MADISON TOWNSHIP — Madison Township Trustees, during a special meeting Monday night, informed residents of the Eastview allotment about the process to install streetlights in their neighborhood.
Joe Jakubick, external affairs consultant for Ohio Edison Company, said installation fees would be waved for putting LED lights on existing light poles. Any equipment beyond existing poles and the LED lights will be charged to the customer who requests them.
“We’re just going to do as we’re directed as far as installation on street lights,” Jakubick said. “For any municipality, whether it’s a city, township, county — whatever they tell us, that’s how we proceed. We’re only going to do what the township would want us to do.”
Trustee Tom Craft said he knows not all Eastview residents want street lights, but an earlier request from one resident prompted a look into Ohio Edison’s experimental LED lighting program.
The next steps for a possible lighting district in Eastview are to take a petition to each resident, which they can sign if they want a lighting district. If half the residents of Eastview sign the petition, trustees will assign Ohio Edison to complete engineering work and have the company estimate yearly costs for residents.
“Then, we have another meeting and say it’s going to cost whatever a year and then it’s done,” Craft said.
A lighting district wouldn’t cost the township any money beyond installation, Craft said. Residents would split the cost of street lights according to the group of homes those lights serve.
Trustee Cathy Swank said street lights can help with Eastview residents’ safety while helping people keep an eye on their properties.
“There’s a safety factor to help the first responders too,” she said. “I myself was a first responder, sometimes finding those house numbers was a pain in the rear.
“I keep my porch light on all night so that they can see the numbers, because often on the mailboxes, they aren’t clear either. So the cost of keeping my porch light on versus having a street light probably isn’t all that much more.”
For residents of Hazelwood Drive — which installed street lights in 2016, Craft estimated each property owner’s taxes rose by $75 annually in the first year and decreased to $34 a year recently.
Regardless of the results of the Eastview allotment’s petition, Craft said he hopes to pass a future resolution to replace any burned out street lights with LEDs throughout the township.
In the regular trustee meeting, Fiscal Officer Leanna Rhodes presented the 2023 revenue budget. The budget projects $1.9 million in revenue from property taxes, fire district sales and local levies.
Swank said the township’s road department is seeing a delay in responding to calls because one of the three employees broke his foot and won’t be able to work for about two weeks.
She said people can still call the road department at 419-589-9999, but it might take longer to resolve issues and complaints with one fewer staff member.
