MEA Candidate Questions—Darren Kessler

Voting in the Matanuska Electric Association’s 2024 board election started on April 4 and runs through the Annual Meeting on April 30. There are three ways to vote: electronically, by mail, or at the Annual Meeting. Online voting can be done via member’s SmartHub account and ends at 5 p.m. on April 29. Mail-in ballots (which were sent to members in the Susitna West and East Districts on April 4) are due by 5 p.m. April 29. In-person voting will be at the MEA Annual Meeting on April 30 at the Glenn Massey Theater in Palmer (registration opens at 2 p.m., the meeting begins at 3 p.m.) For more information, see the MEA election page.

Here are the responses to AETP’s questionnaire from Darren Kessler, who is one of three candidates running to represent MEA’s Susitna West District. Kessler is a lifelong Alaskan who works as Transportation Manager at Odyssey Logistics. His full candidate profile can be found on the MEA Election page.

Darren Kessler, from his MEA Candidate profile

1. Why do you want to serve on the MEA Board?

I felt like I could bring a fresh perspective to the board with my background in logistics. I also very much care about our community in the Mat-Su valley and want to contribute where I feel I could make a positive impact.

2. What do you think are the biggest challenges facing MEA over the next 5-10 years? What can be done to prepare to meet them? 

The biggest impact is clearly the natural gas shortage in Cook inlet. The Co-op is going to have to get very strategic with how they plan to make the next moves in energy diversification and securing other options for natural gas.

3. Although MEA is a member-owned cooperative, levels of member engagement and involvement are low—less than 12 percent of members voted in the last election (which was for at-large seats) and very few members attend board meetings. What can the board do to encourage greater member engagement and involvement in helping to guide the cooperative’s policies? For example, would you support moving board meetings to a time when more members could attend? Is there anything you would do as an individual board member to facilitate member engagement?

I am a huge advocate on transparency and if the meetings needed to be held at another time to best suite our membership, I would be 100% in favor of this. I also think MEA has done a good job with communication to our membership but maybe some more information on why it’s important to be involved and why voting matters. Also, more public interaction with membership which could be as simple as more site visits to the plant.

4. One practice that contributes to member disengagement is the extensive use of executive sessions in board meetings. In 2023 MEA’s board spent over half of its regular board meetings in executive session (56 percent of total meeting time, up from 47 percent from 2022). Recognizing that the use of executive session is necessary at times, do you believe that cooperative boards have an obligation to their member-owners to maximize the openness and transparency of their decision making? Should MEA’s Board minimize its use of executive session? If so, what steps could be taken to achieve this goal?

Again, I am in support of transparency and unless it’s a Nondisclosed Agreement type discussion that can’t be talked about with our membership group at the time of the board meetings the board needs to be transparent with the community.

5. In recent years there have been attempts to foster greater collaboration among the Railbelt utilities. Do cooperative boards have a role in facilitating greater cooperation, engaging directly with other boards, or should they defer to staff around collaborative efforts?

I think it’s great to have an open dialogue with other utilities boards but when it comes to the day-to-day business it should be left to the staff to have those types of communications. With the impeding issues of natural gas coming to our door we all need to be working together to help weather the storm.

6. The increased collaboration among Railbelt cooperatives has included participation in several Railbelt-wide organizations. These have operated with varying levels of transparency. Some, like the Railbelt Reliability Council (the Electric Reliability Organization, or ERO, whose creation was mandated by the Legislature) have made an effort to be as transparent as possible. Others,such as the Utility Working Group looking at future gas supplies or the Bradley Project Management Committee (in its discussions of transmission planning and applications for federal grants), have conducted their work largely behind closed doors without consultation of other stakeholders, announcing their decisions to the public only after they have been made.

Allowing that some aspects of these discussions need to be confidential, should boards be working to help make as much information as possible about them public before the final decisions are made? Or should information about these deliberations remain restricted?

Without knowing all the working details sometimes things must remain behind closed doors due to the sensitivity of such information. I would hope the closed-door sessions are always in best interest of their members but when time to speak about the decisions that had been made I’d purpose a very healthy dialog with the membership on why those decisions were made to bring understanding to the members.

7. Predictions are that Cook Inlet gas production will no longer be fully able to meet the needs of the Railbelt utilities by 2027. Given that MEA currently relies on Cook Inlet natural gas for about 80 percent of its power generation, what should it be doing to plan for its generation needs over the next 10 years? Is this an area where the cooperatives should be collaborating on solutions? Should the state be playing a role?

I think both, first the state needs to step up and do more as they created this mess we are in. The co-op will need to do everything in its power to diversify our power generation while also figuring out what the best and most economic sense will be when finding new natural resources gas sources.

8. Beyond the issues already discussed in this questionnaire, are there any particular policies or issues you think the board needs to address? 

I think the Bylaws for the co-op could be looked at and possibly changed. I’m not a fan of board members retaining seats on other boards that pertain to energy. If we want to have a level playing field with different people and new ideas the “good ole boys” club isn’t the answer. I propose a limit to an allowance of being allowed on 2 maximum boards that pertain to energy or boards that may be conflicting with the co-op. I also think there should be a spending cap on your political campaign as this is a non-paid board seat position.