New MEA GM looking forward to new gig

In April, Matanuska Electric Association (MEA) will celebrate 75 years of keeping the lights on for our members - that’s more than a decade before Alaska became a state. We are the oldest existing and second largest electric cooperative in Alaska, serving more than 51, 000 members and their families. Since our first 248 founding members started this cooperative back in 1941, MEA has remained committed to safe, reliable, and affordable electricity through cooperation and a strong member focus.

As the new General Manager of MEA, the history and the importance of the service we provide is not lost on me. To be unanimously approved by the MEA board of directors is humbling and to serve as the General Manager of MEA is an honor. However, you don’t just replace steel-toed boots like Joe Griffith’s overnight and my goal is to build on the many successes that started under his watch.

Guiding a group of 180 dedicated employees who come to work everyday with an eye on safety and a goal of making sure this community’s pulse of electricity keeps moving gives me a great sense of pride and responsibility. Providing an essential service for family, friends and neighbors at a low price is a necessity – it is something the MEA team thinks about every day.

One of Joe’s legacies is the Eklutna Generation Station (EGS) Power Plant. It is a unique facility that allows us to produce power more efficiently for our members and also helps strengthen the larger Railbelt system and MEA’s place in it. Already, we have been able to reduce our members’ rates thanks to a more efficient power plant that can provide small increments of power more economically for both our members and other utilities. EGS was built for today, with a vision for the next fifty years.

Another focus for MEA is being a part of the communities we serve. Our staff members are youth sports coaches, non-profit and Chamber of Commerce board members as wells as school volunteers. We provide scholarships for students in our service area to further their education and with the help of our members and charitable foundation, contribute more than $150,000 annually to deserving, valuable local non-profits that help make our communities more livable.

I appreciate the cooperative principles MEA is founded on. That includes a commitment to being good stewards of our members’ resources. As someone who has spent most of my professional career in the private sector, my primary focus over the next few years will be controlling costs. Of course, we will still need to make smart, pragmatic decisions to meet our increasing demand and maintain the first-rate system reliability you all have come to depend on. Those investments will be made under careful scrutiny of our members’ best interests.

In these uncertain economic times, my commitment to the membership is that MEA will be tightening our belts and finding creative ways to do more with less. Over the next few years you will see MEA actively increasing the efficiency of our workforce and communicating with our members using lower-cost, electronic means when possible.

You may have seen our recent ads that say, “We are all MEA,” and for me, that says it all. I am glad to be a part of the team that keeps the lights on in homes and business from Eagle River all the way north to Denali State Park and serves this group of diverse and vibrant communities and members. I look forward to working with you to continue making our cooperative strong and capable of meeting the new challenges and opportunities well into the future.

Tony Izzo is the General Manager of Matanuska Electric Association.