The 70th annual membership meeting of Mid-South Synergy had a lot to offer the members and their guests June 18th as they filed into the Walker County Fairground building just outside Huntsville.
Members visited booths offering information on the many services and perks that come along with being a part of Mid-South Synergy. This included information on Water Resources, Rheem Marathon water heaters, home energy rebates, the Pay-As-You-Go program, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Our Energy Our Future, right-of way mandates (which included free oak saplings for members), compact fluorescent lightbulbs, the co-op’s scholarship and Youth Tour programs and other member services.
Members were treated to a video that looked back 70 years ago when Mid-South Synergy was created and area residents came together to make the dream of having electricity a reality. Cooperative member Floyd Nowak, who remembers when Mid-South’s first lines were energized, talked about all of the milestones he had seen because of electricity being available in rural East Texas: In the 1940s, land values increased. In the ’50s, huge leaps were made in employment. In the ’60s, rural education improved due to more available light for studying. From the 1970s to today, the number of meters continues to increase by the thousands, thus allowing for more opportunities and benefits to members.
General Manager Kerry Kelton introduced the special guests of the meeting, including representatives from Techline, Lamar Tech, McClure & Brown and Brazos Electric Power Cooperative. He introduced the nominating committee, the co-op’s key personnel and the board of directors. “Their experience and passion makes them a wonderful board,” Kelton said. Directors Kenneth McDougald and Judge Robert D. Pierce were both recognized for their numerous years of service to Mid-South Synergy. Board President Marshall Shirley called the meeting to order, and Director Kenneth McDougald gave the invocation. Secretary-Treasurer Jack Shepherd declared that a quorum was present with 313 registered members and read the notice of meeting, which was mailed out in the pages of Texas Co-op Power. The main business of every annual membership meeting of Mid-South Synergy is to elect directors. Since the co-op only elects by mail-in ballot, John Fultz, Mid-South Synergy’s counsel for more than 20 years, read the results. Russell Watson and Paul E. Malek were both re-elected with 490 and 552 votes, respectively. “Your cooperative is a democratic organization. We need your vote—it’s your privilege as a member-owner,” Fultz said.
One of Mid-South’s former Government-in-Action Youth Tour participants, Daniel Sanders, was featured in a short video encouraging members to have their children apply for the annual trek to Washington, D.C. The co-op sponsors four high school students each year to take the 10-day educational trip to our nation’s capital. The winners for 2010, Amber Brown, Brittany Zdunkawicz, Caleb Jones, and Jacob Jones, won the trip by creating a video on the topic: “Without electricity, how would your day-to-day life be different?” All four said that it definitely was the trip of a lifetime.Another video featured the Mid-South lineman crew and Mid-South’s commitment to safety. “Safety is really, really important, and not only around our electric lines. We are on the road, traveling for most of the day, too,” 1st Class Lineman Kevin McDuffie said in the video. These crews service 2,781 miles of line. To put that number in perspective, it’s close to the distance between New York City and Los Angeles. The video also took members on a ride-along with a crew and showed what happens when an outage call is placed to dispatch. T the crew responded to an incident in which a pole had been knocked down by a drunken driver in the middle of the night. Fighting against time—a storm was blowing in— the crew had the pole up within a couple of hours. Because of Mid- South’s smart-grid technology, when an outage is reported, staff can quickly pull up all information on that location, enabling crews to get the lights back on as quickly as possible.
“Last year, we had electricity for 99.97 percent of every hour. That’s the highest in our history as a cooperative,” Kelton said. “Also don’t forget our Member Services Department. Last year, they answered over 65,000 phone calls. They processed over 70,000 members who walked into one of our offices to pay their bill. They processed over 130,000 mail-in bills. And, they did this incredible job with a smile.” Mid-South Synergy’s members were recently surveyed in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, and the co-op scored an 82. “This ranks us with the elite in the electric utility industry,” Kelton said. “We’re well above the national average, which is in the low 70s. And this doesn’t just include cooperatives. This survey ranks us against even the investor-owned utilities.”
The meeting included a skit about Mid-South’s rebate program. If an appliance qualifies, a member can receive a check from the cooperative, simply by investing in new, energy-efficient appliances. To learn more about Mid-South Synergy’s rebate program, go to www.midsouthsynergy. com or call 1-888-525-6677.
The meeting concluded with the giving away of door prizes. The luckiest winners were arguably Tommy Sullivan, a member since October 1980, who won a $500 energy credit and member Ruth Kolbasinski, who walked away with a 42’’ Sanyo television.