MEA election will seat new board member

PALMER — The Matanuska Electric Association yearly board of directors’ election is set for April 23 and the most likely outcome is that one new member will be seated.

There is only one contested race this year and there is no incumbent running for the spot. Larry DeVilbiss, who until this point had served both as an MEA director representing the Matanuska District of Palmer and points east and as Mat-Su Borough mayor, has decided not to seek re-election to the board. Here are the two people who have:

Jamey Duhamel

Duhamel describes herself as a former social worker and active community member.

“What I do have is a pretty extensive experience serving on boards of directors so I really, really understand the critical type of mission, direction-setting work,” Duhamel said. “I am excited to apply all of my experience.”

As for why she wants to run, she said she supports the trajectory the current directors are charting for the cooperative.

“I think it’s going in the right direction, I think it’s exactly the right time to put people on the board who share the mission and the direction that the board is going in,” Duhamel said.

And that’s going to be all the more crucial as MEA moves forward with building its own natural gas-fired power plant at Eklutna.

She said she wants to represent working families “who have lots of children and are working full-time and really know what it means to try to make ends meet.”

In her application to run for the seat, she answered the question of whether she was involved with a group attempting to influence the election that she is on contract with the Castle Mountain coalition, one of the main groups opposing coal development in the Valley.

“Since coal investment and generation is not on MEA’s agenda, I see no conflict of interest with this connection,” she wrote.

Marvin Yoder

When DeVilbiss announced he would not seek re-election to the board, he said that it was due, in part, to Yoder stepping up to run.

“He and I had a chat and I think that he felt like I was the person who could try to fill part of his shoes,” Yoder said.

He said he would bring to the board his experience running an electrical utility as city manager of Galena.

“I’ve been through all of that before,” he said.

He said MEA is in the middle of making some very substantial decisions and he wants to be a voice helping ensure those decisions are made in the best interest of the utility’s customers. But it won’t be easy.

“We found ourselves now in a position where they’re going to build a big gas plant and the prices of gas is getting tight, the supplies of gas is getting tight,” he said.

Uncontested seats

Two incumbents for the board failed to draw challengers. They are David Glines, who represents the Eagle River portion of MEA’s coverage area, and Bob Doyle, who represents the Susitna District, as the co-op likes to refer to the areas from Wasilla north.

Doyle, who was schools superintendent in the borough from 2003 to 2007, says in his statement of why he wants to run attached to his application that he wants to finish what MEA has started with building that Eklutna plant. He said he wants to focus on keeping rates low and ensuring they are “fair to both residential and commercial accounts.”

Glines, currently a civilian working for the U.S. Air Force who retired from the Alaska Army National Guard as a brigadier general, put at the top of his list of important things the utility’s need to bring the power plant project in “on time, on budget and with guaranteed short-to-medium and long-term gas supply contracts.”

Also on that list? “Continuance of activities that enable MEA to be a responsible presence in the communities we serve,” he wrote.

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

• Toastmasters and the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman will sponsor a Meet the MEA Board Candidates event from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., April 11 at Mat-Su Senior Services in Palmer.

• To vote in the MEA election, check your mail for an official ballot, vote in person at the annual meeting on April 23 or, the utility promises, for the first time this year, members will be able to vote online. To vote electronically, members will need their voter number, which will be mailed to members shortly with their annual election packet and a voting password, which was mailed to members separately last week. Members can vote online at https://eballot4.votenet.com/mea.