Co-op beats deadline to pass resolution
Socorro Electric Cooperative’s board of trustees held a special meeting on Tuesday to beat a July 8 deadline to pass a resolution to establish a policy for “interconnection of distributed resources.” It was the only item listed on that night’s agenda.
After the meeting, Co-op General Manager Joseph Herrera said the policy didn’t apply so much to residential customers but were for the development of power generating sources, such as wind and solar. A copy of the policy is available at the co-op office upon request.
A policy is required by the Code of Federal Regulations for interconnections to the power grid with an installed capacity of not more than 10 megavolt amperes at the coupling. In compliance with the Code of Regulations, the policy passed by Socorro Electric’s board is in effect for no more than five years.
The resolution would have been just another agenda item, Herrera said, had it been addressed at the June 28 meeting. That meeting was canceled, however, over concerns that proper notice had not been achieved.
District 5 Trustee Charlie Wagner of Magdalena raised the issue, saying that any action taken would be null and void because the meeting wasn’t advertised in accordance with a bylaw passed at last year’s annual meeting. That bylaw was one of three new measures overwhelmingly approved by members that were aimed at increasing transparency. It required notice of board meetings to be printed on billing statements and advertised in local newspapers.
The board voted to challenge the bylaws in court last year, requesting declaratory judgment on whether the bylaws were valid and injunctive relief from having to abide by them. In May of this year a district court judge decided against the co-op, ruling the bylaws were properly passed and noted that the co-op should have been following them all along.
While the co-op has advertised board meetings in local newspapers since May 2010, notice of the meetings were printed on the billing statements for the first time only this month. The notice reads:
BOARD OF TRUSTEE MEETING: 4th Wednesday of the month at 5:30 p.m., 310 Abeyta. Agenda will be available at the Coop Office during business hours one week prior to the meeting.
The board’s next meeting is set for Wednesday, July 27.
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