Members of Farmers Cooperative Company (FC) and West Central Cooperative need to start watching their mailboxes for their ballot packet in order to vote on a potential merger between the two facilities. The ballots were mailed out on Friday and are enclosed in a white envelope stamped with each cooperative’s respective logo, and are expected to arrive at their destinations before Thanksgiving. Cooperative voting members will need to indicate their decision to the proposed merger by checking either the YES or NO box on their ballot, sign it, and then place the ballot in the official reply envelope. Votes do need to be received by the auditors by noon on December 18.
Ballots may also be turned in to an auditor at any one of twenty upcoming informational meetings. Members are strongly encouraged to also attend, but will need to register online at either wccgrow15.com or fcgrow15.com or by calling their cooperative’s location. FC chief executive officer, Jim Chism and West Central chief executive officer, Milan Kucerak will jointly host all of the informational meetings which will take place between November 30 and December 11. In order for the merger to take place Iowa law requires 50% plus one of each membership to vote, with two-thirds of those votes cast to favor the proposal. The votes will be counted at a special meeting slated for December 18, 2015.
