MEA board to have one new face

PALMER — Katie Hurley was the only one of three board incumbents to lose her seat in this year’s Matanuska Electric Association election.

The election results, announced at Tuesday evening’s meeting on the Alaska State Fairgrounds, are only preliminary. The board of directors will certify the official tally at its next meeting May 10.

But if those tallies hold, incumbent Larry DeVilbiss will retain his board of directors seat representing the electric cooperative’s Matanuska District — essentially Palmer and the surrounding area. His 1,634 votes seem to be enough to defeat challenger Bill Tull’s 1,376.

The Eagle River district saw a much wider margin in favor of incumbent David Glines, who took in 1,589 votes in the preliminary count. His opponent, Tom Staudenmaier, got 436.

Hurley was running for the Susitna District seat, representing Wasilla and points north. The election is a squeaker, but Hurley’s preliminary vote count of 1,818 didn’t seem to be enough to defeat challenger Bob Doyle, who took in 1,875 votes.

Elsewhere on the ballot, preliminary vote counts show all three ballot initiatives passing by wide margins.

The first proposition concerned voting; it changed procedures for packaging and mailing ballots, and allowed for electronic voting, which the state legislature voted to allow this year. The second proposition drew strong opposition from DeVilbiss and Glines and bumped up the amount of business a board member can have with MEA from $10,000 to $250,000, as well as tweaking other eligibility requirements for board members. The third proposition clarified when bylaw changes take effect.

In their speeches that night, both DeVilbiss and Hurley said a loss in the election wouldn’t upset them at all.

DeVilbiss said he was actually of two minds in deciding whether to even run this year. If he won, DeVilbiss said, he would get the opportunity to further advocate his position on power issues. If he lost, he would be free of the commitments he has as a board member.

“I’m going to be a happy man either way,” DeVilbiss said.

Hurley said her biggest achievement in three years was helping to install Joe Griffith as the co-op’s general manager.

“If I lose I can say I leave MEA in better shape than when I was elected three years ago,” she said.

As for the co-op as a whole, Griffith and board president Lois Lester gave an overview of accomplishments logged the previous year and challenges ahead.

Griffith, as he’s has so often in the past, spoke about possible natural gas shortages in the future and aging infrastructure across the Railbelt.

“We have 50-year-old generators,” he said. “It’s time to get that fixed.”

Griffith said he’d thought there was a fix to the problems on the horizon with a consolidation plan to tie together a good percentage of the Railbelt electrical utilities. But the legislature voted that plan down. He said co-ops are moving toward putting together a fix on their own.

Lester highlighted the co-op’s budget surplus — MEA brought in $110 million in revenue and paid out $107 million in expenditures. Griffith added that the surplus allowed MEA to pay credits back to its members.

“We did it last year and we’re planning on doing it again this year,” he said.

Lester also addressed the noticeable lack of games, prizes and guest speakers at this year’s meeting. She said the pared-down offerings at the meeting saved the co-op $150,000.

“This annual meeting is what it should be; a business meeting,” she said.

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