The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Most votes cast in years…two seats up in 2024
By Mark Reaman
In the hotly contested race for the Gunnison County Electric Association’s District 1 seat on the board of directors, incumbent Greg Wiggins retained his seat over challenger Frank Stern. Election results were released on June 22. District 1 is located in the North Valley and includes the town of Crested Butte.
Wiggins received 831 votes, or 57% of the ballots cast, while Stern tallied 624 votes. According to the GCEA, the total number of valid ballots cast in the election was 1,512, which is almost 17% of the 8,921 eligible member voters.
“I will continue my commitment to focus on reliability, affordability and safety,” said Wiggins. “I think Tri-State is moving in the right direction and I will support their Responsible Energy Plan.”
GCEA CEO Mike McBride said that the co-op does not break down the vote by district to see where votes for a particular candidate were stronger than in other districts. “We do not have data to provide a view of the vote by district, by candidate,” he explained. “GCEA’s elections have never been structured to tally votes in a manner that would show how many members residing in a particular district voted for a particular candidate. Unlike a political election where a candidate represents a particular district, GCEA’s elections for director seats are ‘at large.’ All GCEA members, regardless of the district in which they reside, can vote for or against all candidates vying for director seats that are up for election.”
GCEA was able to provide the total number of votes by district and, to no one’s surprise, members residing in District 1 cast the most votes at 471. District 3 voters cast 348, District 2 had 225, District 5 had 198 members vote and District 6 tallied 123. There were four votes cast from an undetermined district.
GCEA executive assistant Sherry Shelton said the next board election will be in a year. The 2024 director election will coincide with the annual meeting that’s held in June per GCEA bylaws. Seats up for election next year are Districts 6 and 7. District 6 is currently held by Polly Oberosler representing “The Tomichi Creek area east of the City of Gunnison to the Continental Divide within the certificated service area of the Association.” This includes Parlin, Sargents, Pitkin and a portion of Saguache County (Cochetopa area). District 7 is the at-large seat held by Mark Daily since 2015.
“We’ll ask the GCEA Board of Directors to finalize a date for the annual meeting at a future regular meeting, and the GCEA will post legal notice of the election and annual meeting date in December this year,” Shelton said. “We’ll then start sharing information in January/February 2024 for how to become a candidate, via our website and in a mailing to all members, typically in the February edition of the Colorado Country Life. At that time, we’ll be advising that candidate packets with nominating petitions are made available mid-February, with a deadline to submit petitions for candidacy in mid- to late April, 60 days before the annual meeting/final day of election.”
In this year’s election, Michelle Lehmann of District 4 and Tom Carl of District 5 ran unopposed. Tabulated votes for these seats were 1,153 for Lehmann (District 4) and 1,188 for Carl (District 5). Results for the association name change passed with 1,225 (91.8%) votes in favor of changing the legal name to Gunnison County Electric Association from The Gunnison County Electric Association. The votes against the name changed tallied 109 (8.2%).
