Manager's Corner

- 412 members voted or 60.5%

- 326 members voted in favor or 79.13%

- 86 members voted against or 20.87%

The board and staff of both cooperatives spent many hours researching the benefits of this merger and then spent time with the membership of both co-ops explaining the benefits. It was definitely time well spent and in doing so, our members were able to express their opinions about both co-ops. It gave all of us a chance to get to the grass root problems that members voiced about our co-ops, so we could make some corrections and make this a better co-op for all members.

Now that the merger has passed we need to capitalize on our opportunities and encourage those who did not vote for the merger to give us a chance to show you the benefits. If you have questions that were not answered, please call me at 515-290-2231 and I will answer any question you may have. Your business is very important to us.

For those of you who voted for the merger, I want to thank you for your support. Your interest and commitment to HOIC is very important and we will do everything we can to meet and exceed your expectations.

We will be ending our year at the end of this month, so if you have a past due account please make a point to talk with Kevin Quinn to get it cleaned up so we can start our new year with SCE in a great position financially. We will be implementing some changes in our credit policy. You will be getting notice of a change on our cardtrol credit policy in the future. SCE will be ending their year on January 31, 2009. We will jointly start our year on February 1 and end our year on September 30, 2009. After that, our year will run 12 months, starting on October 1 and ending on September 30.