SOUTH HADLEY — The ballot is set for Tuesday’s town election and it includes contests for two newly created seats on the commission governing the South Hadley Electric Light Department. A third seat, currently held by Kurt Schenker, is being contested and a fourth seat will go to Select Board member John Hine, who is running unopposed for a one-year term. Town Meeting last fall expanded the SHELD commission from three members to five.
John Hine
Hine, of 39 Chestnut Hill Road, will finish out the last year of the term Christine Archembault won two years ago. She served until she was forced out when her residency was challenged last summer. Daniel Whitford, a retired naval officer, who was appointed to replace her until the new vote, is not running.
Hine, who is in his fourth term on the Select Board and has served on the Planning Board and the School Committee, said he is looking forward to helping the board function smoothly during a time of transition. “All the members of the board have been on for less than a year,” said Hine. “I felt I could add some value as someone who has been in town government for a long time.”
He will join Anne Awad, who won a three-year term last year by defeating the incumbent Jeffrey Labreque.
Hine also hopes to bring some fresh perspectives to controversial issues facing the board.
One of those is the question of where to build a new headquarters. “I’d like to look at this globally,” he said, noting that the Town Hall is “becoming more expensive to maintain,” and that the Council on Aging needs a new facility.
“Rather than each going out and building its own facility, why not approach this where we can meet all the needs, perhaps with a municipal complex,” said Hine. “I think that should be the first option we look at. It may not be possible, but I think it’s worth the time and the effort to see if that is something that could work.”
Hine said it might be worth looking at whether the administrative offices need to be right next to the equipmen
Another hot button issue commissioners are facing is how to deal with a lawsuit alleging that previous boards failed to rein in long-time general manager Wayne Doerpholz, thereby allowing a pattern of bullying, workplace intimidation and retaliation for speaking up to fester in the organization. The utility has been without a manager since the commissioners put Doerpholz on paid administrative leave last fall after he was named in the same lawsuit brought by electrician Robert Blasko.
Awad, as chair of the commission, has been performing managerial duties. Doerpholz’s contract runs through the end of May and the board recently voted not to renew it. So choosing a new general manager will be one of the new board’s major tasks in the year to come.
Hine said he believes new leadership for the organization is warranted. “The industry is changing and looking at the long term, the light department is going to have to change the way it does business,” he said.
A project that has been studied for a few years is bringing fiber optic cable to businesses and residents in town. Hine has been active in those efforts, serving as chair of an advisory committee that recently reported to the board with a recommendation in favor of that idea. “It could be another line of business for the electric light department,” he said.
SHELD has been in discussions for several years with Axia NetMedia, a Canadian company with a proposal to wire South Hadley. Hine said the revenue SHELD could generate from helping build and maintain a fiber optic infrastructure in the town could offset decreasing income from generating electricity in years to come as people conserve more and, in some cases, go off grid by generating their own solar electricity.
Kurt Schenker
Kurt Schenker, of 59 Pine Street, is finishing out a term originally won three years ago by long-time SHELD board member Cheryl Nickl. She resigned abruptly in December 2014 and was replaced by an appointee who Schenker defeated last year. Schenker is now running for re-election in a four-way race for two three-year seats. The other seat is brand new, having been created by the expansion of the board.
Challenging Schenker, are Vernon Blodgett, Jr. of 11 Sycamore Knolls, Dale Johnston, of 38 Chapel Hill Drive, and Diane Supczak-Mulvaney, of 146 Lyman Street.
Schenker, a firefighter and captain in Fire District 2, said he is running again because he feels a responsibility to the voters who put him on the commission last year. “I don’t want to run out on what’s going on there, whether I agree or disagree with what people want,” he said.
Schenker has been consistently in favor of moving ahead with a plan to build a new $10 million headquarters on residentially zoned property the utility owns on Old Lyman Road. “I’d like to see it built there unless somebody comes up with a truly viable option, which I haven’t seen yet,” he said.
On the litigation SHELD is facing, Schenker said, “it’s in the lawyers’ hands now,” adding that he would like to see the matter resolved as quickly as possible “so we can get back to normal life.”
