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IREA electricity flows, but members in the dark

Contributed by: Mike Daniels on 4/30/2008

"It was a well orchestrated and staged event" said one IREA Member-Owner who attended the IREA Annual Meeting of Members on Saturday, April 26th. More than 100 IREA Member-Owners, Management, Staff and Board Members were present at Castle Rock Middle School to share the status of the organization and exchange comments, questions and concerns about what IREA is doing or not doing these days. Although 100 members attending the meeting was a good turnout compared to other IREA annual meetings, it was a pretty dismal showing in relation to the more than 130,000 IREA members. This year's meeting in Castle Rock saw almost twice the number who attended last year's meeting in Strasburg which, although held on the Saturday before Easter, drew a strong presence of members compared to prior years. As the Board of Directors sat with their backs to the membership, only General Manager, Stan Lewandowski, IREA Attorney, Patrick Mooney and Board President Tim White faced the audience. White welcomed everyone and opened the meeting at 10:00am after members were seated in the school meeting room/cafeteria. It was surprising to see so many arrive early, prior to 9:00am, to ensure they had a chance to speak at the meeting as if they had been recruited to do so.

And when the meeting was opened up to the members to speak, the sparks started to fly. The first 10 people whose names were called to speak praised the service they received from IREA, thanked them for the support IREA gives to their community and patted their "good ole boy" leadership on the back for fighting the minority who are trying to make IREA change their ways which management keeps telling them will raise their rates. Others extolled the virtues of IREA General Manager, Stan Lewandowski, for fighting the "good fight" and lauded him and the Board of Directors for a fine job. Several of these individuals went on to admonish the "radicals" who claim the sky is falling and are telling IREA to be concerned about Global Warming which the speakers went on at length to debunk. Many of the speakers had prewritten statements that chastised those who would have IREA subsidize members who wanted to install solar power in their homes or businesses. One individual went as far as to say that they thought IREA should spend even more money to hire lobbyists to defeat the lawmakers' attempts to force IREA's hand to comply with the legislature's directive to use more renewable energy and provide equitable net metering. This was quite a departure from last year's meeting where the Board received a lambasting from members for spending $100,000 to hire a climate change "skeptic" to help defend their continued investment in coal power plants.

One member at the meeting approached me and said " please take a photo of the registration table where only literature refuting Global Warming and other one-sided articles on that subject along with the "Watts & Volts" "propaganda" is available." That display and the current ad campaign IREA is running to promote the results of their recent poll prompted more than one member to speak at the meeting to ask why IREA can't be more fair and balanced with how they share information. The results of that poll were shared at the meeting and have been published ad nauseam in the IREA Newsletter, "Watts & Volts", and IREA area newspapers stating how the vast majority of IREA members oppose Solar Rebates, Energy Conservation and Carbon taxes and Retail Net Metering. When he had his chance to speak, IREA member Rudy Ramsey, Ph.D, who is an expert on statistics and surveys and enlisted other such experts to examine how the IREA survey was written and conducted, challenged how the poll was written and administered. He questioned the findings of the poll's results based on how the questions were phrased and designed to elicit a desired result. He also questioned the "random" sampling of members who responded to the poll and asked the Board to be more objective and scientific when conducting future surveys.

Though all attending were in agreement that IREA does a fine job providing electricity, it was evident that there were two factions of members represented at the meeting. There were those who supported IREA management's resistance to investing in renewable energy and constant debunking of Global Warming and those opposed to their position who find IREA's stand to be embarrassing. Member Michael Chiodo from Parker in IREA District 7, who often travels on business and gets most of his information from the internet wanted to know why IREA keeps their members in the dark by not sharing information, not being forthright with decisions the Board makes that impacts members' funds, and why they don't educate members about both sides of the Climate Change debate. He asked why IREA doesn't get with the times and post matters of import on their web site so members can be kept apprised instead of posting only propaganda refuting Global Warming.

Michael's wife, Elizabeth Hirsh, felt disenfranchised because she was not allowed to speak at the meeting since she is not officially listed on the account with her husband. She shared that she wanted to know "why if IREA President Tim White said at last year's meeting: "There is significant debate relative to how to handle global warming. I believe when it comes to those debates, if all of the information and all of the facts aren't on the table, then some of the times the best decisions won't get made and it's up to the leadership to help drive the arguments to get all the information on the table." So why is Tim White and IREA actively presenting only one-sided and biased information in their monthly Watts & Volts and on the website? Why doesn't IREA present an objective list of resources and let IREA member-owners draw their own conclusions? Why is IREA even involved in taking sides on this debate?" Elizabeth said she is now having IREA change their account information to include her name so she will be allowed to speak at future meetings.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Mike Daniels

Buffalo Creek , CO

Mike Daniels has posted 39 stories and 1 comment since joining on 3/8/2007. Mike Daniels 's average story rating is 4.5.
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