SPP's COVID-19 response - Dec. 28, 2021
This article was updated Dec. 28, 2021 at 3:35 p.m. to correct data related to COVID cases in Oklahoma.
The following message is from Southwest Power Pool’s President and CEO Barbara Sugg.
To SPP’s valued stakeholders –
This year, our leadership team announced we would hold our first in-person stakeholder meetings beginning in January 2022. Our plan was to begin offering in-person options for our Jan. 10-11 Markets and Operations Policy Committee (MOPC) and Jan. 12 Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) meetings in Oklahoma City, and our Jan. 24-25 Regional State Committee (RSC) and Board and Members Committee (BOD/MC) meetings in Little Rock, Arkansas. This decision was subject to change if COVID-19 numbers began to increase.
We have been following a recent, dramatic trend in COVID-19 infections and flu cases in our region. Daily new COVID cases have nearly doubled in Oklahoma since Dec. 18, and recent hospitalizations in Arkansas increased 7% in a day. The health and well-being of you and our employees are of utmost importance to us. Although early data seems to show the Omicron variant is unlikely to severely affect healthy, boosted people, we still do not know what its impact will be on older, at-risk colleagues, friends and family.
For these reasons, we are canceling the in-person option for the January MOPC and SPC meetings. These meetings will now be held by web conference only.
Our current plan for January’s RSC/BOD/MC meetings and Special Meeting of Members at SPP’s offices in Little Rock, is to impose a limit on the number of in-person attendees. Our auditorium will allow for 75 attendees to be seated with social distancing.
We will also be delaying the implementation of Phase 4 of our staff’s return to our Little Rock offices until at least Jan. 18, 2022, while we continue to monitor COVID cases in our community.
We will be in touch with further instructions for registrants of all meetings. As always, there remains the potential for additional modifications to our plans in order to appropriately respond to changing conditions. You can stay updated on our pandemic response at spp.org/covid-19. Please contact your customer relations representative or email communication@spp.org with questions.
I know this means that I will not get to see many of you in-person as soon as I hoped, but I’m confident our team will continue to facilitate virtual meetings with their usual standard of excellence.
Be well and stay safe,
Barbara