VANCOUVER, Wash. – The $619 million Columbia Community Credit Union which was the subject of an extraordinary fight over a charter conversion earlier this year, will hold its annual meeting on September 15 at a local area high school, the credit union has announced. The credit union nominating committee has put four incumbents, Ed Bell, William Byrd III, Dennis McLachlan and Bruce Davidson, forward for the open seats. There are four positions in the contest, three three-year positions and one one-year position. All the credit union's incumbent board members were narrowly retained in a special election at the end of March. The credit union has waived some of the usual procedures for board nominations and will take nominations for board members until August 2. Save CCU, the organization of Columbia members which had opposed the attempted conversion and tried to recall the board, will meet July 26 to discuss the upcoming annual meeting and election. Steve Straub, a former CEO of the credit union and an organizer of Save CCU said that the dissident member group will offer candidates but remained only cautiously optimistic about the chances of unseating the incumbents. "It's sort of like the California governor's election, credit union style," Straub said. He worried that if many candidates ran for the seats it would be more difficult to get members to pay attention to the election. He also worried that the credit union is still committed to outspending challengers in an attempt to preserve the incumbents. The credit union has never revealed how much it spent on defeating the board recall effort. -

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