ThisWeek CW 12/05/2012
Residents complained to city council last week that Groveport’s streetlights are leaving them in the dark.
Holton Street resident Shirley Fisher told Groveport City Council during the Nov. 26 meeting that many of the streetlights in her neighborhood weren’t coming on at night and it was causing her and elderly neighbors safety concerns.
“I’ve lived in this town for 74 years and not had any complaints, but now we’re having a problem down on Holton Street with the street lights. Four times in the last two weeks they’ve not been on,” Fisher said. “I called (council member Ed) Rarey about it and he said he’d take care of it. Well, last night they came on, but now again tonight, they’re off.
“If I go out for a walk down the street and I fall and break a hip or something because I can’t see, someone is going to pay for that and it isn’t me,” she added.
Groveport currently contracts with AEP for streetlight maintenance. According to Rarey, AEP did respond following Fisher’s most recent call.
“I went out right after (Fisher) called and even went door to door,” he said. “Last night (council member Shawn Cleary) and I were going to go out again. but the lights were back on, so we thought it got resolved.”
Rarey apologized to Fisher.
Several city officials said there have been problems with the lights but AEP has been responsive to the issues.
“If you go through the old section, what the majority of us call Old Groveport, we’ve had that problem and we have to address the issue, but we need people to make us aware of these problems,” Rarey said. “Most of our workers go home before the lights come on at 7 p.m. so they aren’t seeing it.”
Council member Ed Dildine also asked that residents help the city record where issues occur and how quickly they are resolved.
“I want to make sure residents have a number to call for an outage so that we have a record because when it happens, we may think it’s been fixed and not see a need for another followup unless they tell us it’s still a problem,” Dildine said.
Mayor Lance Westcamp asked that the city staff call AEP to assure this issue is resolved.
City Administrator Marsha Hall said residents should call the city at 614-830-2042 or via email at pstortz@groveport.org to report problems with streetlights, or they can call AEP directly at 800-672-2231.