‘Round Up’ could add up

WASILLA — At most, individual members will only be contributing 99 cents each month, but the Matanuska Electric Association sees big potential with its nascent Operation Round Up program.

Here’s how it works: every month when power bills are due, the utility will round up the bills of participating members to the nearest dollar. So a bill for $54.72 would become a bill for $55.

MEA Spokeswoman Cheryll Heinze, who is heading up the effort to create a working program, said all that spare change would be lumped together in one fund and a special board of MEA members would decide how to spend it. The board would take suggestions from members — Heinze used the example of a deaf child who needs a service dog, which cost thousands of dollars to train — and also look at the needs of local organizations like police and fire departments.

She said that the goal is to avoid duplicating the efforts of local charities like the Red Cross and the United Way.

“We want to fill the niche where they don’t kick in,” she said.

But there are a couple of things standing in the way.

One has to do with state law. Heinze said that based on the research she’s done on similar programs in other communities — and there are many — the consensus seems to be that if MEA tries to build the program through convincing its members to join then MEA is wasting its time.

Right now, that’s all Round Up is for MEA. She said there are 1,200 members signed up. And, for now at least, the state of Alaska says it can’t be done any other way. There is a law on the books saying that customers have to opt-in to a program, rather than having the program put in place with an option to opt-out.

Heinze said she’s met with the legislator who passed that bill, Anchorage Republican Kevin Meyer, and that he was more targeting credit card companies and banks that cause headaches for customers with fees for programs they never wanted to join.

Heinze said she’ll be working with Meyer for a change to the laws in the next legislative session.

She said the whole idea came from former MEA board of directors member David Dahms. He had been to a meeting in the Lower 48 and heard about a similar program, but the idea kind of died when he brought it back to Alaska. Heinze said that when she arrived at MEA she was looking through things in her office and came across the Round Up idea. In its current, fledgling form, Dahms is chairing the charitable board and the program has been in place for a couple of months.

But Heinze said she sees a lot of potential.

“Most people want to be in the program, they just don’t want to take the time,’ She said. “Or, times are hard.”

Heinze said that MEA recognizes that not everyone can afford even that small donation. So the program is structured so that anyone who doesn’t want to participate can opt out. And anyone who has been paying in for multiple months and decides to opt out can get back all they money paid in over those months.

Another obstacle is that the membership has to approve this kind of program, Heinze said. She said that Golden Valley Electric Association members in Fairbanks already vote overwhelmingly to approve a similar program.

She said she thinks it will probably pass here with a similar margin when it is voted on at the annual meeting this spring.

But if all goes according to plan, and if the bulk of MEA members don’t opt-out, that charitable board will wind up with a lot of money to distribute. Henize said that using an average monthly contribution of 61 cents, it pencils out to more than $402,000 per year.

“We are so excited to think what we could do to help,” she said. “With this kind of money we could really change the face of the Valley.”

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