MEA manager asks for answers…

A Spectrum, by Wayne Carmony

Matanuska Electric Association is a member-owned cooperative. The MEA annual meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m., Saturday, April 6, at Raven Hall on the Alaska State Fair grounds. Your vote and participation at our annual meeting are important to the co-op.

As the general manager of MEA, I also find your opinions and suggestions to be extremely valuable. For several years now, your recommendations have been particularly helpful as I consider management issues and offer advice to your board of directors.

MEA is a member-owned cooperative. Part of our responsibility to you is to keep your rates low and to return the margins contributed by you in prior years in the form of capital credits checks. MEA has been paying out capital credits every year for the last 20 years.

Between June 1996 and April 2002 alone, this amounts to $11.6 million.

To provide perspective, Chugach Electric, which is nearly twice our size, has returned less than $15 million to its retail customers during the same period.

With respect to rates, MEA has delivered reductions 12 times over the same six-year period. Altogether, these 12 rate decreases have already saved you in excess of $12 million. These reductions -- small individually, but very significant collectively -- will save MEA members an additional $4 million in 2002 alone. For a typical MEA residential customer, this is approximately equal to a month of free electricity each and every year as we move forward in time.

Again, by comparison, Chugach Electric has not reduced its base retail rates a single time during this period. As a matter of fact, they have a rate increase pending.

MEA has attempted to strike an appropriate balance between looking out for the interests of past members by repaying capital credits owed them, and the interest of current members, by reducing electric rates.

In fact, our current business practices, with respect to capital credits repayments and rate reductions, are a major element of what we call our Equity Management Plan.

This Equity Management Plan can be adjusted, subject to review by the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, if we choose to put more emphasis on capital credits repayments at the expense of rate reductions, or vice versa.

This year, my management advisory vote question for you is as follows.

Should MEA:

1. Place greater emphasis on rate reductions?

2. Place greater emphasis on capital credit repayments?

3. Leave the balance as it is?

All MEA members should have received a ballot package in the mail. You can also pick up a replacement ballot at the Palmer office of MEA.

There is an advisory vote on the ballot responding to this important question. I encourage you to participate and cast your vote. Please take a few seconds to check the option on the ballot that you believe best serves the interest of the members.

Your response will help guide our future actions in this matter. We at MEA appreciate our members' opinions and participation.

Wayne Carmony