Elyria adds money to HVAC repair program due to high demand

ELYRIA — The city's program to help residents pay for repairs to their HVAC systems, furnace or water heaters has proven successful enough to justify a second round of funding from the Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council, or NOPEC. On Monday, City Council voted to increase the not-to-exceed amount of the project by $38,000 after quickly reaching the original $100,000 funding limit set by Council in March. Mayor Kevin Brubaker said that after the program opened in the spring, the city quickly used up the $100,000 in NOPEC funding it had received from the project to help 11 homeowners fix their HVAC systems or water heaters. The city limited maximum funding for each individual project to $10,000. Brubaker said that after the assigned money was spent, Community Development Director Ashley Scott and Manager Mona Almobayyed told him that four more applicants were seeking money and asked if there was any way the city could still assist them. NOPEC agreed to allow Elyria to access the $38,000 it had left over in its account with the energy aggregator to further fund the project, and the four remaining applicants will receive the assistance they requested. That brings the total number of Elyria homeowners assisted by the program to 15. Brubaker originally pitched the new program as a way to help resident using NOPEC money, after the city had spent a considerable amount of money from the agency to install energy-efficient windows at City Hall in 2024. "We get about $98,000 from NOPEC every year on average — at least over the past three years that I've been in office — and that is based on usage and what residents pay on their bill through NOPEC," he said. "If you remember a couple of years ago, we replaced all the windows at City Hall. That was about $250,000 and that came from that $98,000 as well as we had a lot of carryover in our account (with NOPEC). This time around, I wanted to give that money back to the residents." Due to the success of the program and the clear need in the community, Brubaker said the program would continue next year once the city receives more money from NOPEC. He said that the amount of money available would depend on if the city needed to fund any other energy-efficiency projects, and added that the city had now expended the money in its NOPEC account so there would be no ability to add more funding through that channel. The city also has an emergency home repair fund, but the NOPEC-funded program allows the city to provide additional assistance and is available to middle-income residents, not only those classified as low-income. The emergency repair fund is limited to low-income residents because it uses federal money and is therefore bound by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development income limits. "We raised the income requirement to medium income because there is a group of people between low income and higher income that are left out of the mix because they make too much money to fall into the category and use these programs, but not enough to pay for things like new HVAC or a furnace," Brubaker said. "This truly helps those folks out as well." Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.