MEA board should seize opportunity to bury hatchet

Frontiersman editorial board

It is impressive how many hours some devoted people spend working on various boards for their community. The most effective boards bring together differing viewpoints and champion collective causes, and often compromise some to achieve results that work for the most people.

One rule seems to guide the most effective boards -- check your baggage at the door. Board members work best when they come to the table with all grudges, chips and personal vendettas dropped.

Board members should bring to the table the experience and knowledge that makes them valuable, but when personal feelings get in the way of board business, experience and knowledge are rendered useless.

A power struggle is under way on the Matanuska Electric Association board. It's a battle some say has been waged for years.

Now would be a good time for the MEA board to put the baggage down and work together toward a resolution, as they are currently facing one of their most important decisions in the past few years. A new set of campaign-related bylaws could determine the future face of the co-op board, or could land the board back in court over conflicting interpretations of the document. The task currently before the board is important, and the resulting document must be, to the best of their ability, fair, feasible and legally sound.

It's a big task, and to succeed the board must do their homework, leave their egos and personality conflicts behind when they arrive at the table, and most of all, be willing to compromise to reach the best outcome.

If they're not able to reach a conclusion and remedy the faults found in their bylaws, the board will have done itself -- and MEA members -- a great disservice. They will force members to work within the confines of shaky bylaws for another year, potentially risking more member money on new bylaw-related lawsuits.

The decision is in the board's hands -- let petty battles block the real work of the board or bury the hatchet once and for all and work together to find the best way to mend the bylaws and thereby the integrity of the co-op.