Brookfield trustees have raised the assessments on properties that are served by street lights by 25 percent knowing that it is not enough to meet their goal of stopping subsidies from the general fund.

“I’m very uncomfortable doing this,” said Trustee Dan Suttles. “I know we have to do it. I don’t like doing something that I don’t feel like I have all the information.”

The trustees acted on Dec. 18, the last day the information could be relayed to the Trumbull County Auditor’s Office for inclusion in January property tax bills. 

The last increase in street-lighting assessments was 12 years ago, Trustee Mark Ferrara said. 

The township has eight street lighting districts of various sizes and residents pay for street lights through assessments on their property taxes. The auditor’s office collects the money and passes it onto communities, who pay Ohio Edison for electricity and maintenance. Ohio Edison charges the township based on the wattage of street lights. There is no uniformity in rates as Jacqueline Drive residents will pay $3.75 a year and Valley View residents will pay $26.61 or $60.24 a year under the new rates. The other five lighting districts will pay somewhere in between.

Among the issues trustees do not know are: How many lights are in each district and what are the wattages of those lights? What are the boundaries of each district? Why did the rate charged by Ohio Edison go up from $2,500 a month to $3,600 a month for the period January through April, and then fall to $2,900 a month since then? Which lighting districts are registering shortfalls in collections?

The bottom line is the assessments brought in $19,834 this year, but Ohio Edison has charged $37,000, said township Fiscal Officer Dena McMullin. The trustees allocated a $10,000 grant from its electric aggregation supplier to offset some of the loss, but the rest is subsidized by the general fund, she said. It’s been several years that the street-light cost has exceeded the tax assessments, she said. “We gotta protect the general fund,” said Trustee Shannon Devitz.

The 25-percent hike will only raise the proceeds to just more than $24,000 a year, but Suttles said he would go no higher than a 25-percent hike “until we figure it out,” referring to questions regarding street lights.

One thing trustees have discovered is that not all properties in a lighting district are being assessed. In some cases, the properties were built on and that information was not relayed to the auditor’s office, but other properties have been built on for years and their omissions are a mystery.

Once the trustees know the boundaries of a lighting district, it will take a property-by-property analysis to figure out what properties are not being assessed, and turn them in to the auditor, trustees said.

Property tax bills and individual property listings on the auditor’s website list whether a property is being assessed for street lighting and what district it is in.

Residents in lighting districts will pay the following rates, with the old rates in parentheses:

Warren Sharon Road Lighting District (20-319): $33.99 ($27.19). This district has 114 properties.

Masury Lighting District (20-320): $7.85 ($6.28). 485 properties.

Sharon Lighting District (20-321): $9.71 ($7.77). 664 properties.

Valley View Lighting District 1 (20-322): $26.61 ($21.29). 158 properties.

Yankee Hill Lighting District: (20-323) $38.19 ($30.55).  50 properties.

Brookfield Center Lighting District: (20-324): $13.79 ($11.03). 140 properties.

Valley View Lighting District 2 (20-325): $60.24 ($48.19). 31 properties.

Jacqueline Drive Lighting District (20-327): $3.75 ($3). 19 properties.