Well, good after­noon and wel­come to Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive’s 84th annu­al meet­ing. We’re glad you could be with us online today. And for those of you who came and reg­is­tered all day yes­ter­day and this morn­ing, we appre­ci­ate your par­tic­i­pa­tion in your annu­al meet­ing and espe­cial­ly after we had to delay it due to the weath­er a lit­tle while back. So we’re glad to have the annu­al meet­ing here. And I want to say my name is Lou Green. It’s my plea­sure to be here to help guide us through the busi­ness ses­sion. And we’ll get through the busi­ness ses­sion and then we’ll draw for some prizes at the end. As the meet­ing begins, I’m going to ask Mr. James Bun­ton to come for­ward and offer an invo­ca­tion.

Thank you, Lou. Please bow your heads. Dear Heav­en­ly Father, we gath­er here today with grat­i­tude for the bless­ings of this com­mu­ni­ty and our mem­bers as we come togeth­er as mem­bers of the Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. We thank you for the ener­gy that sus­tains our lives and the com­mit­ment of those who work tire­less­ly to pro­vide it. We ask you for your guid­ance in the dis­cus­sions and deci­sions today. Grant us wis­dom and patience as we seek to serve our mem­bers and enhance the well-being of our com­mu­ni­ty. Help us to be good stew­ards of the resources entrust­ed to us fos­ter­ing inno­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in our endeav­ors. May our con­ver­sa­tions be respect­ful and our goals align with the greater good. Let us work togeth­er with the spir­it of coop­er­a­tion, under­stand­ing and respect for one anoth­er. We pray for the safe­ty and well-being of all those who work on the front lines ensur­ing that pow­er flows to our homes and busi­ness­es. Bless their efforts and keep them safe. Thank you for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have this gath­er­ing and make a pos­i­tive impact on this com­mu­ni­ty. May our meet­ing be pro­duc­tive and our plans be guid­ed by your light. In your name we pray. Amen.

Thank you, Jamie. I’d like to invite you and in fact all of us here to stand and let’s say the Pledge of Alle­giance togeth­er, if you will. I pledge alle­giance to the flag of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and to the Repub­lic for which it stands, one nation under God, indi­vis­i­ble, with lib­er­ty and jus­tice for all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, I’d like to invite Mr. Bun­ton back, he’s the chair­man of the board, and ask him to intro­duce the oth­er mem­bers of the board of direc­tors for Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive. All right. And I’ll ask you to stand as I intro­duce you.

Of course, I’m Dis­trict 2, James Bun­ton. I’m the Chair­man. Mr. Ian Pad­gett is the Vice Chair­man. He is not here today. He has been under the weath­er and he wants to give his respects for not being here. But he hates that he missed this. Mr. Ter­ry Hoff is our sec­re­tary. Mr. John­ny Frank is our trea­sur­er. Mr. Lav­ern Polk is over Dis­trict 1. Mr. Jamey Copeland is Dis­trict 4. Mr. Bill Smoak is Dis­trict 5. Mr. Wen­dell McDon­ald is Dis­trict 7. And then Mr. Jim Bryan is Dis­trict 8. Thank you, gen­tle­men. Appre­ci­ate every­thing. At this time, I’ll turn it back over to Mr. Lou.

I men­tioned that every­one been reg­is­ter­ing all day  yes­ter­day and then this morn­ing. And when reg­is­tra­tion closed, there were939 mem­bers who had reg­is­tered. Impor­tant, because you need 448 to be the quo­rum to be able to con­duct busi­ness at your annu­al meet­ing. State law requires and your bylaws require 5% of the mem­ber­ship. So we are, we just about, just about dou­bled it. So we’re in good shape. Let’s do busi­ness. If there’s no objec­tion, we will con­sid­er approved the notice to the mem­bers that was sent out. And with the same with­out objec­tion, we will con­sid­er approval of the proof of the mail­ing of the notice which I have here in my hand. We also have a copy of the annu­al meet­ing min­utes from 2023 which gives a brief sum­ma­ry of the actions that were tak­en at that meet­ing. We’ll dis­pense with a read­ing of the min­utes with­out objec­tion. There’s no objec­tion. We’ll con­sid­er those accept­ed as sub­mit­ted. Every year about this time, it’s a good time for you to hear a lit­tle bit about what’s been going on with your coop­er­a­tive. I know, and we know that you elect a board of trustees that you entrust with the job of gov­ern­ing your coop­er­a­tive. But we’re going to ask CEO Mark Walling to come for­ward and give you some high­lights today. Mr. Walling.

