2024 Annual Meeting Captioned Video, Transcript PDF Download, and Live Text Transcript

This por­tion is tran­scribed from the audio por­tion of a pre-record­ed video report on the state of the coop­er­a­tive, eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, and com­mu­ni­ty activ­i­ties:

Good morn­ing. I’m Chris Fet­tus, your CEO of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. Wel­come to our 2024 Annu­al Meet­ing. We’re about to take a look back at the past year at some of the sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments in our com­mu­ni­ty. And as we reflect on some of these achieve­ments in 2023, you’ll notice that there were many projects that focused on tech­nol­o­gy and edu­ca­tion. So fol­low me, and we’ll get start­ed in Bryan Coun­ty. 

This is one of our new devel­op­ments in coastal Geor­gia, Hart­wood and Rich­mond Hill. This place is being devel­oped by Radi­ant Homes, and Radi­ant has mas­ter-planned over 7,000 acres. It’s not often that you get one devel­op­er with 7,000 acres to mas­ter plan and imple­ment their vision for this com­mu­ni­ty. So behind me is Out­fit­ters Park, which offers great din­ing and recre­ation­al ameni­ties for the neigh­bors that live here. And off in the dis­tance, you can see the begin­nings of the devel­op­ment in the new homes and home con­struc­tion. It’s very busy, a lot of activ­i­ty here. Infra­struc­ture is being put in. And because of the tim­ing of this devel­op­ment and our vision to bring fiber to the home of all of our mem­bers, these homes will be fiber-ready. When they move in, there won’t have to be any con­struc­tion or dig­ging in their yard. If they want Coastal Fiber and giga­bit speed broad­band, they’ll have it on day one. Ear­li­er today, we met with Paige Glazier of Radi­ant Homes, and she’s going to tell us more about this pre­mier devel­op­ment. 

It’s a lifestyle. Peo­ple come here that like the out­doors, that don’t like the out­doors, that have chil­dren that maybe don’t have chil­dren. Between Del Webb and some of our starter entry-lev­el homes, we’re just try­ing to fit every sin­gle type of indi­vid­ual, type of fam­i­ly, give them access to the lifestyle that we’re try­ing to cre­ate. It’s so much more than just com­ing into a neigh­bor­hood and liv­ing. There’s a lifestyle coor­di­na­tor that works on events and things for peo­ple to come togeth­er and to min­gle and to be a part of a real com­mu­ni­ty. A lot of inten­tion­al, thought­ful plan­ning went into build­ing not just a neigh­bor­hood, but a com­mu­ni­ty at large. You have jobs, You have schools with­in walk­ing dis­tance. You have health care with­in walk­ing dis­tance. You can golf cart to din­ner, to a green space for your kids to go run and play, even to work down at the Belfast Com­merce Park. Lots of indus­try. 

The rooftops are what we all think about when we think devel­op­ment, but real­ly it’s more than that. You’ve got the oth­er pieces that go into it to make it suc­cess­ful and to have an eco­nom­ic dri­ver. The pop­u­la­tion of south Bryan Coun­ty is explod­ing. Drawn by the excel­lent school sys­tem and water­front prop­er­ties and sup­port­ed by advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing, logis­tics, and ser­vice indus­try jobs, res­i­den­tial devel­op­ers are con­stant­ly break­ing ground for new homes and neigh­bor­hoods. At Coastal Elec­tric, we must be proac­tive and not reac­tive. We have to be in the new indus­tri­al parks, mul­ti­fam­i­ly hous­ing, and home sites first, with an infra­struc­ture and pow­er sup­ply capac­i­ty to sup­port what­ev­er might be con­struct­ed in the area. All of this requires care­ful plan­ning. We are con­tin­u­al­ly look­ing ahead 10 years and beyond so that when devel­op­ment comes to this area, peo­ple don’t have to ask, “Will there be enough elec­tric­i­ty to sup­port the antic­i­pat­ed project?” 

When a devel­op­er comes into a project, one of the first things that you assess is, “Where are the avail­able util­i­ties?” I will tell you that when it comes to elec­tric­i­ty, we are so blessed to have Coastal Elec­tric in our com­mu­ni­ty. We don’t have to think about that. We know that we’re going to be tak­en care of. Radi­ant Places and Prop­er­ties real­ly strives on cre­at­ing some­thing that’s com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from the ordi­nary devel­op­ment. We actu­al­ly formed a strate­gic health alliance with St. Joseph’s Can­dler, and as part of that, we’ve cre­at­ed an ini­tia­tive togeth­er called the Bē Health Healthy Liv­ing Pro­gram. With Bē Health, we have a health nav­i­ga­tor on site all the time. 

