La Plata Electric Association will not hold elections for its board of directors this year.
LPEA canceled its annual elections Wednesday after incumbent candidates in all four districts ran unopposed for the first time in nearly two decades. In what has been a busy year, the co-op hopes the uncontested elections signal that members are satisfied with the work and direction of the utility.
“We were surprised,” said LPEA spokeswoman Hillary Knox. “We always expect a race. We have a very engaged membership and when there are people in the community that feel they want to get involved, they throw their hat in the ring. We usually have a pretty good show at the elections and people get pretty interested, but this year we did not.”
Holly Metzler, representing District 1 and Archuleta County; Dan Huntington, representing District 2 and south and west La Plata County; Joe Lewandowski, representing District 3 and Durango; and John Witchel, representing District 4 and north and east La Plata County, will retain their seats on the utility’s 12-person board.
The four candidates will assume their new three-year terms at LPEA’s 2022 annual meeting on May 12 at LPEA headquarters in Bodo Industrial Park. LPEA’s board candidates are not term-limited.
Members will not receive a ballot this year after the cancellation of the election.
One seat in each of LPEA’s four districts comes up for election each year, according to LPEA’s bylaws. However, if there is only one candidate in a district, the board can cancel the election for the district and elect the candidate to the board by resolution.
Ordinarily, one district is uncontested each election cycle, and the election for that district is canceled, Knox said. This year marks the first time in 18 years that elections in all four districts were canceled.
“Last year, we had races in all the districts,” she said. “It’s extremely rare to not have a race in any of the four districts.”
In a news release, LPEA CEO Jessica Matlock said she hopes the lack of challengers indicates co-op members are satisfied with the utility’s work over the last year.
“The past year has been an important one for the LPEA board, with key decisions made on broadband, future power supply, capital credit refunds to members and other issues directly impacting the communities we serve,” Matlock said. “We thank our community for supporting us in these efforts and hope this uncontested election means our members are confident in our current board and happy with our communications and decisions over this past year.”
In May 2021, LPEA’s board of directors approved a one-time capital credit return to members totaling $1.5 million after Tri-State Generation and Transmission’s reduction of wholesale electricity rates. Then in August, the board voted to adopt a new strategic goal that directed the utility to take a more active approach to improving broadband access for its members.
Most recently, LPEA’s board of directors voted unanimously in February to buy-down its contract with Tri-State and pursue contracts with Crossover Energy Partners to expand the utility’s renewable energy portfolio and reduce its carbon footprint.
“These are big decisions that really impacted the community. I would like to believe that (this year’s uncontested elections are) a testament to our community’s happiness with the direction and competence of the board and the direction of the cooperative as a whole,” Knox said.
Last week, LPEA released the findings of its 2021 member satisfaction survey. Of those surveyed, 45% answered that they were very satisfied with LPEA while 6% answered they were not satisfied.
A majority of those surveyed, 69%, strongly supported LPEA’s involvement in broadband, while the competency and effectiveness of the board scored a 3.79 out of 5.
“I can just say from the more historic perspective, we have seen that during times where there are big decisions on the table and when there are a lot of disagreements about the best way forward for the utility, those tend to be the years that we have the most competition,” Knox said.
While participation in the 2022 elections was down, Knox encouraged community members to continue to engage with the co-op and partake in future elections.
“I would remind (members) that we have elections every year,” she said. “We release candidate packets in December of each year to allow people enough time to pull their candidacy together, and we would encourage any member of our community to be involved in that election process moving forward.”
ahannon@durangoherald.com