Thank you, Lou. I’d like to once again, wel­come to our 84th annu­al meet­ing. We would like to express our appre­ci­a­tion and your patience for under­stand­ing the need to post­pone this, which was sched­uled about six weeks ago. As every­one knows, Hur­ri­cane Helene had dif­fer­ent ideas for us. And I’d also like to thank you for your patience dur­ing the process of us restor­ing ser­vice to our mem­bers. Vir­tu­al­ly all of our mem­bers were impact­ed by this storm at one point or anoth­er. Over 99%. So like I say, less than 1% were basi­cal­ly unaf­fect­ed. We lost trans­mis­sion ser­vice to about 70% of our sub­sta­tions. But for­tu­nate­ly they were restored rather quick­ly, the first day from our trans­mis­sions ser­vice provider. We end­ed up hav­ing about 110 bro­ken poles, many spans of wire that was down from trees and limbs that had to be spliced back togeth­er and rein­stalled, which took quite a bit of time, as you are well aware. We did get out­side assis­tance from three sis­ter coop­er­a­tives from with­in the state, which we are great­ly appre­cia­tive of, as well as some con­trac­tors from out­side the state of South Car­oli­na. We are still tab­u­lat­ing the repair costs from this inci­dent. Our esti­mate is cur­rent­ly at about $1.2 mil­lion. Thank­ful­ly, the FEMA or the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency has declared our area a dis­as­ter area and approved for finan­cial assis­tance for this. So we are work­ing with them at this time to apply for that assis­tance. So we are hope­ful that we will not have to bur­den the mem­ber­ship for very much of that cost and expense. I want to talk briefly about our finan­cial con­di­tion and then talk a lit­tle bit about rates.

Our growth has been rel­a­tive­ly flat over the last sev­er­al years. How­ev­er, we are begin­ning to expe­ri­ence some mod­est growth and at the end of August we had 12,224 active ser­vices. Our util­i­ty plant grew $3.8 mil­lion, which is about 5.5% from March 31, 2023 to March 31, 2024, and our total plant now is just over $73 mil­lion. For the sec­ond year in a row, the board has autho­rized the retire­ment of $300,000 in cap­i­tal cred­its to the mem­ber­ship. This retire­ment will be out in Decem­ber for mem­bers of record from 1996 and 97, and that is about 50% increase in retire­ment from recent his­to­ry. Those checks or bill cred­its, if it’s less than $5, you’ll receive a cred­it on your bill rather than a paper check, but they will go out in Decem­ber or be cred­it­ed to your account in Decem­ber. So watch for those checks and/or cred­its on your billing state­ment. You know, as a non­prof­it mem­ber-owned coop­er­a­tive, our pri­ma­ry mis­sion here is to pro­vide safe and reli­able pow­er for our mem­bers at the low­est pos­si­ble cost and our employ­ees and your board here works dili­gent­ly to keep those rates sta­ble.

But unfor­tu­nate­ly, not every­thing is in our con­trol. There are many issues that elec­tric coop­er­a­tives are fac­ing in regards to ris­ing costs in our indus­try. Gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions, as well as sub­stan­tial­ly increased mate­r­i­al costs and high­er whole­sale pow­er rates con­tin­ue to dri­ve our costs upward. These chal­lenges are not unique to just Coastal Elec­tric. All three of South Car­oli­na’s large util­i­ties, Domin­ion Ener­gy, Duke Ener­gy, as well as San­tee Coop­er, have announced rate adjust­ments dur­ing 2024 and our sis­ter co-ops in the state, which are 18, are imple­ment­ing sim­i­lar mea­sures due to these ris­ing costs. I’m hap­py to say for the past 11 years we have been for­tu­nate and that we’ve been able to stand before you at each and every one of those annu­al meet­ings and inform you with good news that our rates were being able to kept sta­ble and our base ener­gy increase was last changed back in 2013.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I’m not here today to tell you that same bit of news. With the ris­ing costs we are see­ing, espe­cial­ly the rise in whole­sale pow­er costs from our pri­ma­ry sup­pli­er, San­tee Coop­er. They’re one of sev­er­al that we do get pow­er from, but we’re see­ing sig­nif­i­cant increas­es from them due to the reg lock rolling off in 2025 which we have spo­ken about in past annu­al meet­ings. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s dri­ving our costs to where we can­not absorb all of those increas­es and so we will have no choice but to increase rates in 2025. We assure you that we are com­mit­ted to increas­ing rates only as a last resort. The board has not yet made a deci­sion on exact­ly what that rate increase will be. We are work­ing on our bud­get now, but it appears that that increase will be in the range of 6 to 8%. We will noti­fy all of our mem­bers just as soon as we have enough infor­ma­tion to make a final deci­sion.

