MARQUETTE — The Marquette Board of Light and Power said farewell to longtime board member Dave Carlson Tuesday evening and welcomed former board member Edward Angeli based on the results of the recent city-wide election.

The BLP Board of Directors also discussed decreasing the number of scheduled meetings from two to one per month and heard updates from staff.

At its annual organizational meeting, the board re-elected Tom Tourville as chairman and Dave Puskala as vice chairman in two unanimous votes.

Board member Bob Niemi was absent and excused.

Tourville and Angeli were the winners Nov. 7, with incumbent Carlson and former board member John Prince falling short in vote count.

Executive Director Tom Carpenter recounted Carlson’s years on the BLP board, which were 1981-1987, 1989-1995 and 2014-2017. Carlson was chairman of the Citizens to Save the BLP when there was a movement to discontinue the municipal-owned utility, and served on the Marquette City Commission from 1998-2004. He also served on the board of trustees for the Peter White Public Library from 2011-2014.

“I added it up for 24 years of total community service,” Carpenter said. “We congratulate him and are thankful he was on the board.”

Carlson said he enjoyed the work, adding there were all kinds of challenges over the years. He recalled running for the city commission when there was a “crazy idea” to sell the BLP.

“And that actually worked out quite well,” Carlson said. “The fact that we had a voice inside the city commission meant they understood the value of what the BLP was for our community.”

Angeli and Prince also thanked Carlson.

“I’ve watched you over the years Dave, and I’ve enjoyed your input, your wisdom, your ability to go where needed and that I hope I can do as well as you did in whatever time I have on the board,” Angeli said.

At public comment, Prince said the ratepayers are well served by Tourville and Angeli.

The board discussed reducing meeting times to once per month, due to the decrease in board decisions with the completion of the Marquette Energy Center.

Puskala said meetings can be added as needed, and the board doesn’t need to “micromanage bills payable” so much as focus on more significant long-term issues, such as the future of the Shiras Steam Plant, the need for a transmission loop, the coal ash pond remediation and meeting financial targets.

Puskala said a significant amount of work goes into every board meeting for staff, and, compared to the Marquette CIty Commission, less is changing at the BLP from month to month.

He said he supported the reduction “if, with fewer meetings, we stay focused on the bigger picture.”

Tourville said there’s “nothing worse than having a meeting for the sake of a meeting” and that it’s a “waste of everyone’s time to go through the motions.”

Tourville said his high level of trust and confidence with the staff makes him feel “there’s sometimes when the best thing you can do is get out of their way.”

Carpenter also gave general updates, noting that Shiras Unit 3 has come online for winter, and was used last weekend when the BLP was “islanded from the grid” for nearly two days, he said.

“So we had Shiras on supporting that. We would have possibly put the MEC on to do that, but there’s some further tuning we need to do for piloted mode, so we relied on Shiras for that outage,” Carpenter said. “Thankfully, no hiccups, no outages, nobody knew, which is a great thing, (though it was) kind of a nerve-wracking weekend for all the production people.”

Puskala asked if the outage pointed out any weak spots.

“It found all of them as far as the trees are concerned,” Carpenter said, later adding, “Thankfully the power plant stayed on. Our transmission system, the back bone, that all stayed up; we didn’t have any trees on that. I don’t think we had any outages at all.”

Carpenter said they’re looking into opportunities for new technology to bring people online automatically after the big storm a couple weeks ago, in which they received thousands of calls and recorded about 500 hours of overtime.

Tourville thanked the staff for their impressive work responding with “all hands on deck,” even though people “kind of take that for granted,” he said.

Mary Wardell can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 248. Her email address is mwardell@miningjournal.net.