2025 Annual Meeting

Chris Fettes

Good morn­ing. I’m Chris Fettes, your CEO of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive, and wel­come to our 2025 annu­al meet­ing. This is a spe­cial year mark­ing our 85th anniver­sary. We were found­ed in 1940, and our mis­sion has always been to pro­vide afford­able and reli­able elec­tric­i­ty to all of our mem­bers in our com­mu­ni­ty despite the chal­lenges. In this past year, we’ve had some chal­lenges. We had an active hur­ri­cane sea­son, if you recall, with a trop­i­cal storm, fol­lowed up by a pret­ty dam­ag­ing Hur­ri­cane Helene. Then just a few short months lat­er, we had prob­a­bly the most severe Jan­u­ary win­ter weath­er that I can recall, a full week of weath­er and cold tem­per­a­tures below 32 degrees. Let’s hear more about our out­age restora­tion efforts from our engi­neer­ing and oper­a­tions team here at Coastal Elec­tric.

Jake Hor­ton

I’ve been here almost 32 years. In all my time here, I’ve nev­er seen the dri­ving con­di­tions the way they were. The ice and snow stayed here for four days, and the con­di­tions were per­fect. It nev­er got above freez­ing for four days.

Bradley Mullis

We had a cou­ple of trucks get stuck. It was hard. The first morn­ing, we got up at 5:00, 5:30 or so, and it was still dark out. And with the snow, you could­n’t see any lines in the road. You just had to go slow and stay where where you thought it would be in the mid­dle. It’s hard when you try and stop a big truck like that, it wants to slide on ice. Every out­age had some­thing to do with tree limbs. Once that rain had froze on limbs and that extra weight got on there, it tore down a lot of limbs.

Jake Hor­ton

The only thing we would do was run out­ages, and we had one crew assigned to that, and their response time was prob­a­bly hor­ri­ble because they could­n’t dri­ve but about 25 miles an hour.

Bradley Mullis

It’s always cool to see the snow come here because it’s some­thing we don’t get to see every year. But as far as pre­pared­ness, it’s the same thing with a hur­ri­cane or any oth­er storm.

Jake Hor­ton

Nobody can pre­dict the weath­er, and we’ve seen that with the Hur­ri­cane Helene. The Hur­ri­cane Helene was a unique storm. The only one to real­ly com­pare it to in my time here would be Hur­ri­cane Matthew. I think it was just as severe. We did­n’t have a lot of time to pre­pare because the track kept it in west Geor­gia, and the track moved sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the east.

Bradley Mullis

We weren’t expect­ing it to pick up at the last minute like it did and turned into some­thing sig­nif­i­cant­ly worse.

Jake Hor­ton

When­ev­er it did that, it was greater dam­age to our area. There was a lot of oth­er co-ops or neigh­bor­ing co-ops that suf­fered the same sit­u­a­tion as we did. They weren’t pre­pared because it was­n’t sup­posed to hap­pen.

Bradley Mullis

There was a lot of wind involved in that event. I believe it was 90 some­thing per­cent of our sys­tem went down with it.

Jake Hor­ton

It was still a four day, five day event for us to get the lights com­plete­ly restored. It was a cat­a­stroph­ic dam­age around here.

Bradley Mullis

We have some­thing on the radar that’s com­ing. First thing, we’re going to make sure we have all of our mate­r­i­al togeth­er, and we try and keep track of any­thing that needs to be tak­en care of before the storm gets here. Usu­al­ly, our ware­house is pret­ty good. If we think that we’re going to have a major event, that there’s going to be sev­er­al broke poles or what­ev­er, they’ll go ahead and call in and be pre­pared and have extra poles and trans­form­ers or what­ev­er else deliv­ered pri­or to the storm being here. When the out­er bands get here, we’ll work until we get winds over 35 miles an hour. That’s when we have to stand down. Once the storm is cleared, we start with doing the things that we can do first to get the most amount of peo­ple on, and then we just work our way down the line.

