Former LCP director charges: Lake Country Power Board & Management Irresponsible

Dear Editor
Dear Lake Country Power Members:
On April 19 Lake Country Power will have the annual meeting for members. The two Bylaw changes the Board is requesting members to vote for are actually “discriminatory” against members that don’t live locally year round.
Most of the current Board only want members on the Board that meet their “Bad Old Boys” definition of what a Director should be. It is not about intelligence, independence and capacity to understand the issues, but an old group of closed-minded directors that do NOT have the best interests of the members as their primary directive.
Members also need to “ask” for specific details at the annual meeting on what General Manager Greg Randa’s pay package is for 2017 and 2018. Mr. Randa has consistently requested for exorbitant pay raise that were subsequently rejected. Since my resignation from the Board, I can only imagine the Board has established a plan to “grease” Mr. Randa’s pay to boost his retirement pension plan “at the cost of the members” upon his retirement.
Mr. Randa has been talking about retiring for several years and has been pushing for substantial pension plan improvement for years. The Board of Directors again does NOT have the best interest of the members as their primary directive if they boosted his final three years of base salary that members will pay for post-retirement.
For the past 30 years, the management of Lake Country Power and Board of Directors has failed the current and future members of cooperative by not properly upgrading the distribution system. Their goal was to keep rates low at the cost of decreased reliability. They allowed over 2,200 miles (29% of the distribution system), to exceed the EPRI recommended replacement guidelines beyond 50 years old (all members should ask for August 2014 Board presentation).
They allowed section of the system to approach 80 years old! This my fellow members was completely irresponsible. During my short tenure on this Board I pushed for the replacement process to start, but this has and will continue to result in increased rates for decades.
Who benefited? Long-term members and past members that departed the system and didn’t have to pay for responsible system upgrades when they should have been implemented. So who pays for it going forward: all of the current and new members.
Members need to take action and keep your elected Board of Directors responsible for their decisions and ask them to stop playing games with your cooperative. Numerous “needed” Bylaws changes are necessary to fix Lake Country Power, but the changes the current Board is recommending today just hurts the cooperative.
“Stop the Bylaw changes!”
Scott Magie
Ely – Former Director District 2