So crit­i­cal health­care facil­i­ties like St. Joseph Med­ical Cen­ter demand a high degree of reli­a­bil­i­ty and redun­dan­cy. In loca­tions like this, inside Hart­wood and Belfast Com­merce Cen­ter, we have mul­ti­ple pow­er sources and auto­mat­ic trans­fers to alter­nate feeds so we can keep the pow­er on. Just as Coastal Elec­tric must have the infra­struc­ture in place to serve a boom­ing pop­u­la­tion, our schools must also look far ahead to ensure ade­quate class­room space for our chil­dren. It’s a great place to work, to live and play. 

Bryan Coun­ty as a whole, being the fastest-grow­ing coun­ty in the state of Geor­gia, the sixth fastest in the nation. We hire great peo­ple. We’ve got great com­mu­ni­ty. We’ve got great par­ents. We’ve got great kids, and we’ve got great staff. We’ve got a great board of edu­ca­tion right now that has won many awards for their per­for­mance, being an exem­plary board for years and years. To put all that togeth­er, you got a recipe for suc­cess. It is a beau­ti­ful high school, the Rich­mond High School replace­ment. It is right down the street. It prob­a­bly, from design, is one of the largest high schools ever built in the South­east. It’s going to be push­ing about 540,000 square feet to han­dle 3,500 plus stu­dents. State-of-the-art facil­i­ties with a 7,000 to 10,000 seat sta­di­um, a 2,200 seat are­na, and I could go on and on. We were lucky enough to and we’re Coastal on that. They’re our ser­vice provider, and we’re excit­ed about that. We’ve had a long-stand­ing rela­tion­ship with Coastal, and they have been a phe­nom­e­nal part­ner. They’re always at the table with us. Any­time we go to them and either ask for assis­tance or we talk about our growth plans and our needs, Coastal has been remark­able to work with. 

Just like streets and road­ways, safe under­ground elec­tric lines need to be installed first in a grow­ing devel­op­ment. So we have to make the invest­ment in infra­struc­ture first before the growth. So this is Belfast Sub­sta­tion. We are mak­ing that invest­ment in capac­i­ty in antic­i­pa­tion of growth that’s com­ing to the Belfast Com­merce and Hart­wood sub­di­vi­sion areas. But this sub­sta­tion will also be inter­con­nect­ed with sur­round­ing sub­sta­tions. As we know, and every­one knows, about the Hyundai Meta­plant out on I‑16 in north Bryan Coun­ty. With that Hyundai Meta­plant came a vari­ety of tier one sup­pli­ers, and those tier one sup­pli­ers are locat­ing all through­out the sur­round­ing area. Two of those tier one sup­pli­ers have locat­ed in our com­mu­ni­ty, and we’re approach­ing Seo­han Auto­mo­tive, which is one of Coastal Elec­tric’s new mem­bers. It’s these type of invest­ments that bring jobs and more oppor­tu­ni­ties for today’s mem­bers and tomor­row’s mem­bers. I’m still impressed by all the plan­ning and ameni­ties that are being designed for this com­mu­ni­ty. 

All these homes and apart­ments are being designed fiber-ready. When a new res­i­dent moves in, all they have to do is call Coastal Fiber, and broad­band ser­vice will be avail­able with­out hav­ing to dig up the yard. The cable is already installed. Putting togeth­er a mas­ter plan com­mu­ni­ty is a lot like a jig­saw puz­zle. There are so many things that go into the suc­cess and to mak­ing it home for some­one. And these days, high-speed Inter­net is an absolute neces­si­ty. So as Coastal Fiber expands their foot­print and com­ing into Bryan Coun­ty, Hart­wood is the first place in which they have laid the grounds for that new upgrade. And every house here will be wired and ready with fiber, regard­less of if the res­i­dent decides to use their inter­net or not. 

You guys are one of the best providers that we work with from all the ven­dors that we do work with. When we heard you all bring in fiber to the area. We said, Hey, let’s talk and see what we can do. Access to the inter­net, high-speed inter­net like fiber, it’s essen­tial for the world that we live in today. 

