Jon Shelby Stepping Into Power Position At Electric Coop Comes Naturally For Jon Shelby

Jon Shelby would like to move into the big office with the tall leather chair reserved for the general manager of Northern Lights Inc.

But he’s just been too busy.

“I’ll get around to it, maybe on a Sunday afternoon,” said Shelby, who’s occupied his old desk since being promoted to the top spot at the electric cooperative in mid-March. “I’ve just got a few projects I need to get to.”

Shelby, previously the assistant manager, has his hands full serving the 12,000 power customers Northern Lights supplies with more than 2,000 miles of wire.

Like many Northwest utilities, Northern Lights will soon make tough choices about where its power comes from. For years, it depended on the Bonneville Power Administration.

Facing salmon and other wildlife mitigation costs, BPA is under pressure to raise rates to its customers.

As the biggest chunk of Shelby’s budget, power prices mean everything to Northern Lights. That’s why the coop will buy a hydroelectric power facility near Troy, Mont.

That facility, expected to be on line next spring, will produce about 10 percent of Northern Light’s needs, he said.

“We think it will be a real benefit to our members,” he said. “It will go a long way to helping us keep our rates stable.”

The battle of rates put Northern Lights up against Washington Water Power last year. Both utilities fought over who would best serve the Sandpoint customers of departing Pacific Power & Light.

In the dispute before the Idaho Public Utilities Board, WWP won rights to the new territory. The Spokane-based company promised lower long-term rates than Northern Lights, which had lower rates initially but couldn’t guarantee its BPA-dependent rates wouldn’t go up later.

With that dispute behind him, Shelby will concentrate on serving the members. The company’s 60 employees give it a highly efficient worker/customer ratio, and he prides his staff’s long-time dedication to the cooperative.

“We have a great group of employees, many of whom have been here a long time,” he said. “We also still have many customers who were the founders of the cooperative.”

Shelby eschews a tie for a more familiar look than some general managers. He considers his management style “active” and tries to equip his staff with the tools to solve problems.

“I’m not much into long-standing committees,” he said. “I prefer working groups and project groups.”

Shelby’s lack of an engineering background doesn’t hold him back, he said. “I have some great people in our technical side.”

A Northern Lights employee since 1980, Shelby worked in accounting before moving up to assistant manager in 1992. He felt he wasn’t ready to take the big chair after his first stint as acting general manager in 1993.

But after Jim Webb left the top spot last year, Shelby felt the time was right. He competed against dozens of other applicants before the board of directors approved him last month.

It’s a 60-hour-a-week job that requires quite a bit of regional travel, Shelby said. “Nobody here works for greater gain because we’re a non-profit,” he said. “We’re just working for the members.”

Those members sometimes average only two per square mile in Northern Lights territory. The company’s lines run to the Canadian border, south to Athol, Idaho, and into Western Montana near Thompson Falls.

“That presents some different challenges when we try to run lines out to people,” he said.

Kootenai Electric Cooperative General Manager Bob Crump has been working with Shelby on an efficiency study to find new ways the two companies could share resources, and hence save money.

“Jon’s been real helpful in finding some ways where we can save together,” Crump said from Coeur d’Alene. “I think the board up there’s made a good choice for Northern Lights.”

Shelby, 43 on Thursday, clearly liked his choice to move here after getting his degrees in business administration from Montana State University.

With his wife, Janet, and four children, Shelby enjoys the outdoors and especially likes working on projects in his shop.

“I don’t get in there as often as I’d like with this job,” he said.