A year after a somber annual membership meeting because of the Black Forest fire, Mountain View Electric Association pulled out all the stops at the 2014 meeting to celebrate rebuilding efforts. Dinner, door prizes and reports on how the utility absorbed the costs of fire recovery highlighted the celebration.Residents and business owners representing more than 180 MVEA customers and many utility employees and their families attended the event June 5 at the Calhan School. The energy cooperative holds annual meetings because it is owned by its member customers as a cooperative. Members elect board officers at the meetings, who run the day-to-day operations of the utility.Twelve scholarship winners and three essay contest winners were recognized at the meeting. ìTypically, all you hear about the youth of today is how they are disrespectful and have lots of other issues,î said Joseph Martin, board president. ìBut these kids who won these scholarships will clearly do well in life, and I offer my personal congratulations.îThe first topic discussed was rates for electric service. ìFor the first time in a long time, I get to stand before you and have the pleasure of saying there were no increases to the residential rate class in 2014,î Martin said, to lengthy applause. ìHaving said that, it may be a while before I can say that again. There is a tremendous amount of upwardpressure to rates.îThe board changed how capital credits are distributed back to members. Energy cooperatives like MVEA distribute profits back to its members after being retained for a certain period to make improvements or repairs to equipment and facilities. In the past, Mountain View distributed capital credits on a first-in-first-out basis. Members who had service continually since a certain year would receive a check or bill credit for their share.ìTypically, we were on a 15-year rotation,î Martin said. ìThe member who had been with us longest typically got their refund. The board asked if we wanted to change that because we have a lot of new members who donít understand what a cooperative is. The way we could introduce them was to go with a partial last-in-first-out system.î The board decided to allocate 20 percent of the capital retirement fund to the 2011 members.The utility is still feeling the effects of the Black Forest fire, said Jim Herron, Mountain View chief executive officer. The company has cut 18,000 dead or compromised trees in Black Forest to help homeowners mitigate the risk of branches falling onto transmission lines, Herron said.ìThe total damage to Mountain View Electric from the fire was about $9 million,î Herron said. ìWeíve had a lot of people ask how can we have that big an impact without having a rate increase.î He said $5.8 million will be reimbursed from FEMA, and $1.8 million will be capitalized and depreciated over 35 years. Since the fire occurred near the end of a fiscal year, the direct expenses of $1.4 million were split over two fiscal years. ìWe were able to absorb it and pay all our financial requirements in 2013 and 2014,î Herron said.Rick Gordon, board member representing Ramah, Yoder and Rush, was re-elected to District 2. Donna Andersen-Van Ness, representing Monument, was re-elected to District 7. Both ran unopposed and were elected by voice vote.The annual meeting is free to current utility members and is held each June. More information about the 2014 meeting and updates about future events can be found at http://mvea.coop/community/annual-meeting/.