We’re at Trade­port Sub­sta­tion, and I’m about to intro­duce Bri­an Hayes to you. Bri­an is our VP of Engi­neer­ing and Oper­a­tions, and him and I have been work­ing togeth­er over 15, almost 20 years now, to design and build a more advanced elec­tric grid for our com­mu­ni­ty. Bri­an has envi­sioned our util­i­ty net­work inter­con­nect­ed with fiber optic cable for more than a decade, even as ear­ly as 2010, when we start­ed build­ing fiber to our sub­sta­tion, when a new 115KV trans­mis­sion line was con­struct­ed across the salt­marsh, par­al­lel to I‑95 between Lib­er­ty and Bryan Coun­ty, we installed a 96-strand fiber optic cable on those tall tow­ers. This became the begin­ning of our con­nec­tiv­i­ty back­bone to a major Inter­net hub in Atlanta. From our cus­tomers’ point of view, Coastal Elec­tric has posi­tioned itself to bring broad­band to unserved and under­served areas around our ser­vice ter­ri­to­ry. But we have an even high­er busi­ness pur­pose. We’re build­ing a smart grid and net­work where every elec­tric meter in each of our sub­sta­tions and down­line devices will be inter­con­nect­ed with fiber for con­trol and automa­tion. We’re build­ing a self-heal­ing net­work where down­line switch­es com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er to facil­i­tate fast auto­mat­ic restora­tion of pow­er. We could also use that same fiber to offer light­ning fast broad­band speeds to our mem­bers who want that ser­vice from their elec­tric coop­er­a­tive. 

Bri­an Hayes is cur­rent­ly work­ing at a fiber facil­i­ty at our Trade­port Sub­sta­tion. Let’s throw it over to him so he can give us some insight to how the sta­tions work and the untapped capa­bil­i­ties of fiber. All of the fiber comes into this fiber hut at our sub­sta­tion. The hut is like an elec­tric sub­sta­tion where all the fiber is going down line to your homes, and it all comes back here, goes into these elec­tron­ics, and then it’s sent off, and goes out to the Inter­net and pro­vides your broad­band ser­vice. The same fiber is being used to pro­vide sys­tem improve­ments to our elec­tric sys­tem by doing auto­mat­ic sys­tem restora­tion. These reclosers and relays are con­nect­ed with fiber, and there’s sev­er­al of these down our lines that even­tu­al­ly tie to anoth­er sub­sta­tion. We use the fiber for them to com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er so they can find the fault, iso­late it, and then restore pow­er to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. We’re using our fiber to com­mu­ni­cate to our down­line devices to pro­vide a self-heal­ing net­work. When one sub­sta­tion has a cir­cuit and anoth­er sta­tion has a sec­ond cir­cuit, and they have a com­mon tie point. We’re able to com­mu­ni­cate to all of these reclosers. So if a fault occurs in any one sec­tion, they’ll tell the oth­er devices, they’ll auto­mat­i­cal­ly iso­late the fault and then restore pow­er to as many sec­tions as it can auto­mat­i­cal­ly. This can only be done with the speed and reli­a­bil­i­ty of fiber. So the auto­mat­ic sys­tem restora­tion is only pos­si­ble with the use of fiber optics. You need the high speed secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions in order for things to auto­mat­i­cal­ly recon­fig­ure. The man­u­al process to do that would take any­where from 30 min­utes or longer. We’re try­ing to auto­mate it with­in sec­onds.  Coastal Elec­tric’s mis­sion is to pro­vide safe and reli­able infra­struc­ture for eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, and we are com­mit­ted to the com­mu­ni­ties we serve. We not only serve the com­mu­ni­ty, but we live here. This is our home. It’s often said that our prod­uct is elec­tric­i­ty, but our busi­ness is com­mu­ni­ty and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. 

