Amid resident outrage, FirstEnergy recommits to $19 million Lakewood plan

When FirstEnergy representatives came to Lakewood Civic Auditorium in August 2025 in the wake of multiple power outages, the blistering weather outside matched the mood of the large and restive contingent of Lakewood residents. Monday evening at Lakewood City Hall, the emotional temperature was generally more moderate and the audience smaller. Yet the strategy presented by the utilities to address the reliability issues that have plagued the city was largely unchanged.

What was different this year was the force of orders from the Public Utility Commission of Ohio (PUCO) resulting from Letters of Probable Non-Compliance issued by the Commission in response to complaints filed by Lakewood city government.

The hearing was called, said Sarah Kepple, Lakewood City Council president, to get “FirstEnergy’s plans to improve infrastructure, reliability and communication on the record and to have the opportunity for council and the administration to question them on those plans and also why it has taken so much for them to invest properly in Lakewood.”

In the 13 months since the town hall meeting, FirstEnergy installed one of the two transformers at its Lakewood substation in the Birdtown neighborhood, as ordered by the PUCO with another scheduled for installation before the end of 2026.

Yet the new equipment did not prevent a series of failures beginning at the Lakewood substation on June 30 and cascading to the Lauderdale substation on the following two days. According to the PUCO, more than 10,000 customers lost power during a week when the high temperature touched the 90-degree mark. 

“We have not lived up to your expectations or our own, and that’s something we’re here today to say we need to correct,” said Sally Thomas, FirstEnergy vice president of distribution engineering. “We apologize.”

Thomas presented a plan whereby FirstEnergy would commit $19 million to upgrades in Lakewood, $7 million of which was allocated to the installation of smart meters. This was essentially the same plan outlined at the 2025 town hall, but Thomas promised a further plan by year end, assisted by an independent firm, to provide what she called a “holistic plan for investment in our sub-transmission, in our substations, in our distribution systems to set Lakewood up for safer and more reliable performance going forward.” The word “plan” was invoked 35 times in her presentation.

Keeping the focus on the present, Kepple methodically questioned the five FirstEnergy representatives on the status of 19 corrective actions identified by PUCO, 11 of which must be completed by December 31. These include the replacement of the two transformers at the Lakewood substation to the filing of plans to replace aging underground cables and improve communication with customers

Beyond the PUCO mandated corrections, council members proposed other steps that FirstEnergy could take to help restore the trust of its Lakewood customers. Councilperson-at-large Tom Bullock suggested the creation of an economic reimbursement fund through which FirstEnergy could at least partly compensate damages from the power outages and restore goodwill.

Ward 1 Councilperson Kyle Baker pointed out that, “Ohio law and the constitution does afford the ability for municipalities to appropriate equipment,” calling this step “the nuclear button.” Ward 3 Councilperson Cindy Streibig invoked Marie Antoinette, saying, “To recommend to individuals requiring electrically operated life-support equipment that they should obtain backup power sources such as generators or batteries or arrange for an alternative location is FirstEnergy’s ‘let them eat cake.’ It’s insulting.”

Theresa Sweeny, a Lakewood resident whose 30-year-old son requires a ventilator, had stronger words for FirstEnergy. “You all should be ashamed of yourselves. We pay insane rates for electricity. I am running a literal ICU in my home. I need oxygen running for my son.”

On the utility poles and in Lakewood’s substations, work continues on improving the reliability of the city’s creaky and aged electrical infrastructure, some of which is more than 100 years old.

“It sounds as if we’ve got a knob-and-tube grid,” Bullock said, citing a once-common home wiring standard that has been long abandoned. “There’s nothing wrong with knob-and-tube as long as it is in good shape, but [it] probably doesn’t have enough capacity to run central air and all the gizmos that we’re adding all the time in a modern technology-driven economy.” He asked the First Energy representatives, “Do you know why Lakewood has this old equipment, and we haven’t been updated for all these decades and years?”

The question went unanswered for the moment,  but there will be further opportunities to ask. “They’re also committed to coming back to council in another six months or so,” Kepple said of FirstEnergy after the hearing. “By that time, we should hopefully have the full plan from the [Letter of Probable Non-Compliance]. That’s my hope; we’ll see. We all need to keep pushing together, keep working together, keep that pressure on so this stays front of mind for the PuCO and FirstEnergy knows that we’re watching.”.