From the by M.D. Fletcher |
March 2010 |
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The Annual Meeting of the Members of Columbus Electric Cooperative will be held on Saturday, April 3, 2010 in Animas, New Mexico. Registration starts at 10:00am, the business meeting begins at 11:00am, lunch will be served at noon and other business and elections will be held at 1:30pm. Now, if you've never attended one of our Annual Meetings, let me try to give you an idea of what they're like. They're fun. First of all, we'll have busses running from Deming and Columbus over to Animas and back so you won't even have to fire up the old Desoto to get there. When you register as a member, you'll receive a nice little goodie bag chock-full of nifty gadgets (some of which even work so right there you're a winner) plus a chance to win one of our fabulous door prizes. The Board of Trustees will be there and at 11:00am you'll hear reports from the President and the Secretary of the Cooperative as to the state of the organization and after their reports, I'll talk a little about what happened in the last year and what I think might be happening in the future. This is all about your Cooperative, after all, and since you're an owner, this is pretty interesting stuff, even if it comes from a big windbag like me. The Cotton City 4H Club kids will be serving the best darn brisket you ever wrapped a molar around starting at noon and after you've had your fill, you can waddle back into the auditorium to check out the door prizes we'll be giving away at the conclusion of the meeting.. Since I'll be drawing the tickets, the tendency of some folks in past meetings is to discretely offer me a sizable bribe to encourage me to draw their ticket for certain, high dollar items on display. Let me assure you that as a highly principled electric utility professional who values his integrity beyond all else, money talks. Wait a minute ... I mean, no, certainly not! What do you think this is, Enron? Anyway, after everybody has wandered back into the auditorium, we'll go over old business, then new business, and then we'll hold elections for three Board positions. |
Once the elections are over, we'll decide where to have the next Annual Meeting and then the President will call for a motion to adjourn. Since this is the last step before we hand out the door prizes, we generally get forty to fifty motions to adjourn, thereby proving the notion of a free crock pot or flat screen has a strong appeal. Now, the thing about the door prizes is that at the same time we'll be holding the "$20 Out of My Own Pocket Joke Contest". This is where I put up $20 of my own, hard-earned money as the prize for whoever submits the best joke during the meeting. Members are encouraged to write down their favorite joke(s) and turn them in to any of the staff and then I'll read them as we give away the door prizes. Like everything else, however, there are some rules. First of all, you've got to put your name on your entry and it's got to be legible enough for a UNM Lobo to read it. Second, remember there are kids around, so don't bother turning in your favorite selection from the latest edition of Captain Willy's Whiz Bang. Save that for the Elks Club. Third, I have enlisted our Attorney to preview all submissions to eliminate any problems with political correctness, which, not surprisingly, takes a whole bunch of them out of the running right away. Finally, in order to kind of speed things along, this year we're going to whittle the final entries down to the top five contenders. That means that if you really want to lay your hands on that coveted $20 bill, you'd better bring your "A" game and it better be funny. Now, just to give you an idea of what I think is drop-dead, knee-slapping funny, here's an example: Two snowmen, one turns to the other and says, "You smell carrots?" There. See, if you had turned that one in, you'd be in the running, at least in my book. But the members select by acclamation the best joke so don't go by me. Remember Saturday, April 3rd, the Columbus Electric Annual Meeting is the best darn annual meeting you'll attend this year so for goodness sake, don't miss it. You'll have a great time. Be there. |