Schenker, as a sitting board member, is the only one of all the candidates who has been privy to executive session strategy meetings about how the utility should handle the lawsuit. But, he said, the lawyers have advised him and others not to talk publicly about those discussions. “I’m tied on that point, even though there are things I’d like to say,” said Schenker.
Whether the new board decides to negotiate a new contract with Doerpholz, or begin the process of hiring a new manager, Schenker voted against terminating Doerpholz, but hopes to see the position filled soon. “I just want a manager in there because it will take the pressure off of everybody,” he said.
Schenker, as are all the candidates for seats on the expanded board, is optimistic about the benefits of SHELD helping to bring fiber optic telecommunications to residents.
Dale Johnston
Dale Johnston’s main reason for seeking a seat on the commission is his long-standing interest in bringing fiber optics to South Hadley.
The executive director of the South Hadley Chamber of Commerce, a part-time position, Johnston said he ran to be on the commission once before, six years ago, when he lost to then incumbent Rita Lawler. He was already interested in bringing fiber optics to local businesses then, and now he wants to further work begun by Doerpholz to make it a reality.
Johnston said he hasn’t made up his mind on where he thinks SHELD should have its headquarters. “I don’t pretend to know all the issues,” he said, though he said the utility bought the land on Old Lyman Road many years ago for a new headquarters and has always been transparent about its intention to move there. “The problem is in the interim from when they purchased it to today a lot of homes have gone up around that property,” he said. “I don’t think the town should have allowed that to take place.”
Johnston said his primary concern in hiring a new general manager is that SHELD find someone with the knowledge and commitment to bring fiber optics to the town. He also believes in encouraging alternative energy generation in town but that SHELD needs to be careful about what kinds of incentives it gives homeowners to install solar panels. “We have a fiduciary duty when it comes to the finance aspect of it (because) if there is a big increase in solar usage there is literally a drop in demand for SHELD electricity,” he said.
Vernon Blodgett
Another candidate for one of the three-year seats on the SHELD commission is Vernon Blodgett who said he became interested in the question of where to locate a new headquarters for the utility, which was already being hotly disputed when he moved to town less than two years ago.
At the time, Blodgett, a retired banking executive, said he was concerned about the lack of open discussion. He has studied the issue, he said, and believes the commissioners should try to find a location in the Falls section of town rather than build a new headquarters on Old Lyman Road where neighbors don’t want it.
“It seems counterintuitive to me that one neighborhood stands to benefit from an investment and an endorsement by a public utility developing or redeveloping an economic base and another neighborhood is saying ‘please don’t locate in our neighborhood,’” said Blodgett. “Why should two neighborhoods be disregarded?”
Blodgett said he believes SHELD should investigate where and how to promote alternative energy generation where it makes sense. “The board should take a look at the short, intermediate and long-term development of alternative sources of power along with the costs of delivering services.”
Diane Supczak-Mulvaney
The fourth candidate for one of two three-year seats on the ballot is Diane Supczak-Mulvaney.
A lifelong resident of the town, she said her service on many committees over the years, most recently the building committee for the new Plains Elementary School, and her business experience, would make her “a nice addition to the board.”
Supczak-Mulvaney is unsure about where a new headquarters should be located, saying she wants to know more about deliberations that have taken place so far. “I want to do the appropriate studies and involve the public,” she said.
She thinks that deliberations on a building project should include an assessment of other needs in the town. Specifically, she said, the Council on Aging needs new facilities and the Town Hall is in disrepair. “Maybe we capitalize on some economies of scale and bring those three groups together to have a discussion and do the feasibility study in that manner,” she said. “I am suggesting that we look at it as a town.”
Supczak-Mulvaney would be cautious about creating a net metering policy aimed at promoting residential solar installations and other new energy sources. “We need to look at alternative energy sources, but we have to be careful moving forward because we don’t want to have our revenue stream depleted,” she said. “We want to move forward and still capture all of our fixed costs.”