We’re here at McIn­tosh Coun­ty Mid­dle School on Earth Day doing an EV day. We’re work­ing with all of the sixth grade stu­dents here at the mid­dle school. We’re doing a short pre­sen­ta­tion that gives them an overview of what an elec­tric vehi­cle is, how it works, what the his­to­ry is, what its impacts are. And then we come out­side and we look at elec­tric vehi­cles. We’ve got a lot of dif­fer­ent vehi­cles, from a race car built by Rich­mond Hill Mid­dle School to E‑bikes. We’ve got a a vari­ety of pick­up trucks. We’ve got an F150 Light­ning that was loaned to us by the local Ford deal­er. All these vehi­cles were pro­vid­ed by folks here in the com­mu­ni­ty who want­ed to be part of this to help edu­cate these kids. I think this is impor­tant when you look at the his­to­ry of elec­tric coop­er­a­tives, way back when in the 1930s, when co-ops were first start­ed, they spent a lot of time edu­cat­ing peo­ple on how to use elec­tric­i­ty. Co-ops invest­ed a lot of mon­ey in what we’d call the ini­tial elec­tri­fi­ca­tion phase, elec­tric­i­ty 1.0, get­ting peo­ple famil­iar with elec­tric cook­ing, an elec­tric wash­ing machine, those basic things. Fast for­ward to prob­a­bly the 1960s when air con­di­tion­ing real­ly start­ed being adopt­ed in homes across the coun­try. Elec­tric co-ops played a big role in that. They were big pro­po­nents of elec­tric­i­ty for heat pumps, for air con­di­tion­ers. So they, again, reached out to train, edu­cate their mem­bers on what this tech­nol­o­gy meant, how it made their life bet­ter. So today we’re look­ing at elec­tri­fi­ca­tion 3.0, if you will. We’ve got elec­tric trans­porta­tion that tru­ly is trans­for­ma­tion­al in terms of sav­ing peo­ple mon­ey, in terms of its impact on the envi­ron­ment, but also just how fun it is to dri­ve an elec­tric vehi­cle, and that’s reflect­ed in what these kids behind us are see­ing. So it’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty, but it’s also a mis­sion that coop­er­a­tives like Coastal Elec­tric take very seri­ous­ly. This is part of who they are. It’s in their DNA. It’s part of their coop­er­a­tive mis­sion for sup­port­ing edu­ca­tion, for out­reach to the com­mu­ni­ty, and coop­er­at­ing with each oth­er to make this work. 

As an elec­tric coop­er­a­tive, you’ll always hear about Coastal Elec­tric’s ded­i­ca­tion to our com­mu­ni­ty. Part of that ded­i­ca­tion is strength­ened by the efforts of our foun­da­tion. The foun­da­tion focus­es on com­mu­ni­ty needs as relat­ed to food, health, shel­ter, safe­ty, and edu­ca­tion. With a major­i­ty of their quest cen­tered on the edu­ca­tion of our stu­dents, the pri­or­i­ty of the foun­da­tion has been focused on tech­nol­o­gy pro­grams that will enhance edu­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties as an invest­ment in our future. As the Foun­da­tion Coor­di­na­tor for Coastal Elec­tric Foun­da­tion, I am extreme­ly excit­ed to be able to par­tic­i­pate in the Bright Ideas endeav­or that we have every year. The Bright Ideas grant funds that are pro­vid­ed to these schools and to these teach­ers, it is over­whelm­ing. They are over­whelmed with joy. They are over­whelmed with thank­ful­ness. None of this is pos­si­ble with­out our mem­bers and their Round Up dol­lars. Oper­a­tion Round Up is a vol­un­tary pro­gram that Coastal Elec­tric mem­bers can par­tic­i­pate in, in which their elec­tric bill is round­ed up to the near­est whole dol­lar. Those funds are col­lec­tive­ly used to fund grant appli­ca­tions such as the McIn­tosh Coun­ty Skills USA or oth­er endeav­ors that have to do with food, health, safe­ty, shel­ter, or edu­ca­tion. Skills USA is a career and tech­ni­cal stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion that focus­es on build­ing bet­ter lead­ers and work­ers in our Amer­i­can soci­ety. Through that orga­ni­za­tion, they look at all indus­tries such as agri­cul­ture, audio/video, auto­mo­tive, nurs­ing, and it pro­vides them with hands-on expe­ri­ence through com­pe­ti­tions at the region, state, and nation­al lev­el. It’s a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty that all of the elec­tri­cal co-ops do in Geor­gia and across the nation, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in our rur­al areas like Coastal Elec­tric does for Bryan, Lib­er­ty, and McIn­tosh Coun­ties. I learned about Skills USA as a fresh­man in high school. One day, Coach Rob asked if we would be inter­est­ed in com­pet­ing in Skills USA. We did not know what Skills USA was at the time. It was a pret­ty new pro­gram. Lit­tle did I know that it would turn out to be one of the best things I did for myself in high school. I still use the skills that I learned from extem­po­ra­ne­ous speak­ing and job inter­views that I com­pet­ed in in skills back then. Now, I am the Exec­u­tive Assis­tant to the CEO and the Foun­da­tion Coor­di­na­tor at Coastal Elec­tric. And I use those skills every sin­gle day. As the Foun­da­tion Coor­di­na­tor, I received a grant appli­ca­tion from the new Mr. Rob, that is the Skills USA coach. They need­ed mon­ey to be able to go to the state com­pe­ti­tion in Atlanta, Geor­gia. Thank­ful­ly, our board approved it, and we were glad to take the small change from your Round Up dol­lars and apply that to these stu­dents and real­ly make a dif­fer­ence in their lives. 

