87th Annual Meeting a success!

During the 87th Annual Meeting cooperative leaders reported how Verendrye Electric Cooperative continues to maintain a strong financial position, improve reliability and contribute to communities. 

“Powering Your Community” was the theme this year, demonstrating how the cooperative does more that just provide dependable and affordable electricity to homes, farms and businesses. 

Verendrye continued the tradition of a festive meeting with The Waddington Brothers performing on stage for the second year in a row, kids playing in bouncy houses and over 2,000 people enjoying a free meal.  The $3,000 grand prize was not awarded, but a consolation prize of $2,000 was awarded to Rat Schwarz of Minot. 

“The annual meeting is a tradition at Verendrye Electric that allows us to get together with friends and neighbors to conduct co-op business while having a good meal and a good time,” said Clint Gjellstad, board chairman.

Three incumbent directors were re-elected without opposition to serve another three-year term. They were Maxine Rognlien of Towner, Bob Wolf of Minot and Robert Hargrave of Rice Lake.

Verendrye spends around $8 million each year on a workplan that includes replacing aging power lines, replacing overhead power lines with underground power lines, replacing poles and keeping up with technology.
Verendrye recorded an average outage time of 41 minutes per meter in 2025. It is very difficult to achieve an average outage time of less than 60 minutes per meter, which is well below the state and national averages.
Gjellstad said converting overhead power lines to underground lines has helped the cooperative improve reliability.

“At the end of 2025 we had a total of 4,622 miles of power lines, serving 16,862 main meters, in parts of seven counties.  We are pleased to announce, for the first time, the majority of our power lines are underground,” he said. “We still aggressively pursue converting overhead power lines to underground lines.  With 2,324 miles of underground and 2,298 miles of overhead, this makes your cooperative a leader in percentage of miles of line being under ground.”

General Manager Brad Doll reported that kilowatt-hour sales have been flat for the past 11 years at just below 600 million kWh. There is optimism for future growth in sales with a helicopter facility nearing completion at the Minot Air Force Base and other facilities that will be needed for the new Sentinel missiles system currently in the planning stages.

Doll demonstrated Verendrye’s sales diversity with a pie chart showing kWh sales spread across five categories – industrial and large business at 27%, commercial and small business at 21%, farms and cities each at around 20% and military at 13%. 

“Usually when we have a downturn in one category the other four are not affected.  This certainly makes for a strong cooperative versus a cooperative that has 90% of its sales in the industrial category which can swing up or down with the price of commodities,” Doll said.     

      
Business Manager Christel Laskowski presented the finances.
The revenue for 2025 totaled $58.8 million, which was a 10.6% increase from 2024. The operating expenses for 2025 totale

d $57.2 million, which was a 7.4% increase from 2024. 

The cooperative implemented ate rate increase on March 1, which was 9.4% on average. The increase was because of an increase in Verendrye’s power costs, inflation and higher interest rates. There may be another increase in 2027 and Verendrye will keep members informed when more information is available.

Laskowski reported Patronage capital of $51 million. Patronage capital eventually gets returned to the members of the cooperative. 

Each year Verendrye assesses its financial condition at the end of the year and determines what amount of patronage can be given back to the members, taking into consideration loan covenants and other financial conditions. This year $1.4 million was returned to members in the form of capital credits. 

Next year’s annual meeting will be June 10.