Streetlights have stayed dark for as long as six months across parts of West Akron, Sherbondy Hill and Highland Square, leaving residents to navigate pitch-black blocks and, in at least one case, to get a repair done only after calling in a personal favor. Jason Adams, a 50-year-old Highland Square resident who has lived in Akron for 26 years, says the streetlight outside his home on South Rose Boulevard has been out for four months.
“The safety of our homes is at stake every night,” Adams told Signal Akron. He says he is now weighing whether to start a petition, speak at a city council meeting, or simply withhold payment of the special assessment residents pay annually for street cleaning and lighting. That assessment is calculated based on property front footage and has not changed since 2014, according to Akron Service Director Chris Ludlow, who briefed City Council's Public Service Committee on the rate structure in September, as reported by Citizen Portal.
Months of Darkness, No Updates
In Ward 4, some residents reportedly got a streetlight fixed only after asking a friend who works with the city for help, while others say the city and Ohio Edison have offered no response at all to a six-month outage. A streetlight on Orlando Avenue went dark again at the beginning of October, the second time this year, and neighbors say they still have not received any update on the renewed outage, per the same Signal Akron account.
Ohio Edison maintains most of Akron's streetlights under a long-standing service agreement, and City of Akron Utilities Coordinator Joe Kunzler called the outage situation “embarrassing” in a statement reported in mid-2025, pointing to contract terms with the utility, extensive copper wire theft, and line disruptions caused by underground utility digging as root causes, according to Signal Akron's earlier reporting. To fight the theft that keeps leaving whole blocks dark, city crews have started replacing stolen copper line with overhead aluminum wire and leaving some lighting circuits powered during daylight hours, the outlet noted.
In Sherbondy Hill, 64-year-old resident Fannette Morris says overgrown tree branches now cover streetlight lanterns along Diagonal Road. When she reported the overgrowth, she says she was redirected to companies outside the city rather than getting a fix. “They play the blame game between one another,” Morris said, describing the runaround between agencies.
Ward 4 Pushes for a Repair Timeline
Ward 4 Council Member Jan Davis says she has fielded tearful calls from constituents stranded on dark streets, and on Monday she sent a letter to city officials and fellow council members demanding an actionable repair plan, as detailed by Signal Akron. Davis is asking the Public Service, Public Utilities and Green Committee to take an active role in fixing the lights, and wants the Akron administration to set a concrete timeline for repairs along with a formal committee review at an upcoming meeting.
Her letter goes further than scheduling: Davis wants FirstEnergy executives and operations representatives to appear before the committee to explain the delays and lay out corrective steps. She has also requested that FirstEnergy assess the scope of widespread outages — including how many blocks and neighborhoods are affected and for how long — and submit a documented corrective action plan with timelines, repair priorities and measurable progress markers. Davis plans to raise the streetlight issue directly at Monday's city council meeting, and she wants the administration to advocate for a resolution while giving council regular updates on complaints, completed repairs and anticipated fix dates.
A System Stretched Thin
Part of the bottleneck runs through Akron's 311 customer service center, which operates with just nine staff members handling roughly 118,000 incoming calls and generating 75,000 service requests annually across all city services, including streetlights, per the same account. Tim Rogers, a 72-year-old West Akron resident who owns a cane corso named DJ, says he has called 311 repeatedly to report outages near his home. “The only number I knew was 311,” Rogers said, adding that the city told him it would submit a repair request, but the lights were never fixed.
Residents across West Akron, Highland Square and Sherbondy Hill describe their streets after sunset as pitch black, and the frustration extends beyond Ward 4. In Ward 1, Council Member Fran Wilson is asking Merriman Palisades residents to email their home outage records to [email protected] with the subject line Palisades-Outage Records along with their address. One Merriman Palisades constituent says outages there have persisted since they moved in a decade ago. “I'm beyond the point of asking questions and waiting for answers,” Wilson said. Phyllis Johnson, a 77-year-old retired Summa Health System administrative secretary, is among the residents affected by the broader pattern of outages.
Financial Hurdles Slow Permanent Fixes
Akron's path toward a long-term solution runs into its own obstacles. The city's shift to LED streetlights has stalled in part because converting fixtures would end Akron's favorable rate structure under a legacy energy program while demanding higher upfront hardware costs, Signal Akron has reported. State law gives Akron a financing tool for lighting costs regardless: Ohio Revised Code Section 133.13 authorizes municipalities to issue debt in anticipation of special property assessments specifically for street lighting and cleaning operations, according to the Ohio General Assembly.
The pressure on FirstEnergy is also building at the state level. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio rejected a proposal from FirstEnergy and Ohio Edison in June that sought looser statewide grid reliability and outage-duration standards. That decision follows the scrutiny FirstEnergy's Ohio Edison subsidiary faced after an August 2024 storm knocked out power to more than 118,000 customers, prompting state lawmakers to propose forcing utilities to compensate customers for extended blackouts.
Highland Square property owners have already tried a neighborhood-level fix of their own: in February, Akron City Council approved a Special Improvement District along West Market Street, letting local owners self-assess fees to pay for improved lighting and safety patrols. Residents hoping to weigh in directly on the broader outage crisis can attend a meeting Tuesday at Canyon Trail Park in Merriman Hills at 5:30 p.m.
