First with the results. All five of the current board members were elected for another term, and the Share BuyBack program was voted in. There were around 4400 total shares voted.
The board opened the meeting by cancelling public comment and then only allowing the public to make comments after the presentation on the share buyback program. Games games games.
Andy Zody ran through the financial and system upates quickly, along with a recap of the failed consolidation. Other than missing a detail here and there, like forgetting that there were two rate increases over the past year, one in June of last year and one in February of this year, this was mainly boilerplate.
There was some discussion of the share buyback program. It seems most people found it confusing, and there were lots of questions trying to figure out the details. The board, mainly Dave Nilsen, spent a bit of time explaining some of the details. Special focus was placed on pointing out that if no other shares are for sale when someone wants to buy shares, the company will sell shares to the public for less than $3,250. Instead, the board would look at recent sales as a guideline and then list those shares for “fair market value”. Considering there are several hundred shares on the board currenty for sale by the Nilsen family and a few others, this seems rather pointless at the moment. The biggest issue I see (outside of potential corruption issues) is that the company would then not be making as much money out of this program as intended, when it’s already not going to make very much money and take a while to bring a return on the money spent.
One public comment in particular stood out: Kathleen Zimmerman said she was surprised with all the people talking about fixing Tier 3 without mentioning loaning of shares. She said she has many shares loaned out, and is willing to loan more shares to people who are struggling with Tier 3 costs right now. Feel free to drop me a line at peter.barnes@sheepcreekwater.org if you are interested in borrowing some shares.
After this there were nominations for the board and then the candidates spoke. There were no suprises, 8 nominees for the 5 positions. Highlights included Brek Randolph recommending that people start looking into collecting rain water if the cost of water service keeps going up, and Kellie Willias mentioning that the board is looking to upgrade the company’s billing system to software that will allow for online bill payment.
My personal take: This was a decent first showing. The board has a significant home field advantage in setting (and changing) the agenda, and is able to vote all company proxies for themselves as well. That said, Deborah, Brek, and myself were able to receive a few more votes than previous opposition candidates during recent years.
Final Tallies:
Board of Directors
1. Luanne Uhl: 3883
2. Andy Zody: 3801
3. Eric York: 3344
4. Kellie Williams: 3322
5. David Nilsen: 3281
6. Peter Barnes: 1123
7. Brek Randolph: 1087
8. Deborah Philips: 1026
Share Buy-Back Plan
Yes: 3767
No: 612