Jake Hor­ton

With­in 24 hours of the storm, we start get­ting a good game plan. We know whether it’s going to be a storm that’s going to require us to bring in a bunch of crews or if we can han­dle it. We have our OMS as a won­der­ful tool. We can tell what areas are out. We have a board in oper­a­tions where we write down what crew is there, what con­tract crew, who­ev­er we have there. We just assign anoth­er bird dog to that crew and get them in an area that has­n’t been looked at yet, get them to start work­ing. It also lets us know how long our restora­tion effort may be. If it’s a small storm and we have to work with our crews, it’s nor­mal­ly overnight, to maybe into the next day. But if we have to bring in crews, it could be a week or bet­ter.

Bradley Mullis

When we have storms here, once we have every­thing cleared on our end in our town and our sys­tem, once we have the go-ahead, we’ll move to the place. If some­one else still needs help, we’re good to go down there and give them a hand.

Jake Hor­ton

I think that they just need to know that we do every­thing to try to make our mem­ber­ship hap­py and give them what they need. I’m very com­mit­ted. I’ve always been loy­al. I real­ly love the coop­er­a­tive. I love all the guys that’s here. I would­n’t trade them for any­thing else in the world. I will say I lost two of our employ­ees this past year. It’s like los­ing a broth­er. It’s hurt me. It still hurts me to this day, and I still think of them to this day. We’re a fam­i­ly. I mean, that’s as blunt as you can put it. 

Bradley Mullis

Going out of town and help­ing major dis­as­ters. Sev­er­al years ago, we went to Louisiana, and you show up to a place and there’s 500 oth­er peo­ple like you doing the same thing you’re doing. To go out there and make that kind of dif­fer­ence and just sim­ply rid­ing down the road and peo­ple are just out in their yards, wav­ing and honk­ing horns and excit­ed to see you there makes you feel good inside. It’s an awe­some feel­ing. To be able to help some­body who needs it, be there for your com­mu­ni­ty, know that you make a dif­fer­ence, it means a lot.

Chris Fettes

We’re in the Coastal Elec­tric Con­trol Cen­ter, the cen­ter hub of activ­i­ty for all things relat­ed to the main­te­nance and oper­a­tion of our elec­tric grid. Line inspec­tions, con­nect­ing new cus­tomers, and most impor­tant­ly, out­age restora­tion. This is where reli­a­bil­i­ty begins. Our 2024 safe­ty inspec­tions includ­ed over 3,000 pole inspec­tions, 1,000 pad mount equip­ment inspec­tions, and almost 200 miles of right of away clear­ing to pre­vent pow­er out­ages and main­tain our reli­a­bil­i­ty. We also work to con­nect new mem­bers to our elec­tric grid, con­nect­ing over 1,500 new ser­vices last year alone. When Coastal Elec­tric isn’t busy restor­ing out­ages from severe weath­er events, we’re also work­ing with our com­mu­ni­ty part­ners. Many times you’ll hear us say that our busi­ness is elec­tric­i­ty, but our mis­sion is com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment. One of our sig­nif­i­cant part­ners here in Bryan Coun­ty is the Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty of Bryan Coun­ty. I’m sit­ting here with the CEO, Ryan Purvis, and we’ve been work­ing over the years on a vari­ety of projects. Tell us what’s going on with the Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty today?

Ryan Purvis

Well, thank you for hav­ing me, Chris. We can­not do what we do with­out great part­ners like Coastal Elec­tric. You guys real­ly step up to the plate and set your­self apart. When we’re try­ing to invite indus­try to this area, speed to mar­ket is cru­cial. We often work hand in hand with you guys to make sure that the util­i­ty needs are met. You guys are on a lot of our site vis­its with us with prospects. We view you guys as a cru­cial part­ner with us. And real­ly, indus­try does not hap­pen with­out you guys doing what you do. So we appre­ci­ate that. Our mis­sion at the Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty of Bryan Coun­ty is real­ly very sim­ple. We want to pro­vide a diverse indus­try base where any child in high school has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stay in Bryan Coun­ty regard­less of what their career path is. And that’s only pos­si­ble if we have a diverse indus­try. Now, we can’t do any of that with­out you guys com­ing in and sup­port­ing us from the util­i­ty side.

