Well, good after­noon, and wel­come to Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive’s 2023 Annu­al Meet­ing Busi­ness Ses­sion. For the last cou­ple of days, all day yes­ter­day and half a day today this morn­ing, we had reg­is­tra­tion, and we’re appre­cia­tive of all of you who came by to reg­is­ter and helped do the busi­ness of the elec­tric coop­er­a­tive.

Now we come to the busi­ness ses­sion for the meet­ing, which, as you know, we hold each year. Over the last few years, we’ve been hold­ing it online. We appre­ci­ate you show­ing up and watch­ing today as you do the busi­ness of the coop­er­a­tive.

My name is Lou Green, and it’s my plea­sure to be here to help guide us through the busi­ness ses­sion for today. We’ll call the meet­ing to order now, the busi­ness ses­sion. And as we begin, I’m going to invite Mr. Lav­erne Polk for­ward to give our invo­ca­tion.

Thank you, Lou. Let us pray, heav­en­ly father, we thank you for this beau­ti­ful day and for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in Coastal Elec­tric’s Annu­al Meet­ing. We ask your pres­ence in this meet­ing this after­noon that our thoughts and actions will be pleas­ing in your sight to the ben­e­fit of our coop­er­a­tive and to the mem­bers. And we thank you for every­one who worked togeth­er to make this a suc­cess­ful meet­ing. And Father, we thank you for this coop­er­a­tive and our employ­ees who worked so dili­gent­ly to pro­vide safe, reli­able, and afford­able ser­vice to our mem­bers. We ask your care and pro­tec­tion for these employ­ees as they work to pro­vide the ser­vice in all kinds of con­di­tions. And Father, we thank you for the lead­ers of our nation, our com­mu­ni­ty, and our state. We ask you to give them the guid­ance and their deci­sions that affect the lives of our cit­i­zens. And Father, we ask a spe­cial prayer for our emer­gency respond­ing per­son­nel who work so hard to keep us safe and respond to our needs. And we pray that as we depart from here today that you will pro­vide safe pas­sage until we reach our respec­tive des­ti­na­tions. All these things we ask in Christ’s name. Amen. Amen.

Thank you, Mr. Polk. I’m going to invite every­one here to stand with me. Maybe if you’re at home and watch­ing, you’d like to stand as well as we say the pledge of alle­giance and to the Unit­ed States flag. Shall we togeth­er? 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 all. Thank you.

Mr. Polk is the chair­man of your board of trustees, and I’d like to invite him back to intro­duce the board to you. Mr. Polk.

Thank you again, Lou. All right. We have a nine mem­ber board of direc­tors who work very dili­gent­ly to take care of the busi­ness of the coop­er­a­tive, to set pol­i­cy, and make plans for the future. I’d like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce each one of them. First of all, I’m Lav­erne Polk. I’m the chair­man. I’m from Dis­trict 1. From Dis­trict 2 is Mr. Jamie But­ton, and he is the vice chair­man. And from Dis­trict 9 is mr. Ian Pad­get, he’s the sec­re­tary. From Dis­trict 6 is Mr. Ter­ry Huff, he’s our trea­sur­er. From Dis­trict 3 is Mr. John­ny Frank. From Dis­trict 4, Mr. Jamie Copeland. From Dis­trict 5, Mr. Bill Smoak. From Dis­trict 7, Mr. Wen­dell McDon­ald. And from Dis­trict 8, Mr. Jim Bryan. Thank you, gen­tle­men. Thank you for your ser­vice. Thank you all.

Well, to con­duct busi­ness today for the busi­ness meet­ing. We have to have a quo­rum of 443 mem­bers reg­is­tered for the meet­ing. We well sur­passed that. I believe the last num­ber I saw was 912, so more than dou­ble what the quo­rum requires, and we can do busi­ness today. With­out objec­tion, we will accept the notice that went out to the mem­bers, though I have a copy here, as infor­ma­tion. Fur­ther, with­out objec­tion, we will accept the proof of the mail­ing of the notice, which I have here as well. Final­ly, if there is no objec­tion, we will approve the min­utes of the 2022 Annu­al Meet­ing. I have those here. They’re mul­ti­ple pages of sin­gle-space type, but I’m sure you don’t want me to read them to you. We have those.

Now then, for his annu­al report to you, we’d like to wel­come your CEO, Mr. Mark Walling, to come for­ward and offer his com­ments.

