Posted 04/12/2010
Candidate Statements & Photos
Spring is here and Annual Meeting is right around the corner! This year VEC will be hosting its traditional breakfast and business meeting at The Abbey in Sheldon, Vermont on Saturday, May 15^th, 2010.

As you likely remember, at our Annual Meeting in 2009, members voted to create new VEC Director Districts to be implemented in 2010. This new Board Design opens 12 Director Positions for 2010.

The new District design is a hybrid, balancing District representation with other positions being elected “at large.” The entire territory has been divided into seven new, larger Districts, each District representing a nearly equal number of members. In addition, five Directors will be elected at large: two from the Eastern Zone and three from the Western Zone.  

On April 21, 2010 VEC will be mailing the Annual Meeting Notice which will also include a ballot for voting. This year your ballot for electing the VEC Board of Directors and voting on proposed By-law changes and projects will be slightly different than in years past. In addition to voting for a Director from your District, members in the Eastern Zone will be asked to vote for up to, but not more than, two [2] Directors at large and members from the Western Zone will be asked to vot for up to, but not more than three [3] from your zone. No more will you need to deal with two envelops, or place your private information on the outside envelop.  All of the information needed for accuracy will be bar-coded for security purposes, and will be scanned electronically instead of sorted and read by hand. 

Additionally, due to the complexity of this year’s election, in order to have a successful election and ensure the privacy of member information VEC has partnered with an experienced, independent, third-party election management provider, Survey & Ballot Systems (SBS) to handle VEC’s Annual Meeting mailing, ballot counting and reporting process. Please use the business reply envelope included in your mailing to return your ballot. Any ballot not returned in this envelope will be invalid. 

Survey & Ballot Systems works with cooperatives nationwide providing a voting process that is efficient and secure at a very reasonable cost.  While VEC strives to do business locally, we could not find this expertise in Vermont. 

We are confident that our members will find this new process safe, easy, and accurate. 

This is a very important year for the Director election at VEC and we encourage all voting members to have their say! We would like to see increased voter participation and as incentive, there will be a grand prize drawing of a 46” LCD TV at the conclusion of the balloting process. The winner will be randomly selected from the valid ballots cast and will be notified by Vermont Electric Cooperative, Inc. the week of May 21st.