All

right, we will call to order the uh September 28th meeting of Committee of the Whole.

I will first move to approve the minutes of the July 27th meeting without the necessity of a reading.

Second.

Motion's been made and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor?

Aye.

And that motion passes.

Okay, so tonight we have two items docketed, but they're both kind of about the same thing.

So I'm going to attempt to summarize that a little bit.

So I'll just begin by welcoming Mayor George, Council members, members of the administration, First Energy representatives, and our neighbors.

We

here in Lakewood are all entirely too familiar with First Energy's ongoing failures to provide the Lakewood community with reliable electricity.

Beyond experiencing these outages ourselves, we have heard from countless residents who have endured extreme hardship, losing food, throwing out critical medicine, and in some cases facing hospitalization and life-threatening conditions.

These perpetual electrical failures are entirely unacceptable.

They drain our city's resources as we work to support a community suffering from this wealthy corporation's blatant neglect.

Our response must be multifaceted.

It requires continued legal pressure through the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, PUCO or PUCO, as you'll hear mentioned probably a few times tonight, an expansion of local resilient and sustainable solutions, and advocacy for statewide policies to reduce strain on our outdated system.

The purpose of tonight's hearing is to review First Energy's plans to improve infrastructure reliability and communication, specifically regarding the corrective action plans required by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

Both the 2025 and 2026 investigations resulted in the PUCO issuing notices of probable noncompliance, a PNC, that concluded that most of the outages were caused by equipment or line failure, and both highlighted First Energy's failure to invest in infrastructure and maintain and implement a comprehension comprehensive communication plan.

To help us understand how we got to tonight's hearing, it is worth reviewing the timeline.

In June of 2025, after a series of severe outages, Mayor George and Cleveland City Council members representing the affected areas petitioned the PUCO to investigate.

In July, the mayor, Cleveland Councilmember Casey, State Rep Raider, and I met with the First Energy representatives here with us tonight or their predecessors, and were assured that the temporary transformers in place and various repairs would be sufficient to handle Lakewood's energy needs.

Later that month, the PUCO issued a letter of probable noncompliance that told a different story and ordered First Energy to replace two transformers at the substation in the Birdtown area, improve communications, address other equipment issues, and we'll review those tonight.

In August, First Energy held a town hall at Lakewood Civic Center in August of 2025, holding up smart meters and tree trimming as solutions to the problem and promising to do better while simultaneously filing with the PUCO to be allowed to reduce reliability standards.

In June of 2026, the City of Lakewood successfully intervened, and the PUCO denied First Energy's attempt to lower its reliability standards, heavily citing the massive volume of complaints filed by Lakewood residents.

So thank you for

that.

Summer 2026.

Interestingly, the day after the ruling denying their request to lower reliability standards, First Energy issued a press release announcing the delivery of two transformers

to

a Lakewood substation, leaving out of the press release that they were ordered to do so by the PUCO following Lakewood's complaint.

Less than a week after issuing that press release, equipment failures at the Lauderdale substation caused thousands of Lakewood residents to suffer loss of crucial electricity during dangerously hot weather, in many cases for multiple days leading up to the 4th of July.

During this period, First Energy refused to put out a press release or social media posts, educating residents about what was happening.

They also cut off communication with city council members who were working hard to keep residents informed.

We heard from many residents that the limited communications that they did receive from First Energy were inaccurate, informing them of rolling periods of electrical restoration that never came, or insultingly encouraging them to reduce electrical usage to relieve strain on a system that they could not use.

On August 7th, 2026, after investigating more complaints from Lakewood, the PUCO issued a second letter of noncompliance.

While the final orders from that PNC have not been issued, tonight's hearing will go through improvements that the POCO identified as needed and First Energy's plans to address

them.

In short, both the 2025 and 2026 investigations concluded the same thing.

Outages are caused by equipment failure.

First Energy has not adequately invested in infrastructure, and communication between First Energy and those served must be improved.

Tonight's hearing is to investigate how those improvements will happen.

Before we begin, a few notes about tonight's structure and rules for decorum.

This is an official City Council Committee of the Whole meeting.

As the chair, questions and public comment will run through

me.

While I know that all of us who live in Lakewood and have dealt with the hardships caused by these electoral outages are frustrated, I would ask those in attendance to please maintain decorum.

We have a lot to get through tonight.

And while I sincerely understand the desire to uh respond to comments, um,

you

know, booing, clapping, talking out of turn will take time away from productive dialogue and the opportunity for our neighbors to speak.

Because I anticipate that many neighbors will want to speak, the public comment timer will be set to two minutes uh per person this evening.

When you come up, please address the chair, which is me, state your name and address, and avoid personalities.

Don't worry, I'll remind you of this when we get there.

The format tonight will be a brief presentation by the law department, after which council members will have each have a few minutes to ask questions, and then a brief presentation by First Energy, after which council members will each have a few minutes to ask questions, and of course, members of the administration.

To ensure time for public comment, I'll ask council members to keep remarks and questions as concise as possible.

Tonight we are joined from members of the administration by Mayor George, Law Director Ernie Vargo, Chief of Staff John Story, and Assistant Law Director Jeff Crossman.

From First Energy, we are joined by Sally Thomas, VP of Distribution Engineering, Satfire O'Doule, VP of Operations Transmission, Joseph Ashburn, Director of Distribution Engineering, Daniel Nup, Manager of Reliability Engineering, David Turner, Director of Customer Accounts and Local Engagements, and Charles Seco, local engagement specialist.