Membership Meeting 2009

Last night marked a milestone for our association as we gathered for our third annual membership meeting. Now, I'm not going to lie, I really had hoped for a better turn out but I can't deny that the 50ish people that came out were top quality!! Here is a little blurb about went on at the Floyd County Friend Unity Center in Muncy, Texas last night and yes I am going to use visuals! Enjoy the snap shots.

I greatly appreciated the members that made it out last night; I enjoyed getting to meet and greet members I hadn't met before as well as get to see those I have again. Here are a couple of those members at the sign-in table, signing in and getting their handouts.

Look at that group!! Here they are preparing for the meeting to begin and looking over their handouts. If you are interested in getting a copy of the CREZ map we had available please contact me.

Side note: From here on out you can see how much I prefer to take vertical photos!!

Steve Stokes, our board president, started out the night. He took care of all the "business" stuff. During this part of the meeting the membership voted to change the dues structure for foundation (landowner) members back to its original structure. That structure being that landowners can volunteer to pay $1/acre dues, but are only required to pay a $100 minimum.


Tom Edwards, a Motley County board member, took the podium next. Tom reassured the crowd that wind energy development is moving forward and encouraged members to renew their memberships and help recruit others who aren't currently members. He also recognized Pete Laney, who was in attendance and Joe Heflin for their efforts to spur wind development in our area.

Our first guest speaker of the night was Richard Amato. Richard is the President and CEO of Venti Energy, a developer based out of Austin, as well as wind subcommittee chair for the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association (TREIA). Richard gave the group an overview of the industry as a whole, including topics relevant to transmission infrastructure, policies and incentives, the development timeline and much more. He even gave us a quick overview of acronyms that are regularly used in the industry. Do you know what PPA means? Well, if you didn't, it's power purchase agreement. Thanks Richard!

Our second speaker, Cameron Fredkin had a short video for the group to enjoy. Everyone watched attentively, see below! Let me know if you would like to see the video; I am sure we can find a way to work something out.

Here Cameron is talking about just who Cross Texas Transmission is. Cameron gave us a great overview of how the CREZ process is going to work and how Cross Texas will be involved. The main point I got from his presentation is that their company really does want to know your opinion. Cameron said they really do have an open door policy. If you have suggestions about the routing of lines you shouldn't hesitate to contact them. I would also like to commend Cameron on his fielding of questions. He got a lot of them and he answered them all very thoroughly.



You can find the complete presentations from both of our speakers on our Web site under news/links. Please call, send me an email or leave a comment on this post if you have any questions about the meeting or about Caprock in general. I would be happy to field them!
And I have to leave you with one last thing. I really liked this picture of the group from last night. Sometimes I have to dust off my photoshop skills and black and white looks good on the group. Enjoy...