Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- Matanuska Electric Association members voted in a power change at the electric utility's annual meeting Saturday.

Peter Burchell, a retired teacher and founder of Burchell High School in Wasilla, won re-election to the utility board.

Palmer businesswoman Janet Kincaid, who joined forces with Burchell to advocate more community participation in the utility, won the second of two open board seats. Burchell and Kincaid serve three-year terms.

There are seven seats on the MEA board. Saturday's results shift the balance of power to a 4-3 anti-management majority.

Voters chose from five candidates. According to preliminary results, Burchell led the count with 4,344 votes; Kincaid received 3,813.

Utility board president Lee Jordan lost his seat, winning just 2,705 votes. Former Houston City Mayor and Councilman Tom Baird trailed with 2,389 votes and frequent candidate Tom Staudenmaier of Eagle River rounded out the pack with 1,088 votes.

The vote tally was called preliminary Saturday. The MEA board of directors will meet Monday to certify the election.

More than 700 people braved bitter Matanuska winds to attend the annual meeting. Inside, members directed their bitterness toward MEA managers. Jordan, who presided over the meeting, was interrupted or shouted down several times during the proceedings. Jordan said he believed the heckling and the election results were linked.

"I think it was that emotion that was stirred up and helped carry the change advocates into power," Jordan said.

In speeches by the candidates before the voting, Jordan stuck to the message that MEA is on the right track. He touted plans by managers to build a local power plant in six years and said change isn't needed. After the election results were announced, he said he fears the new majority will promote radical changes that could stop progress.

Jordan said he believes he and the utility both failed to communicate with co-op members.

"I should have been able to help improve that image, and I didn't," Jordan said.

Kincaid said she doesn't envision radical changes, aside from providing a more open and welcome atmosphere. But she believes the election results will cause a ripple in the broader pond of electric utilities along the Railbelt from Homer to Fairbanks.

At the moment, MEA is not part of a plan by Chugach Electric and others to build a new 260-watt natural gas power plant in Anchorage, or discussions between Chugach and two other Railbelt utilities about sharing power.

"I think the other electrical cooperatives will look at this election and say 'Well, the winds have changed in the Valley,' " Kincaid said.

Burchell will continue to serve on the board. Kincaid will be seated in July, according to MEA bylaws. A bylaw amendment that would have seated Kincaid this month instead of four months from now failed to get enough votes to pass. MEA members voted the amendment down with 4,640 votes opposed to changing the bylaw and 2,519 in favor.

Mary Psenak, a longtime MEA member who has served on the utility bylaw committee for several years, said she was glad that members rejected the change. Her committee recommended a no vote because the amendment clashed with other utility bylaws and would have required other changes. But Psenak said she isn't sticking around to see what changes the new majority planned.

"I won't work for this bunch," Psenak said.

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at www.adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 352-6709.

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