Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) held its 75th Annual Meeting on Wednesday, August 14, 2013. The event is held to allow customer-members the opportunity to vote for SMECO members to serve on the Co-op’s Board of Directors. SMECO held the Annual Meeting at the Blue Crabs Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf, where it has been held since 2009.
SMECO customer-members began registering at 3 p.m., filing into the stadium to vote until registration closed at 7:30 p.m. The Cooperative had 784 members register to vote, with 83 of them voting by absentee mail-in ballot. The following SMECO members were elected to serve on SMECO’s Board for three years: W. Michael Phipps of Calvert County; Gilbert O. Bowling and Richard A. Winkler of Charles County; James A. Richards of Prince George’s County; and P. Scott White of St. Mary’s County.
Each customer-member who registered received a bag made of recycled materials, a magnet, and a flashlight. Free ice cream and sodas were also available. Joseph V. Stone, Jr., Chairman of the SMECO Board of Directors, welcomed SMECO’s customer-members to the ball park and called the meeting to order. J. Ernest Bell II of Leonardtown served as the meeting chairman, a duty he has performed every year since 1999.
SMECO’s president and CEO, Austin J. Slater, Jr., reviewed the Co-op’s activities of the past year in his remarks. Slater discussed SMECO’s solar farm, which has been operational since November, the Co-op’s newly completed engineering and operations center in Hughesville, and the Southern Maryland Reliability Project being constructed in Calvert and St. Mary’s counties.
In the concourse of the stadium, SMECO hosted informational displays about energy-saving programs such as CoolSentry and the Quick Home Energy Check-up. A smart meter display provided information about SMECO’s program and plans for further deployment. To complement the annual meeting theme, “SMECO in the community,” representatives of the Charles and St. Mary’s county volunteer fire departments provided information to prospective volunteers. In addition, Charles County emergency management services provided CPR demonstrations to encourage local residents to “be a lifesaver, not a bystander.” The county is encouraging use of the “hands only” method of saving a life as a practical and effective alternative that inexperienced residents should learn.
Joe Lehan, voice of the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, served as the emcee for the entertainment prior to the meeting during which the Justin Crenshaw Band performed a 45-minute set and customers won prizes for bingo games. Pastor Bill Walker of Grace Brethren Church in Waldorf gave the invocation, the Chopticon High School Air Force Junior ROTC presented the colors, and SMECO employee Tim O’Neal sang the national anthem at the beginning of the meeting.
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