MEA to round up bills next month

PALMER — Come Aug. 1, if you haven’t opted out, Matanuska Electric Association will start rounding up your bill to the nearest dollar.

The extra money will go into a pool that MEA’s charitable board will dole out in grants to recipients who have applied through its new Round Up program.

“The charitable foundation board will meet every quarter and go over the applications that we received and grant those,” said MEA spokeswoman Cheryll Heinze, one of the main organizers of the Round Up effort.

The program has been in place for some time, but has been an opt-in kind of program. The amount of money raised was enough to make a handful of small grants at this year’s annual meeting, but not enough to really make a difference.

Heinze said back in December of last year that to really get the program rolling the utility would have to change the program to an opt-out model.

Having bills rounded up has to be the default for customers because it’s not the kind of thing people bother to sign up for, Heinze said.

It’s a model a number of electric companies around the country have already deployed to great effect, and MEA won’t be the only one in the state doing it. Golden Valley Electric Association in Fairbanks is rolling its program out this year as well.

MEA can’t just make changes like this on its own. Back in December, Heinze said that the state Legislature would need to approve the change. So MEA and Golden Valley convinced a legislator to introduce a bill doing just that, but the bill stalled and didn’t make it through the Legislature before this year’s session ended.

But since then, MEA and Golden Valley have figured out that it’s just as good to go through the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, which oversees utilities in the state.

“It doesn’t affect our tariff or anything like that, it’s just really to let them know what we’re doing and then they sign off on it like they did with Golden Valley and then we have their blessing,” Heinze said.

The RCA has already signed off on MEA’s program.

So now that MEA is getting into the charity game for real, Heinze said it’s going to need some advice on how to proceed.

“We’re getting Dennis McMillian from the Foraker Group to come and talk to us about how we work with that, to make sure we leverage our money,” Heinze said.

McMillian is president of that company, which describes itself on its website as being in the business of training and supporting nonprofits in Alaska. Heinze said it’s important to leverage the money so that MEA can stretch it as far as possible.

If the program doesn’t sound like something you want to participate in, Heinze said there will be instructions at the bottom of your bill, along with a number to call, to opt out.

“We’ve made it obvious that if they want to opt out that’s there,” Heinze said. “They can opt out even if three years from now they change their minds. We will refund their money up to three years.”

And, if you think you know of someone who could use a little help, applications for Round Up grants are available on MEA’s website at mea.coop under the Round Up link.

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