Chris Fettes

Many times in the plan­ning phase, it’s years in advance before the devel­op­ment actu­al­ly starts becom­ing brick and mor­tar, and the infra­struc­ture has to be there first. We don’t want a large oppor­tu­ni­ty or prospect to have to wait on Coastal Elec­tric. So that infra­struc­ture is lead­ing the devel­op­ment, just as we have a new sub­sta­tion on Belfast, 100 megawatt sub­sta­tion, and it’s there to help you have that indus­try with­out any lim­i­ta­tions to elec­tric­i­ty or ener­gy needs.

Ryan Purvis

That’s a good point. Hon­est­ly, from prospects, the first ques­tion they ask is, do we have the pow­er? Our abil­i­ty in Bryan Coun­ty to say, not only do we have the pow­er, but we have it today, real­ly sets us apart and I think gives us an advan­tage that most com­mu­ni­ties don’t have.

Chris Fettes

As we’ve seen a lot of new busi­ness and indus­try come to the area, we’ve also noticed that they’re bring­ing more tech­ni­cal jobs to our area. A lot of those tech­ni­cal jobs need more than just elec­tric­i­ty. They need reli­able com­mu­ni­ca­tions, too. In the giga­bit net­work speeds, Coastal Elec­tric also has a sub­sidiary, Coastal Fiber. We’re bring­ing fiber to all of our meters in Lib­er­ty Coun­ty and Bryan Coun­ty. We can offer that to the indus­try as well. Tell us about what you see on the indus­try needs.

Ryan Purvis

Bryan Coun­ty as a whole, we have a his­to­ry of inno­va­tion. From Hen­ry Ford to Hyundai in a state-of-the-art facil­i­ty there, you can’t entice state-of-the-art indus­tries with­out hav­ing state-of-the-art util­i­ties.

Chris Fettes

With these high-speed com­mu­ni­ca­tions, our first mis­sion with Coastal Fiber was to real­ly bring that high-speed Inter­net to unserved areas. You have unserved and you have under­served. Now that we have accom­plished that mis­sion, they now have giga­bit oppor­tu­ni­ties. We’re now reach­ing out to the new devel­op­ments, so we could be the first option of ser­vice. We’re reach­ing out to those indus­tri­al parks. So much today is in the cloud, and you have to have even more than one con­nec­tion to the cloud. You have to have mul­ti­ple con­nec­tions and high-speed con­nec­tions at that. Ryan, you men­tioned growth. For the last 10, 20 years, Coast Elec­tric has been see­ing res­i­den­tial growth upon res­i­den­tial growth, devel­op­ment upon devel­op­ment. But I would say in these last 5–10 years, we’ve been see­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent. We’ve been see­ing some indus­tri­al growth, com­mer­cial growth, job oppor­tu­ni­ties. Tell us what you’re see­ing and what your out­look is for our area.

Ryan Purvis

What we are see­ing is that 8–10 years ago, most peo­ple came to Bryan Coun­ty know­ing that they would live here, prob­a­bly edu­cate their kids here, but then they were going to have to trav­el out­side the coun­ty for work. And thanks to you and your team, you guys have been a big part in pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties local­ly for folks to stay here. We no longer have to trav­el out­side of Bryan Coun­ty. From the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to oth­er indus­tries, now we have oppor­tu­ni­ties to stay home. Chris, I think these are all the lit­tle things that real­ly set us apart as a com­mu­ni­ty from oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

Chris Fettes

Yeah, and I think it’s that coor­di­na­tion of work­ing togeth­er so that we can not just under­stand the needs of today, but antic­i­pate the needs of tomor­row. That’s why we real­ly val­ue this rela­tion­ship between the Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty and Coastal Elec­tric, so that you’re in tune with new indus­try, and we’re in tune with the tech­nolo­gies that we can pro­vide to the com­mu­ni­ty.

