How to vote

East River’s annual meeting is on Monday, December 8 starting at 7:30 p.m. It will be held in the auditorium of PS 134/137 on the corner of Grand Street and East Broadway.

There are three ways you can vote:

annual meeting walk1. Attend the meeting

Just show up, sign in, get your ballot, fill it out, and drop it in one of the boxes at the front of the auditorium. You can vote for up to four candidates for the board of directors and up to three candidates for the house committee.

2. Mail a directed proxy

A directed proxy is like an absentee ballot — you mark the candidates you want to vote for, sign it, and mail it to the coop’s attorney to be counted with the rest of the ballots.

The directed proxy must be received in the mail by 5:00 on Monday, December 8 — so you definitely can’t wait until the last minute to send this in may have already missed the deadline for mailing this in.

3. Sign a general proxy

A general proxy is a little more open-ended than a directed proxy. It’s more like a power of attorney for just this one responsibility. If you sign a general proxy to your neighbor, your neighbor must bring that piece of paper with her to the annual meeting — she will sign in and vote in your place.

If you are supporting the candidates Cooperatively Yours has endorsed — Lee Berman, Peter Herb, Heather Hubbs, and Don Mathisen — then you can download one of these general proxies and return it to the apartment listed on the bottom of each form. Click each image for a larger PDF.

General Proxy Dec 2014 - Bldg 1-1
453-455-457 FDR Drive (Building 1)
General Proxy Dec 2014 - Bldg 2-1
573-575-577 Grand Street (Building 2)
General Proxy Dec 2014 - Bldg 3-1
568-570-572 Grand Street (Building 3)
General Proxy Dec 2014 - Bldg 4-1
473-475-477 FDR Drive (Building 4)

A few notes about the system

  • If you intend to come to the meeting on December 8 but you’re not 100% sure you can make it, sign a proxy so that your vote will definitely be counted.
  • If you own more than one apartment, you still get only one vote.
  • If there is more than one person on your stock certificate, only one of you needs to sign the proxy or attend the meeting to vote.
  • If you sign more than one proxy (directed or general), the one with the later date is the one that is counted.
  • If you sign a proxy and then decide to attend the meeting, that’s fine — but if you sign in at the desk in the lobby, your proxy will be invalidated and you must vote yourself. (You can also just walk straight into the auditorium, without signing in, and allow your proxy to stand.)

Questions? Leave them in the comments below.