OA Article on 4/15/08 Annual Meeting

5/12/2008 1:09:32 PM

First Basin Board Stays:
Credit union meeting turns tense at times

April 15, 2008 - 11:52PM
By GEOFF FOLSOM

Nearly four hours after First Basin Credit Union's annual members meeting started Tuesday night, results of the board of directors vote were announced - as music to the ears of incumbents.

Around 500 people crowded into an Odessa College classroom for the credit union's first meeting since an attempt to convert to a savings bank, which ended last month.

And three incumbent candidates running for the board, First Basin Chief Executive Officer Shem Culpepper, board chairwoman Annette Snowden and Julian Beseril, Medical Center Hospital's executive director of finance, all came away with more than 300 of the 414 votes cast.

Mario Contreras, the highest finishing of five challengers, finished with 87 votes.

"I think it shows very clearly that this small radical group was able to manipulate a lot of people," Culpepper said after the vote was announced. "We very clearly displayed that we are a cohesive group and have more support than anyone in the community thought we would."

Culpepper used an hour before the official start of the meeting to show statistics he said shot down conversion opponents.

He was interupted several times by those calling for the other side to receive the right to respond, who were, in turn, called down by those wanting to hear Culpepper's remarks.

Culpepper then introduced Jack Selmon, an Austin attorney acting as parlimentarian. He was called on several times to explain rules.

Culpepper said Save First Basin was controlled by the North Carolina-based National Center for Member Trust, even pointing out similarities between Save First Basin's website and a website of a group opposed to a similar conversion in Utah.

Each candidate was given three minutes to address members. In his remarks, Culpepper said he knew most CEOs who tried to convert ended up being fired.

THE RESULTS:
The votes (top three are directors):
>> 327 Julian Beseril.
>> 327 Annette Snowden.
>> 325 Shem Culpepper.
>> 87 Mario Contreras.
>> 80 Danny Armstrong.
>> 42 Bob Thayer.
>> 30 Shan Johnson.
>> 24 Tom McKelvey.

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Reader Comments:

snanderbatch wrote:
Addendum to my previous comment:

More importantly, the Board of Governors, yes, the ones that got reelected, didn't want THE MEMBERSHIP of First Basin Credit Union to hear any opinions other than their own.
4/16/2008 9:10:35 PM
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snanderbatch wrote:
The meeting did get a little tense at times. The effort put forth by the board of directors toward becoming a mutual savings bank, which had been abandoned March 4 due to what Culpepper called “manipulation” by a small radical group was not supposed to be the focus of the meeting. The focus of the meeting was supposed to have been election or reelection of members of the board who spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars of the membership’s money on an effort to fix something that not all agreed was broken. So, Culpepper spent the first hour explaining why the Save First Basin group was just plain wrong and by doing so he totally redirected the focus of the meeting.

But was this just a two-sided issue? Might there have been more information available that would explain and provide a clearer understanding of what it will mean when next year conversion will surely again become a focus and tons more money will be spent? Yes, such information was available. Though Tom McKelvey tried to present it, members of Culpepper’s forces shut him up right quick. Apparently, unbiased information is a real threat to the powers that be. Tom was neither for nor against conversion; he just wanted to add information totally unrelated to that disseminated by the Save First Basin group so the membership in attendance could make a more informed decision. The tragedy is that the folks who got reelected are unwilling to consider any viewpoint other than their own.
4/16/2008 8:50:46 PM

Read it in the ODessa American here