Ryan Purvis

Well, I appre­ci­ate that. I’ll tell you, one of the things that we love about Coastal Elec­tric is the fact that you guys are peo­ple-cen­tered. It’s about the peo­ple first. We see that. We see that on your social media. We see that in PR. We see that in how you guys com­mu­ni­cate to the pub­lic. We’re glad to be a part­ner with you.

Chris Fettes

Many of you know that Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive oper­ates as a not-for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tion. What that means to each of our mem­bers, after all the invest­ments are made, we also allo­cate our rev­enues and mar­gins to a patron­age account. Last year, we were able to return $2.6 mil­lion of patron­age cap­i­tal back to our mem­bers. That brings our total of over $20 mil­lion that have been returned to our mem­bers in the his­to­ry of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. Anoth­er way that Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive gives back to its com­mu­ni­ty is through the Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive Foun­da­tion, by pro­vid­ing grants for orga­ni­za­tions that help the youth and young chil­dren in our com­mu­ni­ty. I have with me today Jean Wilster­man from the First Read­ers of McIn­tosh Coun­ty. Jean, tell me a lit­tle bit about this orga­ni­za­tion.

Jean Wilster­man

We are a non­prof­it that mails books to chil­dren from birth to age five. And in this way, they have books in their homes so that their par­ents can start read­ing to them. So we send the books along with a piece for the par­ents that helps them use these books with the chil­dren to read to them and help them learn their col­ors, their num­bers, all those impor­tant things.

Chris Fettes

And so this orga­ni­za­tion was put togeth­er in, what, 1999?

Jean Wilster­man

Yes, in Madi­son, Geor­gia, because they did­n’t have the work­force read­i­ly avail­able. It was caus­ing prob­lems with devel­op­ment in Madi­son, Geor­gia, and they real­ized it start­ed back with the chil­dren not being pre­pared for school. They say that a child’s brain is 85% devel­oped by age three.

Chris Fettes

I see you do so much for the chil­dren. Is there any help for the par­ents that are receiv­ing these books?

Jean Wilster­man

Absolute­ly. First read­ers believe that the par­ent is the child’s first teacher and most impor­tant teacher. And along with every book that’s mailed to the chil­dren is our Leap into Books leaflet for the par­ents, and it helps them use the book to teach their child.

Chris Fettes

How many fam­i­lies are we impact­ing right now in McIn­tosh Coun­ty?

Jean Wilster­man

Right now, we’re serv­ing a lit­tle over 300. But since we’ve received the grant mon­ey from Coastal Elec­tric, we have signed up over 50 more chil­dren. Our goal is to have every child in McIn­tosh Coun­ty receiv­ing the books at home before they go to school.

Chris Fettes

And many times, I’ve heard sto­ries of chil­dren just being excit­ed to receive some­thing in the mail. A pack­age is com­ing for them.

Jean Wilster­man

Absolute­ly. The books are addressed to the child, and they receive them every month. Like you said, it is excit­ing for them to get a gift in the mail and a col­or­ful, beau­ti­ful book that they can be read to. Most of the par­ents tell me the minute the book arrives, the child wants to sit down and read it. All the mon­ey we raise goes direct­ly to the chil­dren in our coun­ty.

Chris Fettes

This is a great orga­ni­za­tion and a great exam­ple of how Coastal Elec­tric part­ners with oth­ers to make just dra­mat­ic improve­ments to qual­i­ty of life for our chil­dren. The chil­dren are our future, and we thank you for apply­ing for this grant. We’re great to see that this mon­ey is being put to the best use pos­si­ble.