As you can see, Oper­a­tion Round Up is very use­ful and essen­tial to orga­ni­za­tions like Skills USA. How­ev­er, it’s not the only orga­ni­za­tion we’ve had the plea­sure of help­ing. Oth­ers include the Wash­ing­ton Youth Tour and the Boys and Girls Club. Boys and Girls Club and Coastal are a part­ner­ship now We’re watch­ing our area grow by leaps and bounds. $20,000 ain’t chick­en feed. Coastal has fund­ed our Robot­ics & Stems pro­gram, which is very cru­cial when you start look­ing at the way things are going in the future as far as jobs and occu­pa­tions. We’re prepar­ing the future work­force now. It’s pro­ject­ed that by 2025, we’ll be 1,500 work­ers short in our region. We’ve got to start now to erad­i­cate that prob­lem. Our kids now know how to do some basic pro­gram­ming. Coastal has a long rep­u­ta­tion of being a good cor­po­rate cit­i­zen and giv­ing back to the cit­i­zen­ry. The impact they’re hav­ing on these young peo­ple’s lives, you real­ly can’t cal­cu­late it in dol­lars and cents. It makes a huge dif­fer­ence in what the future holds for them. Coastal, way to go. Thank you again. 

Recent­ly, many of the foun­da­tion projects include robot­ics and elec­tric vehi­cles. Our inter­est in elec­tric vehi­cles was born in the Bright Ideas pro­gram when a Rich­mond Hill teacher want­ed to con­vert a gas-pow­ered go-cart into an elec­tric go-cart. Now, we’re sup­ply­ing elec­tric cart kits to schools in Bryan, Lib­er­ty, and McIn­tosh coun­ties. More rel­e­vant than ever, these hands-on edu­ca­tion pro­grams will lead to skilled job oppor­tu­ni­ties and the grow­ing demand for full-size elec­tric cars and trucks. This is the sec­ond time we’ve host­ed this com­pe­ti­tion here at Rich­mond Hill Mid­dle School. Stu­dents are cur­rent­ly rac­ing in an hour and a half heats, so 90 min­utes. They have to run three dif­fer­ent dri­vers in that. They try to go as many laps as pos­si­ble in that 90 min­utes. Every­body uses the same vehi­cle, the same bat­ter­ies, the same motors. It real­ly comes down to how good are they at putting the car togeth­er, but even more impor­tant, how good are they at opti­miz­ing their dri­ving per­for­mance? It helps me with math because you have to find out how fast you’re going and how much ener­gy you’re using to see if you need to stop for a pit stop to do more bat­tery check. It also gives you engi­neer­ing because you get to build a car. It’s very fun. They actu­al­ly work real­ly well togeth­er to where this team will help out that team. I’m learn­ing how to devel­op team­work, how to put things togeth­er cor­rect­ly, and how to dri­ve a car. He does­n’t have a dri­ver’s license yet. He’s only 13. This is a good prac­tice for us when we start per­mit and also for dri­ving. He explained that they all worked on the car and that he trusts his team and their skills. Once I saw him suit­ed up and I saw every­one check­ing all of the har­ness­es, mom’s anx­i­ety went down. So excit­ed. I like doing stuff that I’ve nev­er done before, so I’m like, Why not give this a try? So I joined it. I had fun with it. So I did it this year again, too. I can do any­thing just as well as a boy can do. Kind of fun. There’s one turn over there that you have to slow down for, but if you turn off too much, your tires will screech. That’s what hap­pened with mine. But I fig­ured out a way to get around that. Impro­vis­ing. Look at you. I’ve always liked engi­neer­ing. I have a bunch of Legos back in my house, and I love to put stuff togeth­er. So I found that part real­ly inter­est­ing. We joked ear­li­er about, Oh, my gosh, what’s going to hap­pen if it starts rain­ing? Well, elec­tric vehi­cles work in the rain. A lot of sports play in the rain. Foot­ball, soc­cer, base­ball. We do that, too. If it’s just rain, it’s just water, and we’ll get wet. You can actu­al­ly wash your elec­tric vehi­cle. It does­n’t stop work­ing. So this is a rain or shine event. When you look behind you, you see how many more peo­ple are here com­pared to even a year ago. So the pro­gram is catch­ing hold. Every time we have new events in dif­fer­ent places around the coun­try, we get one lit­tle seed that starts, and then those events get big­ger and big­ger and big­ger. There’s more inter­est in elec­tric vehi­cles, so this ties very well into that. We’re train­ing stu­dents how to plug into that in the future. The elec­tric cars real­ly inter­est me because I think they’re what is going to become com­mon in this world, and I real­ly want to learn more about it. I’m think­ing about going to Geor­gia Tech. I real­ly want to go there because it’s the best engi­neer­ing school in the coun­try, and I’d like to be an aero­space engi­neer after col­lege. This is a mul­ti-year project. It’s a big com­mit­ment of spon­sors like Coastal Elec­tric to make this hap­pen. So Coastal rec­og­nize the val­ue of this in schools. They’re actu­al­ly expand­ing this pro­gram now to some of the oth­er schools they serve in the area. There are a lot of orga­ni­za­tions like Coastal Elec­tric that do not do this. I think it’s impor­tant that com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers see that orga­ni­za­tions and com­pa­nies like yours are putting the mon­ey back into the com­mu­ni­ty. Espe­cial­ly for our younger gen­er­a­tion, it’s super help­ful, and it encour­ages them to see that there are oth­er things that they can do because of orga­ni­za­tions like Coastal. Thank you, Coastal Elec­tric, for mak­ing this very fun and enthu­si­as­tic for all of us. I just want to tell them thank you. 

