an interview that he was not anticipating a large crowd, but he said the size of the crowd this week surprised even him.
       “I'd like to thank all you people for showing up. I'm sorry we don't have a quorum. With this few people showing up, it makes me feel that you're pretty well-satisfied,” Board President J.T. Turner said at the beginning of the meeting. Turner has been a board member for 29 years.
       With 13,382 members as of last Friday at the close of business, CNME bylaws required that 209 members be present to conduct business, said Secretary Jerry Britton.
       Items which would have been covered were the treasurer's and president's reports which are printed in a booklet distributed at the meeting, and which are available through CNME offices. The only other item not covered at the meeting was approval of past minutes.
       In 2007 at the 62nd annual meeting in Moriarty, a required quorum of members was also not present. But in 2006 at the 61st annual meeting in Mountainair, there were 209 members present which represented a quorum, according to CNME material.
       Wheeler began Saturday's meeting with a question-and-answer session. Before the meeting, one member handed him a two-page list of questions and he also took several questions from the audience, said Dolores Jones, manager of administrative services.
       One of the first questions was about a home mortgage that CNME is helping to finance.
       “It was my house in Mountainair,” Wheeler said. “There's nothing hidden.”
       Britton told him to go further in his reply and Wheeler said his wife threatened to leave him if he didn't move further north.
       Next Wheeler asked how many people were willing to pay more for wind or solar. About five members raised their hands.
       “In general the wind blows about 37 percent of the time in this area. Typically the wind is not blowing when we need it the most. We are looking into wind through our power supplier. You need to keep in mind that this stuff is not cheap,” Wheeler said.
       Wheeler said an extension with its power supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association of Colorado, through 2050 was signed because “we had no idea where we were going to get power in the future.”
       Tri-State Senior Vice President of Power Management Ken Anderson said that Tri-State tried to get an air quality permit to build a new coal power plant in Kansas, but was denied.
       Anderson said Tri-State may have to build a coal power plant somewhere else “within the next 12 months” if Kansas denies its request again.
       Keven Groenewold, executive vice president and general manager for New Mexico Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said that “a rash of theft of copper” was costing members money but that new legislation will require more stringent reporting requirements of people who sell scrap metal.
       “Fifty pounds of copper could net about $150” for a copper thief, Groenewold said.
       Wheeler told members that a required announcement in the local newspaper of a rate change that “we're making to avoid power costs” had cost the co-op and its members more than an announcement in the Enchantment, the cooperative association's monthly newsletter.
       “The cost to the co-op for the Enchantment is (only) 37 cents per consumer per issue. The notice we had to put in the paper was over $500,” Wheeler said. That cost spread among 13,382 CNME members is about 4 cents per member.
       However, according to the Telegraph sales department staff, the legal ad run on April 24 by CNME — a legal requirement — cost a little over $100 and an announcement of the annual meeting which was run twice cost $250 each time.
       At a Public Regulation Commission hearing held in Moriarty on March 19, questions were asked about how to run for two open CNME trustee positions, but the incumbents, District 3 Leandro Abeyta and District 1 Phil Wallin, ran unopposed, Wheeler said.
       “When it came time to sign up and we had about 10 to 12 people (who said they wanted) to run for the board, no one signed up to run against the incumbents. I think that means that most people are not disgruntled,” Wheeler said.
       Wheeler said about 15 customers who are upset with co-op rates are the ones who are costing other members money.
       “In order to save $20 to $30 a month on a bill, it's going to cost the rest of us a quarter of a million dollars,” Wheeler said about those few customers and the current PRC investigation of CNME.
   

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