Co-op cuts costs for annual meeting
This year’s annual meeting of member-owners of Socorro Electric Cooperative will be all business. Entertainment, door prizes and donuts will be dispensed with.
District 3 trustee Leroy Anaya, who served as chairman of the annual meeting committee, said at the board of trustees’ February meeting that the committee considered cost in planning for this year’s annual event at Finley Gym in Socorro on Saturday, April 9.
The committee recommended that entertainment not be provided during registration from 5 to 7 p.m. and that no door prizes be given out, as has been tradition for decades.
The committee also recommended a dinner traditionally held for trustees and co-op employees not be held.
While the co-op has served donuts and hot dogs free of charge in recent years, refreshments will be limited to cookies, punch and coffee.
At last year’s annual meeting, member-owners passed a resolution that the elections be administered by a third party in order to assure fair elections.
Co-op General Manager Joseph Herrera said Automated Elections Services has been hired to administer the voting at a cost of $14,000. That price includes the cost of printing and sending out mail-in ballots, as well as voting utilizing voting machines.
Up for vote this year is a proposed plan to realign district boundaries. The proposal came in response to a bylaw passed last year that boundaries be redrawn to create five districts of approximately equal member populations to assure equitable representation (see story page 1).
The annual meeting will also include:
• Socorro Civil Air Patrol cadets will present the colors
• Students from Nancy Jaramillo’s class at Magdalena Elementary School will recite the pledge of allegiance in English, Spanish and Navajo
• Catherine Chavez will sing the National Anthem
• Florencio Saavedra and Dr. Bokary Maiga will give the invocation
• Joseph Herrera, who was hired as the co-op’s new general manager earlier this year, will be the guest speaker