The 45th Annual Meeting of Members was held at The Cove of Lake Geneva followed by a historic boat tour aboard The Lady of the Lake, the flagship boat of the Lake Geneva Cruise Line.
Notably, at this year’s business meeting, two current board members chose to not seek re-election, stepping down off the board, and three new nominees to the board were voted in. Chair of the nomination committee, Don Reck, stepped down after serving on the board for six years, and Lynne English after serving two years. Mr. Reck’s final official business in his role as nomination committee chair was to bring three new board members into service by a vote of the membership. Robert Bartlett, formerly Director of Community Affairs at Alliant Energy, Andrew (Andy) Hesselbach, a recently retired former Senior Vice President with WEC Energy Group, and Scott Patulsky, who served as We-Energies Vice President of Fossil Operations among many other engineering leadership positions, were all voted onto the board of directors.
A panel of company lobbyists updated the crowd on the latest developments, lamenting the current political polarization that has made finding consensus on important issues extremely difficult.
Keynote speaker Bert Garvin, Vice President, External Affairs at WEC Energy Group, reviewed his company’s current and future plans. He told members the company expects EPS future growth of between 6.5 and 8 percent. Many questions concerned the proposed data centers and their potential impacts on customers. He said the company expects to deliver the best risk-adjusted returns in the industry. The utilities are in agreement that the new data centers are a positive generation driver, the costs of which will not be passed along to the consumer. The data center will employ environmentally conscious technology which will minimize any environmental impact. Please see the “WEC Energy Group Preparing for Additional 1800 MW...” article at the end of this newsletter for more information.
Following the meeting, members were treated to a boat tour of Lake Geneva.
