Incumbents retain MEA board seats

PALMER — In a relatively tame election night — at least compared to previous years — incumbents on the Matanuska Electric Association’s board of directors retained their seats Tuesday.

Retired educator Peter Burchell and board vice president and businesswoman Janet Kincaid won 5,755 and 4,850 votes respectively. Challenger Bill Folsom, a retired contractor and 10-year board veteran, took in 4,005 votes. The election won’t be officially certified until next week.

Folsom said he ran in this year’s election because he didn’t think MEA was doing enough to keep rates low. He noted that Chugach Electric Association, which sells MEA most of the power it distributes, had cut $19 million off of MEA’s bill but none of that had gone to ratepayers.

He also decried the cost of running in the election, saying that he spent $10,000 and was probably outspent 7- or 8-to-1. Races have gotten too expensive, he said.

“Who in their right mind is going to want to run for this board again?” he asked.

Kincaid disputed that anyone spent $80,000 in the election. She also said she wants to continue her efforts getting Alaska’s utilities to work together. She said she was proud MEA is no longer rife with infighting between management and the board or management and the unions.

“It’s one group of people that is working hard to make MEA a great company,” she said.

For his part, Burchell echoed a lot of what Kincaid said, then told the crowd this would be his last term. He promised his wife he wouldn’t run again.

“I’ve never broken a promise to her before and I won’t start now,” he said.

In addition to the election, the annual meeting is a time for the board president, Lois Lester, and MEA General Manager Joe Griffith to give a rundown of the utility’s accomplishments for the year.

Griffith said that windstorms this past year — he counted five total — cost the power company $1.5 million. The first storm in September alone cost $534,000 in repairs. He had kind words for the linemen who did the work.

“If you were along the Gulf Coast that would’ve been a category 3 hurricane,” Griffith said of the wind speeds. “Can you imagine being on the top of a big boom truck in 100 mph winds working on electrical lines?”

A raft of bylaw changes also on the ballot all passed handily. The most interesting of them paved the way for MEA to round up utility bills to the nearest dollar and use the excess for charitable giving.

The program, called Round Up, exists already but is something members have to choose to join. The bylaw change makes it OK for MEA to make the program something customers have to opt out of. The bylaw change is moot, however, unless the Legislature approves House Bill 114.

Aside from a call for MEA to support Alaska Native corporation CIRI’s effort to build a wind farm on Fire Island, the member comments section of the meeting was dominated with quotidian concerns — a request for better food than popcorn and ice cream at annual meetings and a question about where to buy high-tech light bulbs.

That stands in marked contrast to previous years when the meeting was often the place to air grievances and take MEA employees, board members or both to task for various issues.

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