The annual Access Energy Cooperative meeting took place on Tuesday, and an exciting night of fun was had by many.

People Make the Difference

“At Access Energy Cooperative, we exist simply to provide for our members’ needs. It is people who make the difference – the cooperative difference for safe, reliable, efficient service,” stated Kevin Wheeler, General Manager/CEO, during his report to the members of Access Energy Cooperative at the 2024 Annual Meeting of Members at McMillan Park in Mt. Pleasant on August 6th.

Jennifer Lynn Handling and Revolution put on a great show for the evening. Mt. Pleasant Hy-Vee served a great meal, accompanied with homemade ice cream from Hinterland Dairy of Donnellson. Kids enjoyed inflatable activities from Fields of Fun, pony rides by Windy Acres, and Drive-a-Tractor by the Proennecke brothers and Dick McGohan. Henry County Public Health and the Henry County Sheriff’s office displayed information and interacted with members in addition to cooperative and our power supplier employees providing information on electrical safety, SmartHub, energy efficiency, and demand.

“Access Energy Cooperative thoroughly and sincerely appreciates the assistance and participation from every individual and organization who helped make this meeting happen for our members, including those unseen like Quality Equipment, Mt. Pleasant VFW, Staats, Midwest Old Threshers, City of Mt Pleasant, Lance Refuse, Yotty’s Golf Cars, United Rentals, Printgroup, former employees and spouses of employees, Northeast Missouri Electric Power Cooperative and Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc. employees who helped,” adds Kimberly Davis, Director of Member Services and Public Relations for the cooperative.

Following reports from the cooperative officers and Mark Viguet from Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc., during the business portion of the event, election results were reported by the cooperative attorney. Marvin Larson was elected in district one to serve a three-year term. In district two Larry White was elected for a three-year term, and Jerry Barker was elected for a two-year term. William “Bill” Benjamin was elected for a three-year term in district three.

Drawings were held for prizes, including the Grand Prize of a $250 bill credit, won by member Robert Kessel. Dividend checks for 2024 totaling $1,235,090 were available for members to pick up at the meeting. For those who were unable to make it to the meeting, checks will be mailed out the week of August 26th.

Following the meeting, during the annual reorganizational meeting of the board of directors, the following were elected as the officers of the Access Energy Cooperative Board of Directors: President Marvin Larson, Vice President David Hollingsworth, Secretary Michael Holtkamp, and Treasurer Robert P. Smith.

This year, the Iowa Healthiest State Initiative is introducing a new social media challenge—the Active Early Care Challenge! Early care centers who complete the challenge will have the chance to win money, gain access to additional free resources, and free 5-2-1-0 Healthy Choices Count! Items.

If you’re interested in entering the challenge as an early care site, download the challenge bingo card, register a free walk as part of the Healthiest State 14th Annual Walk, and must be a registered 5-2-1-0 Healthy Choices Count! site. 5-2-1-0 site registration is free, learn more and register here.

• Complete the given activities and take pictures or videos as you do them!
• As the activities are completed mark them off on your card!
• Make sure you tag them so they see your posts!

The challenge opens August 1st, and centers have until September 25th to complete the challenge. The challenge winners will be announced via social media and notified via email by the end of the day, Wednesday October 2nd.

Prize

Two sites will be randomly selected from those who shared a bingo on social media, and will be awarded $500 to help fund healthy habits or a healthy initiative at their early care center. The winning sites will be required to share a project update within one year of the funds being awarded, showcasing how the prize money was utilized. All centers who completed a blackout will be given a free 5-2-1-0 swag bundle!

Have questions? Find the official rules document and resources to take on the challenge below. Please reach out to info@iowahealthieststate.com with any questions regarding the Healthiest State Annual Walk or its related challenges!

Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks spoke at Saunders Park in Mount Pleasant Tuesday evening in front of constituents as part of her “District Blitz” tour. This was her 7^th event of the day, as she continues across the district in attempts to raise support ahead of the election in November. Meeks will face off against not one, but two opponents, as democratic challenger Christina Bohannan and Libertarian candidate Nicholas Gluba both seek the seat.

I was able to ask Miller-Meeks a variety of questions after the meeting.

(Q) Yorke – Tell me about your visit to Henry County tonight. Why are you here?

(A) Meeks –“So typically campaigns, as they get closer to election time, will reach out to their constituents or reach out to people. And so we are on our 20 county tour, there are 20 counties in Iowa’s first congressional district, and we’re hitting all of these counties. We typically do that on the official side as well, but we’re doing this on the campaign side, making sure we reach out to people, we’re available to people, we’re there to answer their questions so they can know what we are working on, what bills we have passed, what we’re going to work on in the future, and also ask questions about what they see happening in their federal government.

(Q) – What is the key to winning the contested race against Bohannan and Gluba?

(A) Meeks – “The key to winning is exactly what we are doing now, and that is to continue to reach out, to be accessible, to answer questions, to be all over the district, to be ourselves. To be authentic, to be real. And I think people in Iowa were, you know, because we’re the first in the nation caucus, we’re used to having access to our candidates. So I think that goes a long way. We are going to continue to do all that hard ground work, whether it’s door knocking, having meet and greets, whether it’s being around people. And then we’re also going to raise the money so that we can compete on the airwaves as well.”

(Q) – (Christina) Bohannan has attacked your views on abortion recently. What do you have to say about that? What are your views on abortion?

(A) Meeks – “So I am pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, I’ve been very consistent upon that. Christina Bohannan is lying about my record, but more importantly the extremes on abortion are the democrat party. They voted for a bill, in Congress, that would have abortion up until the birth of the child, so up until birth. That is an extreme position, such as North Korea and China have. That is no in keeping with the majority of Americans or the majority of Iowans. So you have an extreme party who has nothing else to run on, they have high gas prices, high food prices, high interest rates so young people can’t afford a house and don’t think they can get ahead in the United States. They have open borders with record amounts of fentanyl coming across the border, the cartel is in control of the southern border, record number of people and people on the terror watch list, crime has risen. And then you have chaos that is abroad, and this is, uh, these are the people who want to continue to control our country, have nothing to run on so they are going to run on abortion. And they are going to lie about people’s records.”

(Q) – Kamala Harris picked her Vice President candidate pick in Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, how do you feel about this?

(A) Meeks – “I think that this is a left-wing progressive that is in-keeping with Kamala Harris extreme California left-wing progressive view. So it’s not a surprise that they’re together. If you want more of the same that we’ve had the past four years, with high food prices, high gas prices, increasing crime, open borders, then they are right in keeping with that. They are responsible for that. People don’t feel that they are doing better than they did four years ago, they think they’re doing worse. And, uh, to me the answer to that is to reelect your congresswoman Marrianette Miller-Meeks, help elect republicans up and down the ballot, and to reelect President Donald Trump.”

She admitted that this will be a “brutal election” as the democrats want her seat back. Bohannon is outraising Meeks so far this cycle, but Meeks doesn’t seem worried. When it comes to the importance of this election, she mentioned that the House must be controlled by republicans. If not, she fears, democrats will attempt to impeach President Trump, if elected, from day one, and that nothing will get done due to constant “disruption”.

Meeks will be meeting with constituents at a fundraising event in Iowa City on September 7^th, ahead of the annual Iowa-Iowa State football game.