Then there are oth­er needs in the com­mu­ni­ty besides edu­ca­tion. Some­times it’s the most basic neces­si­ties that many of us take for grant­ed, like sleep­ing on a bed. I received a phone call one evening from our HR man­ag­er, Daphanie Har­ris. She was out ear­li­er that day look­ing for a project for our team build­ing exer­cise. She con­tact­ed an orga­ni­za­tion called Sleep in Heav­en­ly Peace. They at that point direct­ed her to me, and she had no idea that I was involved with Sleep in Heav­en­ly Peace. The Rotary Club that I’m a mem­ber of, we spon­sor fos­ter kids and kids in our neigh­bor­hood who are low income. We received a Christ­mas wish­list that year for a bed. So a child in our com­mu­ni­ty want­ed a bed. Our Rotary Club found Sleep in Heav­en­ly Peace and start­ed a local chap­ter here in Hinesville. What we do is we receive appli­ca­tions from chil­dren in the local com­mu­ni­ty who do not have a bed. They’re sleep­ing on the floor. They may be sleep­ing on a couch, pile of clothes. So at that point, we reach out to that par­ent and facil­i­tate get­ting them a bed to make sure that no kids are sleep­ing on the floor. Daphanie Har­ris… After a cou­ple of min­utes of both of us laugh­ing about that, she expressed a need and a want for hav­ing our employ­ees be a part of this project. We sat down and fig­ured out how many beds that our employ­ees we want­ed to build. We had to order all the lum­ber from Lowe’s. We had to bring in all the saws, the sanders, the tables. Once that day arrived, it was all hands on deck. We had about 35 employ­ees. After about two and a half hours, we had rough­ly, I think it was 12 beds that day that were ready for deliv­ery in our local area. It makes me feel absolute­ly won­der­ful to be able to help these kids. If you don’t have a good night’s sleep, you can’t focus dur­ing the day. Every­thing that they do dur­ing that day is… I’m sor­ry, I get choked up. Know­ing that my cowork­ers, the peo­ple that I spend the major­i­ty of my time with every day, want­ed to come togeth­er and par­tic­i­pate in this project, it brought a sense of joy and pride to me as work­ing at Coastal Elec­tric because one of the things that you hear all the time, you hear it at oth­er places, is when you work some­where, you’re fam­i­ly. At Coastal Elec­tric, you tru­ly are fam­i­ly. 

As you just heard from Ter­ry, that was such a great project, not just a team build­ing project, but an exam­ple of Coastal Elec­tric’s com­mit­ment to com­mu­ni­ty, to each oth­er, and to the chil­dren. That’s part of the cul­ture here at Coastal Elec­tric, to serve those in need. Here we are, anoth­er suc­cess­ful year for our com­mu­ni­ty, and anoth­er rea­son to come lis­ten to the Annu­al Meet­ing of Coastal Elec­tric. If you reg­is­tered, you might be the lucky win­ner of our $1,000 give­away. Come with me. 

End of tran­script from the audio por­tion of the pre-record­ed video.

The remain­der of this tran­script is from the live-streamed annu­al meet­ing:

We’re just about to start the busi­ness por­tion of our annu­al meet­ing. But first, I’d like to take a moment to thank every­one who came by our offices to reg­is­ter and vote dur­ing these past three days. Hope­ful­ly, you had a chance to speak with me or our direc­tors or many of our staff. It’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to come by and ask any ques­tions or give us any feed­back. Because after all, this is your meet­ing for our mem­bers. We did have a great turnout. Almost 2,300 mem­bers reg­is­tered for this event, and we enjoyed the many con­ver­sa­tions with each of you over these past few days. 

