March 2020 Back Page – Your Ballot Is In The Mail!
Posted: June 5, 2020AVEC’s annual meeting is around the corner – April 8, 2020. At this meeting, your votes will be announced and you will elect two candidates to fill the board seats that are cur-rently held by Robert Beans and Robert Hoffman. The nominating committee, which consists of seven of your community delegates, has forwarded the following candidates for your consideration.
- Robert Beans, Mt. Village
- Neil Furuya, Yakutat
- Homer T. Hunter Jr., Scammon Bay
- Myron P. Naneng, Sr., Bethel
- Darren Cleveland, Quinhagak
- Robert Hoffman, Bethel
- Fred Tom Hurley, Jr. , Ekwok
- Dalarie Peters, Bethel
In addition to voting for two candidates, your ballot includes three Bylaw propositions:
No. 1: One Year Terms for Alternate Delegates: Community delegates (primary, first alternate and second alternate) are elected for a term of three years. Alternates attend the AVEC Annual Meeting if the community delegate cannot attend. When alternate delegates are also unavailable or no longer live in the village, communities may not be represented at the annual AVEC meeting. Electing alternates every year makes it more likely that all AVEC communities are represented at the annual meeting.
No. 2: Changes to the Nominating Committee: The Bylaws require a nominating committee of seven community delegates to recommend candidates for the Board of Directors. It has been challenging to find enough individuals willing to serve on the committee. This amendment would allow the appointment of former delegates (including alternates) who attended the AVEC annual meeting in the past three years and also changes the committee size to five to seven members instead of exactly seven members.
No. 3: Village Meeting Quorum: Currently the quorum for annual community meetings is 10% of the members or 10 members, whichever is greater. This amendment would set the quorum at 10% at a minimum of 10 members and a maximum of 50 members. In larger communities with more than 500 members, it is very challenging to get a quorum for the annual community meetings. The annual meeting in Anchorage requires a quorum of 50 members, as do most cooperatives in Alaska, so capping the quorum for community annual meetings at 50 is consistent with our industry and Alaska law.
You have been mailed biographies of the eight board candidates with your ballot and more detail on the proposed Bylaw amendments. The Board urges you to exercise your right to vote and to send your ballot in before the deadline of April 7, 2020. And don’t forget to sign the outside of the envelope before dropping it in the mail!
