Another year has gone by since our 2004 Annual Meeting. North Itasca Electric Co-op., Inc. Board of Directors continues to work with our power supplier to keep our rates stable and secure. North Itasca has a representative on the Great River Energy Board of Directors. Mr. Bruce Leino, Director from Squaw Lake, is our voice at GRE and attends monthly meetings at GRE Headquarters in Elk River. He keeps us informed of their current business plan, the financial status and their ongoing energy expansion endeavors that will guarantee us a reliable power supply and energy savings programs for the upcoming years.

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You would think that after 32 years of Annual Meetings I’d quit getting excited about all the details that go into the preparation and the meeting itself. After all, my staff and employees have been through this many times themselves and know exactly how to set up the meeting area, register the Members, keep everything orderly and on track, so why should I get excited? I think it’s because the Annual Meeting is the only chance I get each year to directly address the Members as Owners of their Cooperative business. I want everything to be at its best and impress you with our accomplishments over the past year. My better half (Sandra) says I’m almost impossible to live with the last the two weeks before the meeting.

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North Itasca Electric’s Operation Round Up® Trust Board approved $11,360.00 in contributions to local community programs during its semi-annual meeting in April.

Operation Round Up was started by the cooperative in November, 2004. During the next six months North Itasca Electric Co-op customers’ bills would be rounded up to the next dollar and the difference was put into the fund and held for semi-annual distribution by the Trust Board.

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I’d like to thank everyone who took time out of his or her busy schedule to come to our Mother’s Day Open House. We enjoyed visiting with everyone; you helped make it a wonderful day.

Highway 38 required a five mile three phase express feeder from Bigfork to County Rd 43. This line will provide back feed abilities and will relieve some of the load on Jessie Lake Substation. Highway 38 north of Marcell, a new three phase underground line replaced the overhead line.

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Last winter, with our Turtles having been installed for over a full year, and our seasonal customers having been paying monthly for a full year, we had many questions and concerns from some of our customers on their energy bills. But, with the hardest winter we have had in years, the Turtles once again were able to answer many questions about how many KWH were used and exactly when they were used. The Turtles were also able to detect when some of our seasonal customers had left heaters or something else on in their cabins that they thought were totally shut down. These little green gadgets still amaze me with the information we get from them, how useful they have been, and the time savings we have gotten from them.

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2004 is done and gone and we are half way into 2005. What a busy time it is at North Itasca Electric Co-op., Inc. at the beginning of the year. The 2004 Books are closed, audited and approved by the Board. The 2005 Budget is prepared, approved by the Board, and guiding us through the year. Federal and State Formare completed and filed with the appropriate agencies. We have had our first North Itasca Community Trust Grant Meeting and $11,300.00 of the Operation Round-Up ® monies that had been collected to date have been granted out to worthwhile area non-profit groups and organizations.

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