Thank you, Lou. Wel­come to your 83rd Annu­al Meet­ing. First of all, I’d like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank a lot of peo­ple that helped us make this year’s meet­ing suc­cess­ful. We had quite a few vol­un­teers, many of which were co-op retirees. It was great­ly appre­ci­at­ed for them to come out and assist us and good to see those folks back with us. We’d also like to thank the law enforce­ment offi­cers that help us with traf­fic con­trol. But I’d like to thank, espe­cial­ly our employ­ees for their hard work, their ded­i­ca­tion, and safe­ty, not just today or the last few days, but the entire past year. We’ve had a good year, and I’m very thank­ful for their efforts. I’d also like to thank the board for work­ing with me through­out this last year, but espe­cial­ly the co-op mem­bers, you, for allow­ing me to serve you anoth­er year as your CEO.

I’ll give you some finan­cial facts and updates at this time. As of the end of Sep­tem­ber, we have 12,176 active ser­vices. Util­i­ty plan has grown by 1.8 mil­lion from about 2.7 % from March 31st of 2022 to March 31st of this year. Now, our total util­i­ty plan is just over $69 mil­lion. We expect that to con­tin­ue to grow, in fact, a lit­tle faster with some of the indus­tri­al devel­op­ment and recruit­ment efforts that are pay­ing off. I am hap­py to report that the board has autho­rized return­ing $300,000 in Cap­i­tal Cred­its this Decem­ber, which is an increase of almost 50% over the past sev­er­al years. I great­ly appre­ci­ate their efforts to increase that so we can return the mem­bers’ invest­ments out in Decem­ber.

As I men­tioned last year, I want­ed to talk about rates again. Rates and reli­a­bil­i­ty I men­tioned last year would be some­thing that I would con­tin­ue to talk about. I think those are two of the most impor­tant things that we as a man­age­ment team here at the co-op work on.

As I men­tioned last year, our whole­sale pow­er rates from San­tee Coop­er are locked to the end of next year, 2024. San­tee Coop­er pro­vides about 75% of our pow­er require­ments through Cen­tral Elec­tric Pow­er Coop­er­a­tive, which is owned by the 20 dis­tri­b­u­tion co-ops in South Car­oli­na. We’re not sure what will hap­pen yet in 2025 after this rate lock ends. I can say Cen­tral Elec­tric and San­tee Coop­er are work­ing dili­gent­ly on options that min­i­mize any impacts of any rate increas­es that may be required after this rate lock peri­od ends at the end of 2024. As of right now, I’m very hope­ful and excit­ed to say that I do not think we will need to raise our base ener­gy rates again in 2024. We’re about to enter our bud­get­ing process to con­firm that for sure. If we’re suc­cess­ful, as I believe we will be, that will make 10 con­sec­u­tive years with­out an increase in the ener­gy com­po­nent of the rate.

We did increase the facil­i­ty charge back in Jan­u­ary of this year by three dol­lars a month. Pri­or cost of ser­vice stud­ies have shown that we are under col­lect­ing for this fixed cost of pro­vid­ing ser­vice to you, the mem­ber. This facil­i­ty charge is real­ly intend­ed to recov­er costs that we incur for a ser­vice, whether or not you actu­al­ly use ener­gy. Every ser­vice requires the instal­la­tion of cer­tain equip­ment, such as trans­form­ers and ser­vice con­duc­tors and a meter. And also there are oth­er facets that we have to do, such as billing and the col­lec­tion of those bills, regard­less of how much ener­gy is con­sumed by that premise. Trans­former costs alone have dou­bled in the last three years.

We intend to per­form a cost of ser­vice study at the end of 2024, where we will ana­lyze what our cur­rent costs are in light of these cost increas­es and eval­u­ate what our needs are for future cost recov­ery of these fixed costs.

Mov­ing on to reli­a­bil­i­ty. When we nor­mal­ly men­tion the word reli­a­bil­i­ty, we tend to think about storms that impact our sys­tem, whether it be thun­der­storms, wind events, hur­ri­canes, or even ice or snow­storms, even in the Deep South. But today I want to talk about a dif­fer­ent storm that is brew­ing. This storm I’m speak­ing of is the lack of new base­load gen­er­a­tion that is being con­struct­ed today or not being con­struct­ed, I could say, to replace the aging fleet of units that are being retired through­out the entire South­east. Back on Decem­ber the 24th of last year, we expe­ri­enced some very cold tem­per­a­tures here in the South. In fact, the whole South­east region was expe­ri­enc­ing very cold tem­per­a­tures. The entire South­east had record high elec­tri­cal demands, and many util­i­ties were forced to imple­ment planned pow­er out­ages. Nev­er some­thing a util­i­ty wants to do. Coastal Elec­tric, in fact, was noti­fied of the poten­tial for our mem­bers to be affect­ed by these rolling black­outs ear­ly that morn­ing.

