Dear Cleveland City Council and Mayor Bibb,

The undersigned residents of the city of Cleveland and Our CPP, a group of residents and advocates championing a stronger Cleveland Public Power, call on Cleveland City Council and Mayor Justin Bibb to respond to the July 2026 Cleveland Public Power blackouts with the following steps:

(i) making a one-time capital investment in Cleveland Public Power’s grid to to resolve the systemic issues that led to the July 2026 Cleveland Public Power blackouts and;

(ii) establishing a permanent Consumer Representative Committee to further commercial and residential consumer communication with Cleveland Public Power.

The undersigned residents applaud Cleveland Public Power for their transparency regarding the issues that caused the outage and releasing a recap of the holiday weekend outage. The July 10th recap Cleveland Public Power published on its website is honest about the causes of the outage due to “equipment failures” and the effects of this outage “including the loss of groceries, damage to appliances, and concerns regarding refrigerated medications.”

Unfortunately, the recap is less clear on how Cleveland Public Power will ensure blackouts like the ones consumers experienced in July 2026 will not happen in the future. What is clear, however, to all who experienced the blackouts, is that Cleveland Public Power’s current infrastructure is inadequate to serve a Cleveland affected by a changing climate.

The undersigned residents and OurCPP ask Cleveland City Council and the Mayor’s office to commit to making a one-time capital investment commensurate with the scale of the problem into systemic updates to the Cleveland Public Power distribution system to ensure that such outages do not occur going forward.

We commend Mayor Bibb and Councilman Brian Kazy for their support of modernizing Cleveland Public Power and their understanding of the scope of the issue, as reported by Signal Cleveland in April. By committing new resources to Cleveland Public Power in response to the July blackouts, leadership at Council and the City have the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding that in the time of rising bills and a surging climate crisis, updating the Cleveland Public Power grid is urgent and essential.

Furthermore, the undersigned residents of the City of Cleveland and OurCPP call on City Council and the Mayor to institute a Consumer Representatives Committee (CRC). The CRC would be a standing body that enables designated Cleveland Public Power consumers, residential and commercial, the opportunity to meet consistently with CPP leadership to share information back and forth. Consumers have information Cleveland Power Power needs. Cleveland Public Power, a city-owned utility accountable to Cleveland voters, has information consumers must have access to. The fact that we currently lack a formal place where this sort of exchange happens regularly is a missed opportunity that City Council and the Mayor must fix. Creating the CRC demonstrates that Council and the Mayor understand the severity of the July 2026 blackouts, and are willing to seek systemic solutions.

We understand that fixing the problems that lead to the July 2026 blackouts will require sustained effort from City Council, the City, and consumers. It’s time to do that work together in earnest so nothing like that happens again.