Moreland Hills council finalizes edits to power-outage survey and plans letter to FirstEnergy

Councilors on July 8 spent significant time refining a planned resident survey on power outages and utility performance and agreed to send a letter to the local power company to press for answers.

Mayor opened discussion on a draft survey staff prepared to gather resident experience and data about outages. Council debated whether to shorten the questionnaire to avoid survey fatigue or keep more items for detailed feedback; some members said optional demographic/contact fields should be placed at the end to maintain response rates. Mister Richmond and other councilors suggested adding an optional question about whether residents believed trees on their property needed trimming, while others warned that question could be misread as assigning responsibility for outages.

Councilor and staff agreed that the name field would be optional and that staff would edit the draft to move optional questions to the end; the mayor and staff asked that the edited draft be circulated for quick review and signoff. Council also discussed a draft letter to FirstEnergy (also referenced as CEI in prior files) asking the company for information about outage causes and plans; Mister Richmond said the letter should be sent on behalf of the mayor, council and residents and that survey results would be used to support follow-up.

Members raised longer-term resilience options, including exploring group buys for whole-house battery systems and community solar programs via regional initiatives such as Clean Future Ohio; staff agreed to follow up on potential contacts and programs.

The council did not vote on the survey or the letter at this meeting but authorized staff to circulate an edited survey and to prepare the letter for distribution.