Having SHELD participate in bringing fiber optics to the town could play a role in offsetting the strains of residential energy production. “It could be an opportunity for us to balance out net metering policies, (but) I don’t have all the details in front of me to make the final conclusion,” she said.
She is similarly unsure of what the board’s stance should be relating to the lawsuit. “I can’t really take a stand until I have the information presented in front of me,” she said.
Jeffrey Millard
As part of the expansion of the board of commissioners from three to five members, Town Meeting created a two-year seat that will become a three-year seat during future elections.
Jeffrey Millard of 12 Alvord Street is one of the candidates seeking that seat. He said he is running out of a sense of civic duty to participate in local affairs and because, having served on municipal boards elsewhere dealing with contentious issues he thinks he can be a calming influence. “There is turmoil there and there is certainly public consternation about what has been going on,” said Millard. “I think the organization needs a little more transparency and some thought and ideas from people who are seeing things from a fresh perspective.”
Millard said he has no opinion on the lawsuit facing SHELD. “I don’t think anybody who is not on the board currently has enough information to come up with a clear idea of what the real issue is there,” he said.
Millard said as a commissioner he would look at revising SHELD’s net metering policy, which governs how much it pays for electricity generated by homeowners with solar panels. “I think the commissioners need to make a decision about that relative to the long term interests of the rate payers in general,” he said. He wants to look at what kinds of policies other municipal light districts have put in place. “There are alternative ways to bill ratepayers so that the expenses of the organization could be covered by a portion of that payment,” said Millard. “I think there is a solution to the problem so that the organization as a whole would not be in jeopardy, as well as benefit the ratepayers on a long term basis.”
Gregory Dubreuil
The other candidate for the single two-year seat on the ballot is Gregory Dubreuil, of 5 Eagle Drive.
He first became interested in SHELD’s governance because he opposes building a new headquarters in a residentially-zoned area on Old Lyman Road, near where he lives.
“The more I read and found out about the electric light department, I think some things need to change,” said Dubreuil. “There really needs to be some transparency and accountability to the rate holders.”
A certified public accountant and controller of a large property management company who has also taught at Holyoke Community College for 17 years and helped create a master’s degree program in accounting at Bay Path University, Dubreuil said he is especially interested in seeing how bringing fiber optics to South Hadley residents can be integrated with expanding the amount of solar electricity generated in the town.
“I know that in the past the department has actually discouraged people from putting alternative energy into their homes because they lose revenue,” he said. He wants to look at the department’s finances as a whole to see how they can be structured to best meet the needs of the future.
“There seems to be a voluminous fixed cost structure in place down there that nobody really seems to have a grasp on and I think that with my financial background I might be of benefit to rate payers,” he said.
He firmly believes that SHELD should do all it can to find appropriate accommodations in the Falls part of town for its headquarters. “It was at one time a bustling commercial and residential area and from an economic and development perspective, the last thing we need to be talking about is pulling another business out of the Falls,” said Dubreuil.
He also said it would be a financial mistake for SHELD “to build a $10 million structure” given the size of the community. “It would put another layer of fixed costs onto a department where we can’t even get a handle on what our fixed costs are now,” he said. “I don’t think its fair to the rate payers who are already paying more for electricity than the other surrounding towns with municipally owned electric companies like Chicopee, Westfield and Holyoke.”
South Hadley, he said, “should focus on bringing fiber optics to our residents instead of blowing 10 million bucks on a new building.”
Dubreuil said he has been following the lawsuit alleging a pattern of bullying and mismanagement at SHELD. “We know there is usually a lot more than we see from the surface, but it is certainly disturbing that those accusations are there,” he said. “It’s not a comforting feeling on top of everything else we know about the department.”
He is withholding judgment until the process works itself out. “Hopefully, justice will be served,” he said.
Dubreuil welcomes the search for a new manager. “Based on the history and everything else that’s gone on, it may be time for a change,” he said. “Sometimes you need a fresh set of eyes and a fresh perspective.”
Eric Goldscheider can be reached at eric.goldscheider@gmail.com