For­tu­nate­ly, that did not occur. It did not reach a point, in fact, for any coop­er­a­tive mem­bers in the state to have their pow­er inter­rupt­ed. How­ev­er, there were oth­er util­i­ties in this state that were forced to cut pow­er to many cus­tomers to pre­vent the grid from a total col­lapse. We do not want this sit­u­a­tion to become a com­mon occur­rence. But if we don’t start build­ing some new gen­er­a­tion, it will become just that, a com­mon occur­rence. We need addi­tion­al gas and trans­mis­sion capac­i­ty in South Car­oli­na, and we need to start build­ing it now. You will hear more about this in the com­ing months, and we ask for your sup­port to spread the word for these capac­i­ty increas­es on the gen­er­a­tion, both elec­tric and gas trans­mis­sion sys­tem, and all the mod­ern grid improve­ments.

The last thing I’d like to men­tion again, as I do at the end of every year, is talk about the mem­ber invest­ment pro­gram that the coop­er­a­tive offers to all mem­bers. For a min­i­mum $5,000 invest­ment, you can invest in your co-op, and we use that mon­ey to build our infra­struc­ture. It saves us mon­ey from bor­row­ing from high­er cost insti­tu­tions, and there­by it saves you mon­ey in the end. The cur­rent rate is five and a half per­cent, which is very, very com­pet­i­tive in today’s mar­ket. For a reg­u­lar invest­ment of $5,000 up to $100,000, and if it’s over $100,000 invest­ment, we’re offer­ing six per­cent cur­rent­ly. I hope that you’ll con­sid­er that. Again, it’s a win-win sit­u­a­tion. You earn the inter­est while it also saves in the long run on your pow­er bill.

Again, I appre­ci­ate your allow­ing me to serve you this past year. I look for­ward to anoth­er good year. I appre­ci­ate every­one’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in this year’s annu­al meet­ing. I will turn this over now to our gen­er­al coun­sel, Mr. David Black.

Thank you. I’m David Black. I’m the Coop­er­a­tive’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel. One of the impor­tant things that we do each year at the annu­al meet­ing is to elect the trustees. Notice was sent out through pub­li­ca­tion in the South Car­oli­na Liv­ing mag­a­zine, and I have the report here of the Nom­i­nat­ing Com­mit­tee. The 2023 Nom­i­nat­ing Com­mit­tee, con­sist­ing of Mr. John­ny Lindler, Mr. Barn­well Fish­burne, and Ms. Michelle Ben­ton, nom­i­nat­ed the fol­low­ing to serve on the board of trustees of Coastal Elec­tric for a three-year term begin­ning in Octo­ber 2023. For Dis­trict 3, Mr. John­ny Frank, Dis­trict 7, Mr. Wen­dell McDon­ald, and Dis­trict 9, Mr. Ian Pad­gett. Because this was an uncon­test­ed elec­tion this year, at the con­clu­sion of the meet­ing, they will be seat­ed for the remain­der of a three-year term.

I’d like to con­grat­u­late our board mem­bers and thank the nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee for their ser­vice. Anoth­er item that was cov­ered dur­ing the vot­ing was a bal­lot, and the item on the bal­lot was regard­ing the struc­ture of the Annu­al Meet­ing and reg­is­tra­tion of the vot­ing process. The two ques­tions were, I pre­fer a dri­ve-through where I’m able to stay in my car. That was checked off for 87% of the mem­ber­ship. And the, I pre­fer in-per­son event where I can park and walk around, was checked off at 13%. I think the coop­er­a­tive has heard loud­ly from its mem­ber­ship to move for­ward with the dri­ve-through option.

Thank you. Thank you, David, and thank you, Mark. Now we come to the place for unfin­ished busi­ness. I don’t know of any unfin­ished busi­ness. None? None? If not, then new busi­ness for the busi­ness ses­sion. Any new busi­ness? We don’t have any on the list. If there’s no fur­ther busi­ness, I would enter­tain a motion that we adjourn the busi­ness ses­sion and draw for the prizes. Do I hear such a motion? I have a motion. I have a motion, a sec­ond? All those in favor say Aye. Aye. And we are adjourned .I trust you said, Aye, watch­ing as well.

So we can get right to the prize draw­ings, which we’ll do. So let’s see here. Let’s get the roll cage over. Is that what we’re going to do first? And as they bring the roll cage that is full of the reg­is­tra­tion tick­ets that you dropped in or had dropped in when you came to reg­is­ter, you had to reg­is­ter to be able to have a chance to win the prizes. So the first thing we’re going to draw for is the grand prize. And the grand prize this year is a rid­ing lawn mow­er. That’ll be good. You want me to go over there? Okay. All righty then. Let’s see.

