4 vie for 2 MEA board seats

PALMER — Four people are running for two open seats this year on the Matanuska Electric Association’s board of directors.

Incumbents are Catherine “Kit” Jones and Lois Lester. Their challengers are Bryan Scoresby and Marvin Yoder. The winners will be announced at the end of the co-op’s annual meeting April 24. Here’s a rundown of the candidates and their backgrounds, in alphabetical order:

Kit Jones

Jones lives in Palmer, has been a pilot for four decades and ran an aviation sales business for 33 years. She and her husband moved to Alaska seven and a half years ago. Almost immediately, a neighbor got her interested in goings on at MEA.

“Right off the bat I started going to board meetings to find out more about it,” Jones said. “Us member-owners didn’t really have a voice at all that was being listened to and responded to.”

She said she thinks she helped restore that voice and wants to continue working on big, important projects MEA is undertaking.

“It is a huge change for MEA to be going from just a distributor of electricity to being a producer and a distributor,” Jones said, referring to MEA’s project to build a natural gas-fired power plant in Eklutna. And she said she’d like to see MEA continue to work well with others in the power generation business in Alaska.

“When I came seven years ago everybody was really, really territorial. Each one was kind of grabbing for money from the Legislature and not willing to work kindly with one another,” Jones said. “Finally, we’re coming to the realization that those economies of scale will help all of us.”

Lois Lester

Lester is a 12-year board veteran and currently serves as president of the body. She is a retired chemistry professor who lives in Eagle River.

In her bio in the packet distributed with mail-in ballots, Lester said she is committed to providing reliable power at reasonable rates. But reasonable rates, she said, doesn’t mean skimping on safety and using outdated equipment.

“I support budgets that include upgrades to power lines, substations and replacing equipment that is on the borderline of being safe,” she said.

She also cites Eklutna as one of the main things she would like to continue working on if returned to the board.

Reached by phone Monday afternoon, she did not have time to speak to a reporter before deadline.

Bryan Scoresby

Scoresby is a newcomer to MEA politics, but not to the Valley. He’s a mortgage loan originator with Wells Fargo and has lived here more than 19 years.

“It’s a community service thing,” he said of his decision to run for the board.

He the commitment means he’ll be putting in a lot of hard work and said he’d like to change some things at MEA.

“I think we can do some things so we can reduce costs down there and make all of our power a little bit cheaper,” he said.

Scoresby has watched MEA’s progress during his time here and said he thinks the co-op needs to find a way to build generators more centrally. In his view, Mat-Su Borough rules have pushed the power plant to Eklutna, on one end of a vast service territory that stretches to Talkeetna. He said he’d like to see Eklutna built, but then see MEA work with the borough to fix those rules.

Another thing he wants?

“I’d like to see our rates go down,” he said.

He’d also like to see the state build the hydroelectric plant on the Susitna River.

“MEA can be a huge cheering section, but that’s about all they can do there,” he said. But he wants to help lead that cheer, saying that hydroelectricity would bring cheap power to Alaska for decades. “Our great grandkids would still be enjoying cheap power out of it.”

Marvin Yoder

Yoder has run for the board before but said he decided to make another try because he worries about the co-op’s future.

“When I ran last time I was basically concerned that the deadline was approaching for the MEA contract (to buy power from Chugach Electric Association) to end and I didn’t think they had a really good plan,” he said. “We’re three years closer and they kind of have a plan.”

Yoder worries, though, that the plan is faulty. It relies on natural gas, and natural gas supplies are kind of in doubt these days. Will that gas come from the North Slope through a bullet line? From Cook Inlet out of new wells drilled there? Will natural gas be imported from other markets?

And what’s that going to cost? Will MEA be able to lock in a stable price or be at the mercy of the market?

“The next couple of years are going to determine whether we have a stable price for a long period of time,” Yoder said.

As for the dam, Yoder said he’s all for it. Kind of.

“They’re talking about huge subsidies from the state,” Yoder said. And if that’s what everyone wants, he’s fine with it. He just wants everyone to be clear that the state is contributing greatly to the project. “I just don’t want them to do that and people find out later and get upset.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.