Borough Council Commends JCP&L on Outage Response

Although Hurricane Irene happened almost a year ago, memories of massive outages and lack of communication between the Council and Jersey Central Power and Light (JCP&L) is still fresh in minds of many Borough residents. With numerous storms and heat waves coming through Freehold the Borough Council took time to commend JCP&L on their recent response tactics. 

Last week, the Borough experienced a large number of outages following a storm that caused two polls to fall and a damage to a water main pipe. At the Monday, July 16 Freehold Borough Council meeting, Council President Sharon Shutzer addressed the audience with a report on how JCP&L handled the outages. 

During the hurricane we had through no fault of ours, very little communication with JCP&L. And even our Mayor at the time could not get through to a representative until many hours into the storm," explained Shutzer. "...just a few weeks ago a representative from JCP&L was here and pledged to us [the Council] that measures had been taken so that this kind of thing would not happen again. There were some of us, including me, who were very cynical that night and doubted that anything would really be done, because we have had lip service before. Unfortunately, JCP&L had the opportunity to put our money where their mouths are. Although there were some that were dissatisfied with their [JCP&L] response time and expected immediate restoration of electrical services, realistically we must all agree that JCP&L was immediately in communication with the Mayor and town and that communication continued until the last outage was restored.

Shutzer further explained that restoration of electrical services took time because of other factors not pertaining to JCP&L. 

"I was on the scene after the hurricane and I was on the scene after the storm and there was an undistibuable difference in the electric company's response and for that I thank them."