David McClellan
CPA CCM MBA

I was elected to the board of Cobb EMC in 2012 as members sought to take back control of their EMC and decided to replace the entire board. While on the board I have served as Chairman of the Budget and Finance committee, and I have worked very hard along with other board members to:

Decrease Rates

• Over the past 18 months $24 million has been returned to our members as the result of decreasing the EMC’s cost structure. Member bills were decreased through a negative Wholesale Price Adjustment (WPA).


• Last summer the Georgia Public Service Commission’s residential rate survey found that out of 94 electrical providers Cobb EMC was the 4th lowest in the state. Watch for the new rate survey that will be released in August.


• Shortly after I was elected to the board, other board members and I discovered that our EMC had been sued because the prior CEO and prior board had refused to return excess profits that had been collected from our members. We worked diligently to settle the suit quickly which resulted in a $98 million class action settlement for the benefit of our members. Judge Schuster oversaw the settlement. In addressing the court afterwards he told the new directors and executives, “You have truly saved the company and turned the company around. It’s a new board, a new CEO and a whole new outlook. The EMC is now focused on member rights.”

Improve Electrical Reliability

• We are ranked third in the nation for service reliability which means when you experience an outage, your lights are back on in less than 2 minutes.

Provide Member Advocacy

• Numerous times I have been the advocate of members before the EMC. A member recently told me, “I especially want to thank you for your involvement. I’m convinced we would not have received the kind of attention that we did had I not contacted you.”

Increase Member Rights and Promote Transparency

• I worked with the Audit Committee to conduct a forensic audit to determine the extent of misdeeds by the former CEO and prior board at Cobb EMC.Starting four years ago all board meetings have been open to members to attend for the first time in the history of the company. Meeting times were moved to late afternoon to make it easier for members to attend.

Bylaws were rewritten to increase member rights:

• Created a member’s Bill of Rights
• Term limits instituted for directors
• Returned EMC to not-for-profit status

Encourage Renewable Energy when it Does Not Increase Costs

• I voted to enter into an agreement to purchase 101 megawatts (MW) of solar energy from a 131-MW photovoltaic (PV) solar project that was constructed in Taylor County, Georgia because it did not increase power supply costs.

Improve Culture of Safety

• Cobb EMC has achieved a Workers Compensation Mod of .55 which means that members have saved $365K per year over the average mod of 1.0.
• We recently achieved a score of 99 out of 100 for safety practices from the Electric Cooperative Safety Accreditation Program of Georgia.

EMC of the Year

• While I was on the board Cobb EMC was named EMC of the Year and was presented the 2014 Georgia EMC Community Service and Volunteerism Award for unprecedented generosity and service to thousands of residents in five metro Atlanta counties.

I am honored to have served you for the past 4 years and am proud of our many accomplishments. I am pleased to have been part of our community for 30 years and it is my desire that our EMC continue to serve the community, our children and grandchildren with extraordinarily low rates and unparalleled reliability.

I would be thrilled and delighted to continue our progress and to serve you for 3 more years.