Homer Electric Association’s three incumbent Board of Directors candidates will keep their seats for another three years. Voting in the cooperative’s annual election closed at Thursday evening’s annual membership meeting, where the winners were announced.
Even as the meeting got underway, Board President – and candidate – Dan Furlong was still encouraging attendees to cast their ballot. This year, cooperative members could vote online, by mail and in person.
“It is the last call for the vote,” he said from the stage. “You can still go out and vote if you have not voted, please do so at this time. You have a few minutes.”
Furlong carried an almost 200-vote lead over challenger Mitch Michaud for the board’s District 2 seat. That district covers Soldotna, Sterling and Kasilof. Nikiski’s Wayne Ogle will keep his District 1 seat after narrowly beating out Patrick Parker, of Soldotna. Just 17 votes separated the two candidates, who ran for the seat that covers Kenai, Nikiski and parts of Soldotna.
And on the southern peninsula, Erin McKittrick handily won reelection to the district that covers Kasilof south to Kachemak Bay. She faced two challengers in Matthew Bullard and Rick Eckert, both of Homer. Their combined vote total was roughly half the amount of votes McKittrick received.
Keriann Baker is the cooperative’s chief strategy officer. She announced the election results at Thursday’s meeting and says the voting process is baked into HEA’s guiding principles.
“The HEA cooperative is a democratic organization that is controlled by all of you here in this room – the members that we serve,” she said.
Almost 26,000 HEA customers were eligible to vote in the board election. Less than 4,000 actually did. That means less than one in five people voted this year which puts the voter participation rate at 14.6%.
Full election results, and a recording of HEA’s membership meeting, can be found on the cooperative’s website.
