COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – At the time the polar voltex was making its presence felt last Thursday, there were some icy feelings during a meeting of Michigan South Central Power Agency Board of Directors.
A divided board voted 3-2 to keep Paul Beckhusen as General Manager following a performance evaluation. Chris Mathis of Union City and David Mackie of Hillsdale felt Beckhusen should have been terminated. Voting in favor of keeping Beckhusen were Jeff Budd of Coldwater, Tom Tarkiewicz of Marshall and Kevin Cornish of Clinton.
Mathis said the board also voted 3-2 to give Beckhusen a raise and pay his attorney fees which totaled over $17,000.
The board voted in December to end a probe by the Lansing law firm of Fraser Trebilcock into a personnel issue involving Beckhusen. Mathis and Mackie also voted against a motion last Thursday that the investigation findings did not support the allegations made against Beckhusen.
Four of the five board members voted in favor of the investigation back in September. Beckhusen said at the time he was confident he would be fully exonerated.
The controversy surrounding Beckhusen goes back to the fall of 2016 when the Coldwater Board of Public Utilities bought the former Sauk Trail Trading Post building at 168 Division Street for $168,000 for the purpose of putting in office space for the Agency and the Coldwater BPU’s technology center.
Beckhusen was the CBPU Director at the time of the transaction. He became the MSCPA General Manager last year.
A short term agreement that allows the agency to lease the northern part of the building has been approved by the CBPU board, the MSCPA Board and the Coldwater City Council.
It calls for a rent payment of $6,500 a month to the B.P.U. that would be retroactive to January first of last year.
Some MSCPA board members previously raised concerns about the rising cost of the building and what they felt was a lack of transparency.