Jean Wilster­man

Thank you. It is. It’s so impor­tant. These are your future cus­tomers. This is the future of McIn­tosh Coun­ty and coastal Geor­gia.

Chris Fettes

All of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive’s work is made pos­si­ble by you, our mem­bers, and some of the most impact­ful work for our com­mu­ni­ty hap­pens as a result of your dona­tions to the Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive Foun­da­tion. When our mem­bers allow us to round up their elec­tric bill through Oper­a­tion Roundup, those pen­nies, nick­els, and dimes are pooled togeth­er and invest­ed back into our com­mu­ni­ty to assist with food, health, safe­ty, edu­ca­tion, and shel­ter needs of the cit­i­zens in our coun­ties served by Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. Last year, mem­bers con­tributed approx­i­mate­ly $100,000 to be be invest­ed in our com­mu­ni­ty pro­gram. For over 20 years, we have offered Bright Ideas edu­ca­tion grants to teach­ers in kinder­garten through 12th grade class­rooms across our elec­tric ser­vice ter­ri­to­ry, pro­vid­ing fund­ing for inno­v­a­tive class­room-based projects that might oth­er­wise not be pos­si­ble. In 2024, over $42,000 in Bright Ideas grants were award­ed to local edu­ca­tors. And we did­n’t for­get about the prin­ci­pals either. They received $24,000 to use towards the well-being of stu­dents and fac­ul­ty. For the stu­dents, Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive Foun­da­tion award­ed over $144,000 in schol­ar­ships so that they could go on and con­tin­ue their edu­ca­tion and pur­sue high­er aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments. Then we have anoth­er great pro­gram for the stu­dents in our com­mu­ni­ty.

It’s called the Wash­ing­ton Youth Tour. Every sum­mer, our Wash­ing­ton Youth Tour offers ris­ing high school seniors, along with hun­dreds of their peers from across the state and across across the coun­try, to have an incred­i­ble week in our nation’s cap­i­tal. The tour is a fast-paced lead­er­ship oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet with their leg­is­la­tors and see what makes Amer­i­ca tick. The Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive Foun­da­tion will always be a strong sup­port­er for edu­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties for the stu­dents in our com­mu­ni­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly with sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math skills for these stu­dents. We’ve been sup­ply­ing elec­tric vehi­cle kits for the stu­dents to get hands-on expe­ri­ence with what makes an elec­tric vehi­cle car run. And Green Pow­er USA has been a great part­ner assist­ing Coastal Elec­tric by host­ing elec­tric vehi­cle ral­lies where the stu­dents not only just race their cars, but they learn and com­pete with one anoth­er. Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive and our foun­da­tion will always be here to sup­port our com­mu­ni­ty now and into the future. And what a bet­ter way to pre­pare for the future than to join us in our 2025 annu­al meet­ing.

Chris Fettes

Wel­come back, every­one. We’re just about to start the busi­ness por­tion of our annu­al meet­ing. But first, I’d like to thank every­one that came by our offices for the past three days to vote and reg­is­ter for the annu­al meet­ing. Hope­ful­ly, you had a chance to speak with me or one of our direc­tors, or many of the staff that were there to greet you. It’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask any ques­tions or give us some feed­back that you have for us. As you know, this meet­ing is for you, our mem­bers. And we had a great turnout. Over almost 2200 mem­bers showed up dur­ing these past three days and reg­is­tered for this event, and they all reg­is­tered to par­tic­i­pate in our grand prize draw­ing com­ing up here, too. So, next on our agen­da is to give away $1,000 to one of those lucky mem­bers. Emi­ly, would you please join me in pick­ing out the win­ning tick­et? It’s a lot of tick­ets. I don’t know if we have a drum roll, but…

All right. The win­ning tick­et. Okay. This is from Lib­er­ty Coun­ty. This mem­ber… from Rice­boro, Geor­gia, specif­i­cal­ly. And it would be Yvonne Gor­don. Yvonne Gor­don. You have just won $1,000. Con­grat­u­la­tions. And in a few min­utes, I’ll be con­tact­ing you with a cell phone num­ber that you left me. And we’ll coor­di­nate lat­er today and get you $1,000. Con­grat­u­la­tions. What a great start to a Memo­r­i­al Day week­end. Now we’re about to start the busi­ness ses­sion, so I’m going to intro­duce our board pres­i­dent, Mr. John Woods, to come to the podi­um and take over the meet­ing. Thank you.

