SOUTH HADLEY — When voters cast their ballots in South Hadley’s annual town election on April 12, there will be only one contested race on the ballot.
Three candidates will be competing for two three-year terms on the Municipal Light Board of the South Hadley Electric Light Department, or SHELD: Kurt Schenker, Ronald Coutu and Paul Dobosh. The candidates are profiled in the order they appear on the ballot.
The elections will be held at South Hadley High School, located at 153 Newton St, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
A lifelong South Hadley resident, Kurt Schenker has been on the Municipal Light Board since he was first elected in 2016. A 35-year employee of Fire District 1 who worked as EMS coordinator and ambulance director, Schenker said keeping electricity rates down is his biggest priority.
“I’m trying to do whatever we can to keep the eclectic rates down,” he said.
Schenker, 59, has retired from the Fire Department, but is still working construction, which he did on the side for many years. He said his past work experience gives him an intimate knowledge of South Hadley’s infrastructure, and that his years of experience on the Municipal Light Board set him apart from the other candidates.
“I am willing to listen to everybody’s ideas,” Schenker said. “I firmly believe everybody should have their chance to speak at least once.”
Schenker said when he was first elected he really wanted to push for the town to begin installing fiber optic broadband internet, which it has done. That is bringing in more new customers than expected and paying for itself, he said.
“I really want to see the fiber through,” he said. “As far as the power system, we’re overly redundant in our town — we have a very reliable system.”
There has been controversy recently over the construction of a “peaker” plant in Peabody — a 55-megawatt gas-burning facility from which SHELD has contracted for approximately 10% of the energy it will produce at times of peak energy consumption during the year. Some have opposed that contract because it is tied to the construction of a new fossil fuel plant.
Schenker said that at the time it was thought to be a good idea and the board voted for it. He said that unless another utility buys SHELD’s shares in the plant, the town isn’t getting out of the project.
“If it runs the way they say it’s to run … and it keeps the cost of power down on the peaking side, it works for us,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who think it’s going to kill the world, but I think they’ve gone overboard on some things.”
A town resident for close to four decades, Ron Coutu spent 35 years developing electric markets for ISO New England, the region’s wholesale power grid operator. He hopes to continue using that experience on the Municipal Light Board.
“My career was completely in an industry that is very relatable to what happens with SHELD every day,” he said.
Coutu, 60, retired from ISO New England in 2017 and has since done part-time consulting, including for smaller wind-energy projects and the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Co. The Select Board appointed him to a vacancy on the Municipal Light Board late last year, and he hopes to be elected this month.
Coutu said he will continue to be a strong advocate for SHELD’s fiber optic internet service. He said he also supports efforts the utility has made setting up advanced meters, and he vowed to work to educate people about ongoing issues SHELD is dealing with.
One of those issues is the construction of the “peaker” plant in Peabody. Coutu said that it is not a simple issue, given the complexities of electric markets where energy is produced and consumed at close to the same time. He said it is important to build more wind energy, for example, but that it’s not possible at the present moment to rely 100% on solar and wind.
“My goal is to keep educating people,” he said. “I may not shift their perspective, but I want them to at least understand the issue around why these plants are still being built.”
A retired professor of chemistry and computer science at Mount Holyoke College, Paul Dobosh has lived in town for five decades and is a Town Meeting member. He said he hopes his expertise can help the board tackle the big issues.
“I think sooner or later the light board is going to have to get involved in buying battery systems,” he said as one example. “I think I’d like to push them to get involved with it sooner.”
Dobosh, 78, said he would like to dig into the issue of peak energy demand and understand how it will be impacted by future trends like more electric vehicles and heat pumps in town. He also said he’s interested in ensuring SHELD is publicizing good work they are doing.
“I think they’re a good organization,” he said of SHELD, noting that he respects the two people he is running against as well. “I think I just bring a somewhat different perspective because of my chemistry background and even computer science background.”
Dobosh said that he thinks SHELD has done a “fabulous job” with building out its fiber optic internet network and customer base.
As for the Peabody peaker plant project, Dobosh said that “we’re sort of locked into it” at the moment. He said residents can still work to ensure that no other fossil fuel projects are built, and to increase the town’s ability to draw from clean sources. He noted that South Hadley pulls electricity from two nuclear facilities, saying that although nuclear energy has its own problems, those big problems are “not the ones that are going to bring about the end of the world,” unlike the climate crisis.
“We should concentrate on everything we can do to alleviate the climate change issues,” he said. “Nuclear gives us a sort of life boat to get to the future.”
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.