Record attendance highlights 22nd annual meeting

(Paxton, Ill) A $25 bill credit and record crowds highlighted Eastern Illini’s 22nd Annual Meeting held Thursday, June 11, at the cooperative’s headquarters in Paxton.

Over 876 members attended the meeting, smashing the previous attendance mark by several hundred members.  Other meeting highlights included a carnival like atmosphere with food, fun, contests, and games for kids of all ages, and Energy Wise seminars designed to show members how they could help control their energy costs through simple energy efficiency measures. 

The co-op provided dinner to members, and offered many prizes to attendees, including a $500 grand prize, and five $100 gift certificates to be used towards the purchase of a child’s bicycle.

During the meeting, members re-elected Bruce Ristow of Cissna Park, Brad Ludwig of Fithian, Herb Aden of Newman, and Steve Meenan of Melvin to the Eastern Illini Board of Directors. 

Several key topics were discussed during the business meeting. 

Pending federal climate change legislation will cause electric rates to rise.  The extent of the tax, and when it will actually take place are still up in the air.  Eastern Illini is working with politicians, both at the state and federal level, to minimize the negative effects this legislation will have on our members.

The Prairie States Generating Facility in Lively Grove, Illinois, is progressing nicely, and it scheduled to begin operations in 2011.  Eastern Illini has a partial stake in the plant through our wholesale power supplier, Prairie Power, Inc.  The plant will cover about two thirds of Eastern Illini’s base load generation.  The remaining one third of the required base load power supply has not yet been committed, but the cooperative is continuing to look at ways to diversity our future energy portfolio to protect against future cost increases.

From December 19 to December 24, we were hit with two of our worst ice storms in the last 20 years.  Over 10,000 members lost power during the multiple outages.  Heavy winds and extremely cold weather slowed the restoration process.  We are very proud of the way our employees – and the line workers from other cooperatives – worked so diligently to the get power restored as quickly as possible.

The financial report was submitted by Treasurer Herbert L. Aden of Newman. In 2008, EIEC’s total operating revenue was increased by $522,122 compared to 2007.  Net margins for 2008 were up $152,643 to $2,284,651.  The net utility plant value is $50,325,646 and total assets are $69,280,324.

For more information, please contact the Eastern Illini Marketing Department at 1-800-824-5102 or email us.