A power outage left thousands in the Valley in the dark Monday afternoon.
But while all those customers did have power restored soon after, one Valley community says they're tired of the constant on and off on a regular basis.

People in Girard say Monday's outage marks the 14th time they've lost power since early May. They claim they aren't getting answers from First Energy so they are going to take their fight to the state.

There's no good time to lose power but it seems especially hard to lose it in the summer.

"With the humidity, with air conditioning not working, freezers, I have young kids at home as well, it's just become a real nuisance and an inconvenience. In today's day and age you'd think they power wouldn't be going out the way it has been," said 1st Ward Councilman, Keith Schubert.

City leaders say they have reached out to First Energy for reasons and or solutions but haven't been given much information at all.

"They haven't told us what the problem is. one time it's a squirrel eating a line another time it's a breaker. a power switch. They don't seem to know what the problem is. They don't answer the question when you say 'what's the problem?'" said Girard Council President, Reynold Paolone. 

According to Mayor, James Melfi, "It's just not a bad storm or high winds it's not just that anymore, it's just over and over and over again. Without any reason but 'oh, we're upgrading.' upgrading what? If they were we'd be receiving some of that benefit now, which we're not."

21 News contacted First Energy back in June about the problem and was told they continue to have reliability issues that are being addressed by grid modernization.

They say they are creating additional circuit lines along power lines to restore outages faster and they are trimming trees along those same lines.
Girard city leaders say they plan to take their issue up with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to try to get more answers and more solutions.