John Woods

Thank you, Chris. Hey, I’d like to call the meet­ing to order. Good morn­ing, mem­bers and friends, and wel­come to the live stream, our vir­tu­al 85th anniver­sary meet­ing of mem­bers of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. Our offices are closed today. Our employ­ees have been work­ing for the last three days in Rich­mond Hill office and here in Mid­way to facil­i­tate the reg­is­tra­tion and our vot­ing of mem­bers. Every mem­ber who reg­is­tered and vot­ed also took away a large cast iron grid­dle. We reg­is­tered over 2000 mem­bers in per­son that came and cast their votes to the elec­tion of the three direc­tors who serve as your mem­ber rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive Board of Direc­tors. This has been an amaz­ing turnout, and we are pleased with our mem­bers’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in this demo­c­ra­t­ic process to exer­cise con­trol of the cus­tomer-owned coop­er­a­tive. And now I would like to intro­duce your direc­tors. Our co-op has nine direc­tors. Each direc­tor rep­re­sents the entire mem­ber­ship at large. I’m John Woods, pres­i­dent of the board. I live in Lib­er­ty Coun­ty on Colonel’s Island.

Ms. Hol­ly Stevens, Lib­er­ty Coun­ty. Mr. Joseph Gill, Lib­er­ty Coun­ty. From McIn­tosh Coun­ty, Mr. John Kearns. Also from McIn­tosh Coun­ty, Mr. Charles Gaskin. Ms. Rea­gan Odom is our vice pres­i­dent (McIntosh/Long Coun­ties). From Bryan Coun­ty, Mr. Ken Luke, Ms. Lau­ra McGee, sec­re­tary-trea­sur­er, and Dr. Kyle Chris­tiansen. Again, I wel­come each of you watch­ing online this morn­ing. This pro­gram will remain on our web­site and YouTube chan­nel. I invite you to share it with your friends who may not have seen it live. And as always, we wel­come your com­ments and sug­ges­tions. Now, I’d like to turn the pro­gram over to our attor­ney, Luke Moses, who will be con­duct­ing the busi­ness ses­sion and our direc­tor elec­tion results. Thank you.

Luke Moses

John. To the view­ers of this live stream broad­cast, good morn­ing and wel­come to the busi­ness ses­sion of the 85th annu­al meet­ing of the mem­bers of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. I’m Luke Moses, and I’m a lawyer at Osteen Law Group in Hinesville, and the attor­ney for the board of direc­tors here at the co-op. There are a cou­ple of brief for­mal­i­ties we must han­dle before con­firm­ing the results of the mem­bers’ vot­ing for the past three days. The first order of busi­ness is deter­min­ing a quo­rum and the read­ing of the notice of this meet­ing. For that, I’m going to turn it over to sec­re­tary-trea­sur­er for the board, Ms. Lau­ra McGee.

Lau­ra McGee

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Good morn­ing. As of May 22nd, 2025, there were 20,473 mem­bers of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. Arti­cle three, sec­tion four 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. Okay. Sec­ond thing, pur­suant to arti­cle three, sec­tion three 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 2025 annu­al meet­ing will be held in the audi­to­ri­um at the head­quar­ters of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive on Thurs­day, May 22nd, 2025 at 10 a.m. The meet­ing will be live streamed on Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive and Face­book Live. At this meet­ing. 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 seat on the board. I have obtained the ver­i­fi­ca­tion from the US Postal Ser­vice that those notices were mailed on April 19th, 2025. Thank you.

