Trust Board holds spring grant meeting  

On Wednesday, April 11, North Itasca Electric Trust Board held its regular spring grant meeting.

The Trust Board meets twice a year, and with each meeting the decisions become more and more difficult as the number of grant requests increases. At its spring meeting, sixty-one grant requests were received with the amount requested over $1,908,481. Over the previous six months, North Itasca Electric had collected $10,944.14 in round up dollars. After a lot of discussion and difficult decisions, the Trust Board awarded grants to 53 applicants for a total of $10,936.10.

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April snowstorm causes major outage  

People commented on how dry our area was; that was before April 15 when the rain started.

By midnight the temperature started to drop below freezing. As ice covered our area. snow started to fall. Everything outdoors was covered.

Early Monday morning outages started around 1:30 a.m. Responding crews had zero visibility on unplowed roads. By noon on the 16th our area received 8 to 10 inches of heavy wet snow. Customers without power had climbed to over 2,400! Help from neighboring cooperatives would be late in coming as crews responded to the larger cooperatives that needed help. Help was received from our right-of-way contractor who supplied crews to assist in tree cutting. Crews were slow in repairing power lines because of trees that had to be removed on unplowed roads. As power was restored on a line, it would be reported that the line was back out. This would be the situation for 36 hours!

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Area Greenhouses  

Bigfork

• Bigfork Hardware is located just north of the river on Highway 38. Adjacent greenhouse open by Mothers' Day with annuals, vegetables and baskets. Phone: (218) 743-3113.
• Country Gardens Greenhouse is located in the parking lot of Kocian's. Open by Mothers' Day featuring flowers, heirloom vegetables and hanging baskets. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Mon. - Sat. Phone: Carol at (218) 743-3343

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My view from the board table 

This month's WATTS NEWS has the list of grant amounts from Operation Roundup and who gets them. Thinking about this has caused me to reflect on what an amazing area we live in. There are very few whom I would consider wealthy. In fact, considering the number of seniors who live on a fixed income, we might be considered a depressed area.

However government statistics can only deal with hard numbers. The part I am referring to is the "heart" and sense of community of you rural residents. It seems that every week there is a benefit or fundraiser for some worthy cause or individual in need, and the area residents always step up to the plate.

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2011 Member Satisfaction Survey Results  

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May 2012 Calendar of Events 

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