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City manager reports land‑bank grant submission, rooftop solar options, Whirlpool substation outage and rising power costs
Summary
City staff reported submitting six parcels to a combined Welcome Home Ohio grant with the county land bank and neighboring jurisdictions; they also discussed rooftop solar options, a Whirlpool-area substation outage likely caused by lightning, ongoing demolitions and rising wholesale electric costs.
City Manager and staff reported several administrative updates: they submitted six city parcels, coordinated with the county land bank, as part of a Welcome Home Ohio grant application that in total includes about 12–13 parcels in partnership with Fremont and Gibsonburg. Staff said combining parcels across jurisdictions may improve the grant award chance while the city will retain site control for properties that come through the program.
Staff also said the grant consultant and discussions with Westerville opened a potential option to add rooftop solar to modular homes to improve returns for homeowners and to tie generation behind the city’s meter, noting municipal electric status makes some approaches more feasible. Because the city has municipal electric, staff said rooftop-solar options and an updated solar ordinance are being revisited; meetings with John Courtney were planned to consider ordinance updates.
Staff reported a power outage the previous night that staff’s best guess attributed to a lightning strike that damaged equipment at the Whirlpool substation, which cascaded back to the West substation and triggered an AEP breaker and caused most of the town to lose power. Staff said Whirlpool is currently on a bypass fed directly from the city’s substation to restore service.
Demolition of properties tied to the land-bank effort is underway, including properties listed in the report as 309 Vine, 3306 East Maple and 915 North Main Street; staff said two of the properties were already cleared and one had half the house removed. Those demolitions were described as funded through county land bank and state grants with no direct local line-item cost to the city.
Finally, staff warned that electric costs are set to increase in June due to a prior PJM auction and said the city’s retail rates have not changed since 1996. Staff urged council to consider what, if any, credits or relief to provide customers and suggested a possible future work session to discuss options.
Why it matters: The Welcome Home Ohio grant could return vacant properties to productive use, rooftop solar could change energy economics for residents and the city’s municipal electric status affects options, the substation outage explains recent loss of service and the wholesale price change will affect utility costs for the city and potentially customers.
No formal council action was taken; staff provided updates and recommended follow-up work sessions on energy-pricing responses and on solar-ordinance revisions.
