Clearwater-Polk 69th annual meeting at Timbers

Management and members of Clearwater-Polk Electric met for their 69th annual meeting on Thursday, April 7

The Clearwater County Nursing Service held a health fair prior to coffee and cookies being served. The meeting started at 10:30 at Timbers in Bagley.

Stacy Pittman sang the national anthem and Pastor Randy McGuire gave the invocation.

Brian Stavenger CPA with Eide Bailly gave the financial report. The company had $8,900,557 in revenue and $8,678,272 of costs leaving an operating margin of $222,315 which will be allocated to members. The weather last year led to lower energy usage.

The management comments included the addition of 46 new services, 16 of those were for new homes, 17 for cabins or camp sites and the rest for shops, wells, radio towers and the new casino southwest of Bagley. The casino will be a good addition to Clearwater Polk’s energy sales. They also rebuilt 36 services for larger capacity and 28 were retired. The total utility plant grew by $1,129,904. The average interruption time per member increased from 1.37 hours in 2014 to 7.43 hours in 2015. Even with the outages caused by the storm electricity was available 99.9% of the time.

Guest speaker was Robert "Mac" LcLennan, President and CEO of Minnkota Power Company from Grand Forks. Minnkota Power serves 11 electric distribution cooperatives in Minnesota and North Dakota. He told the audience to expect rates to go up as the government forces coal fired generation plans to emit less carbon dioxide which will drive costs up.

Clearwater-Polk Electric members made a $19,584 in 2015 to local non-profit organizations by rounding up to the nearest dollar their monthly bills. Since the program started $335,515 has been contributed.

The meeting concluded with a noon meal.