JOHNSTOWN, Penn. — A glitch in the way members are notified of USSCO Johnstown FCU's annual meeting has, at least for the moment, cost three challengers their spots on the board of directors.
A trio of candidates, running essentially as a slate, defeated the incumbents by a margin of six votes in the May election but because a little over 300 members were not notified of the meeting, the credit union had no choice but to invalidate the vote, according to USSCO's attorney Guy Messick.
"They send out the annual notice in the quarterly statements and there are 300 some members who do not get one because their accounts are not active enough to justify quarterly statements and they just get annual statements," he explained. "I didn't know any other fair way to resolve this issue given the numbers."
Those members only received annual statements because the credit union stopped paying interest on accounts that contained less than a few hundred dollars about 20 years ago, board treasurer Don Riffle explained. As for why the credit union has not encountered this problem in the past, the answer is simple.
"We've never had an election," said Riffle. "The last election I can remember was back in 1959 when I was elected and there hasn't been one since." Riffle won his spot on the board in the first, and until this year only, election in the CU's history when it was founded just over 50 years ago.
Because the CU had technically violated its bylaws for the last two decades by failing to notify every member of annual meetings, Riffle said he was willing to stand for re-election and contended that the rest of the board, not just the three individuals whose terms expired this year, should do the same. But the other members demurred. "They said what's done is done," Riffle commented.
A new meeting is set for early August; members will be notified by their next quarterly statement while the 300 or so members who do not receive quarterly statements will get a special notification.
"I feel for the ones who were elected because it wasn't their fault that the notices didn't get sent out, but it is not something anyone purposely did," said Messick.
