Aberdeen Mayor and Council Call For State to Investigate JCP&L

The Aberdeen Township Mayor and Council are calling upon the New Jersey Governor and State Legislature to investigate Jersey Central Power & Light over a spate of recent power outages in parts of the municipality and communications issues with residents and township officials.

“We have been trying for more than two weeks to set up a meeting with a JCP&L engineer to discuss outages that have impacted our residents during the last four storms, but have not received any response,” said Mayor Fred Tagliarini. “In addition to learning why there have been so many outages and why it has sometimes taken the utility so long to get power restored to affected areas, we wanted to discuss the severe lack of communication during these recent events.

“After Superstorm Sandy,” the Mayor continued, “JCP&L made tremendous strides in communicating with our government and residents regarding the status of outages. Those open lines of communications appear to have withered during the recent Nor’easters and, again, during this past weekend’s wind events. We are tired of being kept in the dark on both levels.”

According to the Mayor and Council, following Sandy, township officials routinely received detailed emails from JCP&L when outages occurred, indicating the geographic area affected, how many homes were impacted and approximately when the utility hoped to have power restored.

“Unfortunately, those reports have not been coming in during the recent storms,” Deputy Mayor Robert Swindle said. “Instead, we’re learning about outages from residents who post the information on Facebook. Additionally, the Mayor published his cell number on social media so that Aberdeen residents could inform us of the outages. This is no way to run a public utility.”

“Given all of these issues and JCP&L’s lack of response, our Council has no choice but to call on Governor Murphy and our legislature to investigate,” said Mayor Tagliarini. “With other towns in the Bayshore region having similar experiences, we hope that their mayors and councils will join us in calling for the state to act.”