Over 1,700 members and guests attended this year’s Sioux Valley Energy Annual Meeting held on June 11. The meeting format was the same as last year, providing members with the option to attend closer to home with three different venue choices of Brandon, Volga, or Pipestone. Last year’s meeting was the first time in the Co-op’s history that we hosted the Annual Meeting in multiple locations. The reason for that change was to make it easier for members to attend the meeting as we have a very large service territory. It seemed to have worked because attendance increased both in 2023 and 2024.
One of the cooperative principles is democratic member control and because Sioux Valley Energy is a cooperative, that value is embedded into our bylaws. Your Cooperative bylaws require District Meetings to elect directors and an Annual Meeting to hold a business session where bylaws are adopted and/ or changed when needed. We did not have any proposed bylaw additions or changes, but our directors provided reports to the membership.
This year’s Annual Meeting theme centered around teamwork. The Sioux Valley Energy mission of Serving Our Members. Always., includes providing reliable, cost-based electricity to our membership.
We strive to be in the top quartile of reliability nationwide, and we’ve been able to accomplish that because of teamwork between the Board of Directors, Strategic Leadership Team, and employees. The Cooperative’s Board of Directors recognizes the importance of investing in the electric system, approving an aggressive 125-mile a year replacement plan. Employees have worked together to step up to that challenge as it takes a significant amount of planning and strategy to accomplish that amount of work each year. The average outage time for our members is less than half of what it is nationwide. That’s a testament to the teamwork we strive for each day.
Locally, we are doing all we can to balance that top quartile reliability with member service excellence and affordable rates. We see it as a three-legged stool that has to balance. At the meeting I addressed an emerging issue that may put that balance at risk, and it’s an issue that I discussed in my last Manager’s Column – the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new power plant rule.
As a reminder, the EPA recently adopted a rule that aims to aggressively cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Now don’t get me wrong, we all want clean air and water. But the rules that were adopted propose a timeline that is not feasible, because it requires such drastic cuts in emissions in a very short period of time. So that means our power generators, like Basin Electric, will need to make the decision to either shut down existing fossil-fuel plants that still have a lot of life left in them or adopt an expensive unproven technology that is not yet widely commercially available. Either way – it means additional costs for you, the member. We plan to continue working with our co-op partners to find solutions to this issue.
At the meeting we also introduced three employees who have served the membership collectively for 80 years – Jeff Huebner, Ryan Hyland, and Dave Jensen. Thanks to them for their many years of service!
We also introduced a new class of EmPOWER students and congratulated EmPOWER students who received a scholarship this year. You can find their names and photos on Page 15.
Members who attended the Annual Meeting and have an email in our system should have received a survey. Your response allows us to gather your feedback and make adjustments and/or improvements for future years.
Before I close, I do want to mention that we have had a lot of public contacts (people hitting electric equipment) lately. It is not only an inconvenience for those that are left in the dark after an outage, but it can be very dangerous. PLEASE Take the Time, Every Time, to look up for overhead power lines and call 811 before you dig.