You don’t have to be present to win, so you’re a lucky per­son if you’re Gilbert Lin­der. I assume this is first name, last name in order. Gilbert Lin­der of Ruf­fin, Trails End Lane in Ruf­fin, got him­self a brand new rid­ing lawn mow­er. So very good.

Sec­ond grand prize is the flat-screen tele­vi­sion. Okay, I’ll be right back. And the sec­ond grand prize, a flat-screen tele­vi­sion. Is this col­or? Is this a col­or TV? Okay, all right. There’s a col­or TV. And the win­ners are Ricky Hall and Shirley Sam­son of Wal­ter­boro on Koger Road. Yeah, Koger Road. So con­grat­u­la­tions to them. Mr. Polk looked like he was­n’t sure whether it was col­or or not. I’m gonna trust that it’s col­or.

And the third grand prize is a $300 bill cred­it. Okay, here’s the $300 bill cred­it for Samuel Williams, Pleas­ant Grove Road in Wal­ter­boro. Samuel Williams, third.

Now we have fif­teen $100 bill cred­its, and the board will draw those and give me the names, and I’ll let you know who won. What I did­n’t say ear­li­er, relat­ed to the grand prizes and these as well, is that we’ll get in touch with you, we’ll send you a note or some­thing, and be sure that you get them so you don’t have to come to the co-op to pick them up.

First, $100 bill cred­it for Daria Sig­mund of Cot­tageville. Daria Seigh­man.

The sec­ond $100 bill cred­it, and you can go ahead and draw again, and the num­ber sec­ond one is for Bev­er­ly Lewis of Island­ton. Bev­er­ly Lewis.

A $100 bill cred­it goes to Marie Samuels. Marie Samuels.

These bill cred­its will come in handy. Go ahead and draw them out. They’ll come in handy as we get into the fall, which is nice and com­fort­able now, but come about win­ter­time we’re going to appre­ci­ate that, or some of you are going to, includ­ing William E. Stew­art. William E. Stew­art from Syd­neys Road.

And Calvin Mitchell and Shirley Mitchell of Ruf­fin, they live on Cedar Creek Dri­ve in Ruf­fin.

Thank you, sir. Anoth­er bill cred­it goes to Thomas Sum­n­er and Don­na Sum­n­er of Wal­ter­boro. Con­grat­u­la­tions to them.

Thank you, sir. The next win­ner is Eliz­a­beth Var­na­doe. It’s a tem­po­rary poll, but it counts. From Cot­tageville, Eliz­a­beth Var­na­doe.

Thank you. Next is Thomas Fini­gan, Sr. of Wal­ter­boro on Otis Road there. Thomas, con­grat­u­la­tions.

Still draw­ing for the $100 bill cred­it. Next one goes to Sybil Grif­fin. She lives on Pop­py Dri­ve in Wal­ter­boro. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Sybil.

These are not bad chances. One out of 912. That’s bet­ter than Pub­lish­ers Clear­ing­house, isn’t it? There we go.

Here’s anoth­er $100 bill cred­it for Ralph War­ren of Wal­ter­boro. Ralph War­ren. All right.

And the next one is Lawan­da C. Hodges. Lawan­da Hodges.

Go ahead. And anoth­er $100 bill cred­it for Denise Williams and Jack­ie Williams of Wal­ter­boro. Denise and Jack­ie Williams. I beg your par­don, it’s Den­nis and Jack­ie Williams. I mis­read that.

All righty, some more $100 bill cred­its com­ing up. 13, 14, 15. Here we go.

Here’s one for Bren­da Stroud. Bren­da Stroud of Chest­nut Road.

We have 15 of these, and this one com­ing up is num­ber 14. And the next to the last win­ner is George Bin­g­ley. One more. George Bin­g­ley. Con­grat­u­la­tions, George.

That’s the last one. You’re the win­ner if you’re Melodie Hayes of Pio­neer Trail. Melodie B. Hayes. Con­grat­u­la­tions.

Well, that’s pret­ty good. Sev­er­al $100 bill cred­its, a rid­ing lawn mow­er, flat-screen tele­vi­sion, and a $300 bill cred­it. That’s a pret­ty good haul for your Annu­al Meet­ing this year. Again, we thank you for reg­is­ter­ing yes­ter­day and this morn­ing, and we thank you for watch­ing your busi­ness ses­sion. We wish you the very best of days and week­ends, and we’ll see you again maybe next year. Have a good day.