Next on our agen­da is a give­away of some mon­ey to one of those lucky mem­bers that reg­is­tered for our annu­al meet­ing. Emi­ly, will you please help me draw the win­ning tick­et for our $1,000 grand prize? Spin that wheel. Okay, as you can see, it’s very secure. We have it all locked up. The win­ner from Rich­mond Hill, Geor­gia, who lives on Plan­ta­tion Way, Sher­rell Mack. Sher­rell Mack, con­grat­u­la­tions. We will be con­tact­ing you with­in the hour for your chance to come down here today, hope­ful­ly, and pick up your $1,000 and start off this Memo­r­i­al Day week­end. 

There’s also a $250 raf­fle that goes to all the mem­bers who left us their email address. We will draw that name and con­tact you using that email address in the next few busi­ness days. Now that we’ve made Sher­rell very hap­py, I’d like to We’re going to take this time to intro­duce our board pres­i­dent, Mr. John Woods. 

Thank you, sir. Good morn­ing. Now, I’d like to call to order the 84th annu­al meet­ing of mem­bers of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. We’re com­ing to you live from our head­quar­ters in Mid­way, Geor­gia. Ear­li­er this week, 2,245 mem­bers cast their bal­lots to elect three of the nine direc­tors to each serve a three-year term. Now, I’d like to intro­duce our Board of Direc­tors. Our Vice Pres­i­dent, Ms. Rea­gan Odom, Rea­gan is a life­long res­i­dent of Long and McIn­tosh Coun­ties and has served on the board since 2016. Next, our Sec­re­tary-Trea­sur­er, Ms. Lau­ra McGee. Lau­ra is a retired CPA over 40 years from Rich­mond Hill, Geor­gia, and has served on our board since 2011. Join­ing them is Mr. Chuck Gaskin from McIn­tosh Coun­ty. Chuck is the founder of Dorch­ester Shoot­ing Pre­serve in Mid­way and has served on our board since 2020. We also have John Kearns from McIn­tosh Coun­ty. John has lived in McIn­tosh Coun­ty for over 25 years and been a rep­re­sen­ta­tive on our board for the past 14 years. Mov­ing to Lib­er­ty Coun­ty, please wel­come Hol­ly Fields. Hol­ly cur­rent­ly works for the city of Hinesville as Human Resources Man­ag­er and has been a rep­re­sen­ta­tive on our board since 2017. Our newest addi­tion to the board, Joseph Gill. Joe is a life­long res­i­dent of Lib­er­ty Coun­ty and joined our board in 2023. Next, we have Mr. Kyle Chris­tiansen. Kyle is a life­long res­i­dent of Bryan Coun­ty and has owned a vet­eri­nary prac­tice for over 28 years. Kyle has been on our board for 10 years. Last, cer­tain­ly not least, we wel­come Mr. Ken Luke, Bryan Coun­ty. Ken is a Senior Vice Pres­i­dent at SNF Chem­i­cal in Rice­burg and has served on our board since 2009. 

At this time, I’d like to intro­duce our attor­ney, Luke Moses, to con­duct our busi­ness meet­ing and announce the results of the elec­tion of direc­tors. 

Thank you, John. To the mem­ber­ship, I want to say good morn­ing and wel­come to the busi­ness ses­sion of the 89th annu­al meet­ing of the mem­bers of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. Like John said, I’m Luke Moses, and I’m the attor­ney for the Board of Direc­tors and an attor­ney here in town at Jones, Osteen & Jones. There are a cou­ple of for­mal­i­ties we’ve got to han­dle before con­firm­ing the results of the mem­bers’ vot­ing over the past three days. 

First, we need to deter­mine if there’s a quo­rum, and we need to have the read­ing of the notice of this meet­ing. For that, I’ll call Sec­re­tary-Trea­sur­er, Lau­ra McGee, to the stand. 