Again, please know that we are doing every­thing we can to keep your elec­tric costs to a min­i­mum while con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide the high­est qual­i­ty of ser­vice to our mem­bers. Thank you again for your par­tic­i­pa­tion in this year’s annu­al meet­ing. I want to thank our employ­ees and the vol­un­teers that help make this pos­si­ble today and yes­ter­day. And last­ly, I want to express my deep­est thanks to the mem­ber­ship as well as the board for allow­ing me to serve you as your CEO. I’ll turn the meet­ing now over to our attor­ney, Mr. David Black.

My name is David Black. I’m the coop­er­a­tive’s gen­er­al coun­sel. Pur­suant to the coop­er­a­tive’s bylaws, the busi­ness and affairs of the coop­er­a­tive are man­aged by a board of eight mem­bers. One of the impor­tant things we do at the Annu­al Meet­ing is to elect board mem­bers. We cur­rent­ly have three seats to elect to the board of trustees. Pur­suant to the coop­er­a­tive’s bylaws, notice was pre­vi­ous­ly fur­nished to the mem­ber­ship via mail­ing. The fol­low­ing three seats for Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive’s Board of Trustees are now open: Dis­tricts 1, 6, and 8. The fol­low­ing can­di­dates have applied and have been found to be qual­i­fied by the Coop­er­a­tive’s Nom­i­nat­ing Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee: Dis­trict 1, Mr. Lav­ern Polk, Dis­trict 6, Mr. Ter­ry Hoff, and Dis­trict 8, Mr. Jim Bryan. If only one indi­vid­ual is nom­i­nat­ed to run for elec­tion for a trustee posi­tion, then the indi­vid­ual pre­sid­ing at the Annu­al Meet­ing may announce that the nom­i­nat­ed indi­vid­ual is elect­ed by accla­ma­tion and no voice vote is required. Because there is not a con­test­ed elec­tion for the three trustee seats, the can­di­dates are here­by elect­ed and seat­ed by accla­ma­tion. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Mr.Polk, Mr. Hoff, and Mr. Bryan. Now I’ll turn the meet­ing over to Mr. Green. Con­grats.

Thanks, David. Thank you for par­tic­i­pat­ing in that part of your busi­ness for the annu­al meet­ing assigned to the mem­ber­ship. We don’t have any oth­er things on the agen­da that we know of, but I’ll ask if there’s any unfin­ished busi­ness to come before the meet­ing at this time. Hear­ing none, is there any new busi­ness to come before the meet­ing of mem­bers at this time? I hear none. In that case, hav­ing con­clud­ed the agen­da, we will con­sid­er this meet­ing adjourned. Thank you for par­tic­i­pat­ing, but don’t go away. Although the meet­ing is adjourned, we’ve got one more thing to do and that is draw for a few prizes that we do every year. So if you’ll, while I’m talk­ing, if you’ll go ahead and who­ev­er’s going to pull the roll cage up here into which we’ve put all of the reg­is­tra­tion tick­ets or part of the reg­is­tra­tion tick­ets that you filled out or you brought with you to the annu­al meet­ing when you reg­is­tered, we’re going to roll the cage, mix them up real well, and draw for some win­ners:

3 grand prize win­ners:

• Lawn­mow­er – Sta­cy G Ban­is
• Flatscreen TV – Ash­ley D Cros­by
• $300 bill cred­it – Dorothy J. Shep­herd

$100 account cred­its

1. David / Annette Lyons
2. Roo­sevelt Chap­lin
3. Mabel M. Williams
4. Yahya Peter­son
5. Von­le­he Bai­ley
6. Wynelle Har­ri­son
7. Susan R. Solomon
8. Fel­isha Glover
9. Mary A / Isa­iah White
10. Gwen­dolyn Col­leton
11. Stephanie Parham
12. William E Smy­ly
13. Ken­neth Case
14. Suzanne Adams
15. Latonya N. Smith

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all of you for win­ning and thank you for par­tic­i­pat­ing in your 2024 Annu­al Meet­ing. Well, I hope you have a great week­end and a good after­noon. Good day.