Mark Ekrut

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I’m Mark Ekrut and I serve as your elected Director on the Board of the Pedernales Electric Cooperative. My fellow board members selected me as the current Presiding Officer.

I am respectfully ASKING for your vote to continue to serve you.

I have been a PEC member for over 30 years. I live in Jonestown with my wife of thirty-three years, Darla and our cattle dog Missy.

As the director who represents you on the PEC Board, I will continue to:

• Keep PEC rates as low as possible.
• Keep reliability high.
• Ensure the voices and concerns of our members are heard.
• Embrace and perpetuate the culture of PEC.

I am a local small business owner who feels called to serve:

• I am in the third year of my first term as Director for PEC and I currently am Board President as selected by my peers. Prior to that, I was selected as Secretary/Treasurer.
• I previously served as the Presiding Municipal Judge for the City of Jonestown Texas.
• Member of the Texas Municipal Court Association as well as the Sheriff’s Association of Texas.
• I’ve been a small business owner in Cedar Park for over 28 years.
• Active volunteer and driver for our local food bank.
• Volunteer/Member of Jonestown Night Sky Advocacy.
• Served as an appointee to the Jonestown Land Use & Development Board.
• Member of the Friends of Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge.
• Received Director Accreditation from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.
• I am a certified director of the National Association of Corporate Directors.
• Member of Anderson Mill Baptist Church.
• I am also a certified Texas Mediator.

The business model of a member owned cooperative calls to me to serve my fellow members. I desire to continue engaging in my civic duty of insuring that the needs of the members are conveyed to management. PEC has done a great job of keeping our rates low and the service levels high. I will strive to find and encourage ways to continually improve both. Through creative partnerships and utilizing federal grants, I would like to pursue ways in which our infrastructure can be improved without adding additional costs to the membership.

I believe we must be cognizant of the challenges of the explosive growth we are currently experiencing. Planning for future capital expansion of the PEC’s distribution infrastructure is imperative. As a fiscal conservative, I will continue to instill common sense approaches that serve long term perspectives. I am also committed to importing more renewable energy sources into the wholesale power portfolio when reliability and competitive pricing are present.

I want to keep rates as low as possible while re-investing proper levels of net margins back into plant expansions to strategically address population and meter growth requirements.

No Director on any board should be self-serving nor have ties to any special interest, and I have none. I believe a PEC Director should be an effective communicator of the members’ needs while providing clear visions of policy for implementation by management that will assure what’s best for the organization AND the member owners. With PEC having over 385,000 meters providing power for over a million people (and growing at record rates), I want to maintain the priceless feeling of us all being neighbors. That feeling is not present with any other utility. PEC is very involved in the community, and I see ways to expand on that.

As your Director, I will continue to participate in as many functions as possible to be a positive representative of our cooperative. I’m committed to being an ever-open conduit for the concerns of all members as I consider myself very in tune with the citizens of the geographically derived District 3 seat.If there is one thing that can be taken away from this self-introduction is that I’m known for serving and having a common-sense approach in solving challenges. I want to keep those attributes effectively utilized on the Board and help solve the multitude of complex challenges that are being considered by management.

I respectfully ASK for your VOTE! I vow to be responsive to your contacts and listen to your concerns and suggestions.

Please call or email with any questions.

Thank you!

Mark Ekrut
(512) 230-5444 -- Mark.Ekrut@yahoo.com