Thank you. Good morn­ing. As of May 23, 2024, there were 19,876 mem­bers of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. Arti­cle 3, Sec­tion 4 of the bylaws of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive states, 2% of the mem­bers present in per­son or rep­re­sent­ed by proxy shall con­sti­tute a quo­rum. This morn­ing, I declare a quo­rum present for the trans­ac­tion of busi­ness. Now, because he says we have to, I’m going to read our notice of the meet­ing. Pur­suant to Arti­cle 3, Sec­tion 3 of the bylaws of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive, there has been sent to each mem­ber writ­ten notice from the Sec­re­tary of the Coop­er­a­tive, which pro­vides as fol­lows: The 2024 annu­al meet­ing will be held in the audi­to­ri­um at the head­quar­ters of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive, on Thurs­day, May 23rd, 2024 at 10:00 AM. The meet­ing will be live streamed on coastalelectric.coop and Face­book Live. At this meet­ing, reports con­cern­ing the affairs of the coop­er­a­tive will be pre­sent­ed, and mem­bers will elect three direc­tors for terms of three years to fill the expir­ing terms for Bryan Coun­ty, Lib­er­ty Coun­ty, and McIn­tosh Coun­ty seats on the board. I have obtained ver­i­fi­ca­tion from the US Postal Ser­vice that those notices were mailed on April 19, 2024. Thank you. 

Thanks, Lau­ra. The next item of busi­ness is the approval of the min­utes from the 2023 Annu­al Meet­ing. The board mem­bers have those min­utes placed before them, and they were placed before them before they arrived this morn­ing. If nobody has any changes to those min­utes, I’d like to ask for a motion for those min­utes to be approved and placed in the per­ma­nent record books of the coop­er­a­tive. Okay, Rea­gan Odum has moved, and John Woods is sec­ond­ing. Is every­one vot­ing? Every­one votes. It pass­es unan­i­mous­ly. 

Our next item on the agen­da is a pre­sen­ta­tion of reports of offi­cers and direc­tors. Because this is a vir­tu­al meet­ing, our CEO made his report by way of the year-end review video that you just saw. That report will remain on the co-op’s web­site for the next year, and we invite you to watch and share that video with your friends and oth­er co-op mem­bers who might be inter­est­ed. A print­ed annu­al report and the audit­ed finan­cial state­ments of the co-op have been mailed to every mem­ber of the coop­er­a­tive inside the June issue of Geor­gia Mag­a­zine. I invite you to review that report and call or send emails if you have any ques­tions. 

Our next item of busi­ness is the con­fir­ma­tion of the elec­tion of direc­tors. Coastal Elec­tric is gov­erned by a nine-mem­ber board of direc­tors elect­ed by the mem­bers of the coop­er­a­tive. Each direc­tor serves a three-year term. There are three direc­tors from each of the coun­ties served by the co-op. How­ev­er, the direc­tors are elect­ed and serve at large. Because the terms are stag­gered each year, only three direc­tor seats become open for each year. Our bylaws pro­vide for a nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee to be appoint­ed and to meet to nom­i­nate a slate of can­di­dates to fill the expir­ing terms of the board. Those nom­i­nees are placed on a paper bal­lot, and mem­bers may vote either in per­son or or at the co-op office in Rich­mond Hill or in Mid­way for the three days imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing this meet­ing. That nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee that I ref­er­enced for this elec­tion con­sist­ed of the fol­low­ing mem­bers: Mark Schlag as chair­man, Don­na Moore, Lana Ray, Regi­nald Pierce, and Tim­o­thy Baty. The com­mit­tee met on Feb­ru­ary eighth of this year at 11:00 and made their nom­i­na­tions. I have their signed report, which I’ll read to you now. The direc­tor nom­i­nee from Bryan Coun­ty is Mr. Ken Luke, for Lib­er­ty Coun­ty, Mr. Joe Gill, and for McIn­tosh and Long Coun­ty, Mr. John Kearns. There were no nom­i­na­tions received by peti­tion, and that report is signed by Mark Schlag, who I already men­tioned is the chair of the nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee. In accor­dance with our bylaws, ear­ly vot­ing was per­mit­ted for the three days imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing this meet­ing. Each of the three incum­bent direc­tors ran at large. There were 2,245 bal­lots cast, and because each can­di­date was unop­posed, I can declare Direc­tor Ken Luke from Bryan Coun­ty, Direc­tor Joe Gill from Lib­er­ty Coun­ty, and Direc­tor John Kearns from both McIn­tosh and Long Coun­ties are duly re-elect­ed to three-year terms for the board of direc­tors. Con­grat­u­la­tions, gen­tle­men. 

Now our agen­da calls for any unfin­ished busi­ness from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing. I know of no unfin­ished busi­ness, unless I hear some from the board, I’ll move on to new busi­ness. Is there any new busi­ness that the board wants to bring up? Hear­ing none and hav­ing con­firmed the elec­tion of the three direc­tors to our board, I declare this meet­ing to be adjourned. Thank you all for com­ing.