Lakewood City Council Member Tom Bullock managed to pin down First Energy CEO Brian Tierney on the power outages that have frustrated residents this summer.
Tierney was speaking at the Union Club as part of Crain’s Cleveland’s Power Breakfast series. Bullock attended the breakfast and submitted an audience question about Lakewood’s power failures.
As reported by Crain’s Abbey Marshall, Tierney replied that Lakewood’s outdated electrical system needs to be replaced. That could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take seven to nine years, he said.
Bullock appreciated Tierney’s candor.
“The CEO was very forthright and frank and didn’t make excuses or mince words,” the Lakewood council member told Weekly Chatter.
Lakewood officials have hounded FirstEnergy over its heat-wave outages, sparking a Public Utilities Commission of Ohio investigation.
This month, the PUCO made this eye-catching observation: The investor-owned utility was using garden sprinklers to cool off transformers at two Lakewood substations. The state regulator has proposed fining FirstEnergy $3 million over its continued outages.
Although Bullock was hopeful that FirstEnergy’s leadership was paying attention to Lakewood, he said the city should verify that the company will follow through.
“It’s a significant exchange directly with the top leader of the company and we learned quite a lot,” Bullock said. “We’re going to have to keep at this.”
More ballyhoo over Burke Lakefront Airport
Like a row of airplane propellers, everyone has his or her own spin on where Cleveland’s push to close Burke Lakefront Airport is headed.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, who opposes closure, told the Statehouse New Bureau this week that Mayor Justin Bibb’s plan is “100% not going to happen.” Charles Slife, the chair of City Council’s Transportation Committee, said the conversation appears to be at a halt for now. Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration says it isn’t giving up.
Now Austin Davis is jumping into the debate. The Ward 7 council member represents Burke and supports closing the airport. He wrote in his newsletter this week that all the recent talk about Burke is just that: talk.
“There’s been no final, immutable decision. It’s just commentary and headlines,” he wrote. “And let’s be honest. If our route to closing Burke and reclaiming our lake was federal action, it wasn’t going to be this year, and it wasn’t going to be under this federal government.”
In other words, it won’t happen under President Donald Trump.
Don’t count on Cleveland’s second-largest airport coming up during the 2028 Democratic presidential primary debates. But if the conversation is kicked to a future election cycle, it may become an issue for whoever runs for mayor in 2029.
