Courage. Commitment. Cooperation.
Those three words sum up Basin Electric’s cooperative spirit. It is what it took to form our cooperative, and what it takes today to continue moving forward, evolving, and growing. We are stronger today than we’ve ever been because we have never lost sight of why we do what we do. We do it for you the member-owners. You are the co-op. The co-op exists to serve you.
Basin Electric’s employees understand this also and we thank them for their dedication and commitment. Every one of them is a vital part of the cooperative family, filling roles that make it possible for us to provide more than 3 million members across nine states with the affordable, reliable, and responsible electricity it takes to power their lives.
Another important piece of Basin Electric is my fellow directors. Our directors govern our cooperative as fellow members of their communities. They are end-use consumers who know firsthand the challenges and opportunities their communities face -- and when they make decisions, they know those decisions will impact their friends, neighbors, and themselves. They make every decision in the boardroom with that in mind.
As your board of directors, we are dedicated to returning value to our past, present, and future members, because that is what co-ops do.
Our members have told us that reliability and affordability are the most important aspects of the service we provide. As we look at the financial health of our cooperative family, the board has directed staff to develop a strategic plan around deferred revenue, rate stabilization, and market volatility. We will discuss this effort and a related amendment to the bylaws during the business meeting later today. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the bylaws committee for all of the work they’ve done to make this recommendation to our members.
Additionally, staff and the board will continue working over the first half of 2023 to develop a margin philosophy that will enable Basin Electric to add the generation and transmission resources we need to reliably, affordably, and responsibly serve the growing needs of the membership and to maintain our financial strength and flexibility.
This past September marked one year since Todd Telesz joined our co-op family as General Manager and CEO. Todd set several goals for himself – some big – some small, but all very important. One of those goals was to tour the generation facilities by his one-year anniversary, which he did. The board was even able to join him on one of these tours and we really enjoyed spending time with employees and seeing the facilities they operate for our membership.
On behalf of the board I want to thank you for joining us here today and for all your Courage, Commitment, and Cooperation to your co-op and your communities.