Luke Moses

Thank you Lau­ra. The next item of busi­ness is the approval of the 2024 annu­al meet­ing. Those print­ed min­utes were placed on the table in front of each of the direc­tors when you arrived this morn­ing. Does any­one have any changes or addi­tions to those min­utes? Hear­ing none, I’d like to ask for a motion from the floor that those min­utes be approved and placed in the per­ma­nent record books of the Coop­er­a­tive. Mr. Woods? Is there a sec­ond? Ms. Odom? Okay. All vot­ing. Unan­i­mous­ly approved. The next item on the agen­da is a pre­sen­ta­tion of reports of offi­cers and direc­tors. As every­one knows, this is a vir­tu­al meet­ing, so our CEO has made his report in the Year in Review video pre­sen­ta­tion you just saw. That report will remain on the coop­er­a­tive web­site for a year, and we’d invite you to watch and share that with your friends and fam­i­ly and any oth­er coop­er­a­tive mem­bers who may be inter­est­ed. A print­ed annu­al report and the audit­ed finan­cial state­ments have been mailed to every mem­ber inside the June issue of Geor­gia Mag­a­zine.

I invite you to review that report and call or send an email to the coop­er­a­tive if you have any ques­tions about it. The next item of busi­ness is the con­fir­ma­tion of the elec­tion of direc­tors for the board. Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive 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 coop­er­a­tive. How­ev­er, the direc­tors are elect­ed and serve at large. The terms are stag­gered so that each year only three direc­tor seats of the nine become open. The bylaws of the coop­er­a­tive pro­vide for a nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee to be appoint­ed and to meet to nom­i­nate a slate of can­di­dates to fill the expir­ing terms. Those nom­i­nees are placed on a paper bal­lot, and mem­bers may vote either in per­son at the coop­er­a­tive office in Rich­mond Hill or the coop­er­a­tive office in Mid­way for the three days imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing this meet­ing. The nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee for this elec­tion con­sist­ed of the fol­low­ing mem­bers: Mark Schlag, who serves as the chair­man of the Nom­i­nat­ing Com­mit­tee, Don­na Moore, Lana Ray, Ray Williams, and Jack Stan­dard. That com­mit­tee met on Feb­ru­ary 5th of this year at 11 a.m. and they made their nom­i­na­tions. I have their signed report and I’ll read it to you now. The direc­tor nom­i­nee from Bryan Coun­ty is Kyle Chris­tiansen. From Lib­er­ty Coun­ty is Hol­ly Stevens, for­mer­ly Hol­ly Fields. From McIn­tosh and Long coun­ties, Charles “Chuck” Gaskin. There were no nom­i­nees received by peti­tion in accor­dance with the bylaws, ear­ly vot­ing is per­mit­ted for the three days imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing this meet­ing. Each of the three incum­bent direc­tors run at large. There were a total of 2149 votes cast. Each can­di­date was unop­posed. That’s a nice way to run for reelec­tion. So I declare that the direc­tor, Kyle Chris­tensen from Bryan Coun­ty, the direc­tor Hol­ly Stevens, for­mer­ly Hol­ly Fields from Lib­er­ty Coun­ty, and the direc­tor, Chuck Gaskin from both McIn­tosh and Long Coun­ties to be duly reelect­ed to the board of direc­tors for a three year term. Now our agen­da calls for any unfin­ished busi­ness from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing. I know of no unfin­ished busi­ness.

Does any­one from the floor have any unfin­ished busi­ness? Hear­ing none, I’ll ask, is there any new busi­ness to come before this meet­ing? I know of no new busi­ness. Is there any new busi­ness from the floor? Hear­ing none, I’ll move on. Hav­ing con­firmed the elec­tion of the three direc­tors to our board and know­ing of no oth­er busi­ness, I declare this 85th annu­al meet­ing of the Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive to be adjourned. Thank you for tun­ing in.