To view the full print/pdf version of this issue of Currents, click here
For previous issues of Currents, visit our Currents Library
2022 Online Meeting Recap
By: Steve Sokolowski, Marketing Associate
Email: ssokolowski@sussexrec.com
As you may know, Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative’s plans for our 2022 Annual Meeting are different than in previous years. After a cancellation of our Annual Meeting in 2020 due to the pandemic and a shift to an Online Meeting in 2021, we are innovating our Annual Meeting into a two-pronged Annual Meeting Event. Our 2022 Online Meeting was shared on Monday, June 6th on our website at www.sussexrec.com/annual-meeting. We are now building up to an in-person Member Appreciation Event that we will hold at the NJ State Fair on Monday, August 8th.
We are very excited for our upcoming Fair event and will offer more details about it later in this article. First, however, I would like to walk through the contents of our Online Meeting, which served as the business portion of our Annual Meeting Event, for the benefit of those who were unable to check it out.
Board of Directors Election
On June 6th, our general counsel Tom Ryan of Laddey Clark & Ryan LLP made the announcement of the results of our 2022 Board of Directors Election. Each year, one seat from each of our three districts comes up for reelection. This year two directors, Brad Sparta from District 1 and Joe Barca from District 2, were up for reelection. Our seat in District 3 was open, and we had two candidates for our members to choose from in our voting process – Michael Abate and Michael Gall.
Our election was conducted by mail during the month of May. Each of our members received a ballot and made their selections from each district’s candidates. Overall, there were 1,022 ballots cast. Brad Sparta received 908 votes for his reelection and Joe Barca received 919. For the contested District Three seat, Michael Abate was selected as our new director, receiving 516 votes. Michael Gall received 391. We welcome Michael Abate to our board of directors and look forward to working with him in service of our members.
2022 Chairman’s Address and Financial Report
The Chairman of SREC’s Board of Directors Jack Haggerty Jr. delivered his Chairman’s Address in a pre-recorded video speech. In this speech, he discussed recent tree-related outages and what we have been doing to increase reliability of service. This includes the contracting of a professional arborist and a major project to place underground transmission lines in a vital part of our system, which was shared with Currents readers in June’s issue. Mr. Haggerty also spoke on the rising cost to purchase power that SREC is encountering. Before discussing the potential of a capital credit retirement at the end of the year, Mr. Haggerty took a moment to remark on the tragic passing of one of our long-time directors, Ray Cordts, in March and the upcoming retirement of Frank Betley, the CEO of Allegheny Electric Cooperative, our power supplier, and the PREA, our statewide association.
In a separate video, our board’s new secretary/treasurer Ronald Dupont gave a brief financial report for the 2020-2021 calendar year. Mr. Dupont reported on the results of an audit from independent firm Buffamante Whipple Buttafaro, P.C. (BWB). He also covered that for the fiscal year ending on December 31, 2021, our operating revenues were reported at approximately $21.2 million and total operating expenses and interest expense totaled $20.5 million, resulting in a margin of $700 thousand.
Questions & Answers
Also included in our Online Meeting, was a six-part series where our President & CEO Chris Reese answered questions submitted by members. We would like to thank all members who participated by submitting their questions. These short videos cover the topics of electric vehicles, renewable energy in our power mix, the cost of power, battery storage projects, residential solar power, and our tree trimming efforts. I recommend checking out these videos if you are interested in any of these topics. You can find them, along with the rest of our Online Meeting, at www.sussexrec.com/annual-meeting.
Member Appreciation Event at the NJ State Fair
Registration for our in-person Member Appreciation Event at the NJ State Fair is only open until July 8th! If you are reading this before that date, be sure to register at www.sussexrec.com/annual-meeting to reserve up to two free tickets to the Fair for Monday, August 8th, plus a member appreciation gift and a $10 bill credit that you will be able to claim at our tent. If you don’t have internet access, please call our office before this deadline and we can get you registered for the event and reserve your tickets!
Once we receive all reserved tickets, you will be contacted to let you know that you can pick up your tickets at our office. While we considered sending tickets by mail, we want to avoid a situation where anyone has their tickets lost in the mail. Not sure you’ll be able to pick up your tickets during business hours? You’ll have no need to worry – all leftover tickets will be brought with us to the Fair to be picked up by registrants at the Fair’s will-call booth on the day of our event.
Our tent will be set up on Park Road, in between the two main entrances to the Fairgrounds. SREC’s employees, directors, and CEO will be staffing our tent at the Fair from 11 am to 8 pm on August 8th. We welcome you to stop by to chat with us, ask questions, and pick up your member appreciation gift! By claiming your gift, your name will be added to our prize drawing which we will be holding at 7:30 pm that night. You do not need to be in attendance at the time of the drawing in order to win a prize. We are very excited about this upcoming event and we hope that we get to see you at the Fair!
