Clearwater-Polk Electric held 71st annual meeting

Members of Clearwater-Polk Electric attended the 71st Annual meeting on April 11, 2018 at the Timber Event Center in Bagley. Members took part in the health fair that was conducted by the Clearwater County Nursing Service to check blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol.  While they waited for the meeting there were a couple of games of bingo called by Harvey Miller with coffee and cookies served.

The meeting was called to order at 10:30, with invocation by Pastor Mark Nelson followed by Stacy Pittman singing the National Anthem. 

General Manager Bruce Bjerke introduced the guests including Attorney Gerad Paul and guest speaker Robert “Mac” McLennan, President & CEO of Minnkota Power Cooperative. 

Gerad Paul announced the board candidate winners for District 2. The two-year term was won by Leroy Riewer the incumbent. He has been on the board for the past 13 years. He and his wife Connie live on a small farm three miles east of Bagley. They have six grown children, four daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, four granddaughters and eleven grandsons, a great granddaughter and 2 great grandsons.

The second board member for District #2, three-year term, was won by Greg Renner. Greg and his wife Jeanne live in Dudley Township. They have 1 son, daughter-in-law and 12 grandchildren. Greg grew up on a 320 acre beef farm in the Shevlin area. He has been a part of construction, retail sales, plumbing and HVAC installation and service for 37 years. He has been a board member and currently is president of the Headwaters Building Association. Greg carries a Technology Systems, Electric license. He is currently the Production/Sales Manager and Estimator at Hill’s Plumbing & Heating. He takes over the position held by Harlan Highberg.

Bruce Bjerke, General Manager, informed the patrons that the operating margin for the year was $500,829 which they will allocate to the members for 2017. The utility plant grew by $1,002,737. They added 40 new services, 19 of those were for new homes, 14 for cabins or camp sites. Other new services were for shops, wells, radio towers, grain bins and drain tile. At the year-end, 4,829 services were connected to a network of 1,502 miles of distribution line. Even with the outages caused last year electricity was available 99.9% of the time. Trees are consistently the number one cause of outages on the system. They not only cause blinks and outages, but more importantly, are safety concerns.

Matthew Neir, CPA with Eide Bailly, LLP went over the financial report. In the Consolidated Income statement ending December 31, 20-17 total revenue was $9,561.486. That was up $554,645 over 2016 revenue of $9,006,841. The expenses for 2017 were $9,059,557 which was up from 2016 expense of $8,562,303 for an increase of $497,254. Total assets for the cooperative were $21,160,706 up from $20,525,383 in 2016. That is an increase of $632,323 over 2016.

Donations to various organizations in 2017 were $20,922. Clearwater-Polk bills have been rounded up the nearest dollar and since the program began in 1997 more than $274,859 has been disbursed.