Under the Lights: What Weston Pays to Light Its Streets
Weston's streetlights cost $14,486 to run in 2025. On Sept. 8, Village Council voted 4–1 to collect $22,000 from property owners in 2027.
This story walks through how the streetlight fund works, shows where it stands today, and lets you try the numbers yourself. What Weston ought to do with the money is an open question—and one worth talking about.
Since the conversion from sodium-vapor lights to LED in 2022, the cost to operate the lights has dropped. The village's fiscal officer recommended dropping the assessment to $18,000, though anything up to $22,000 would work, the mayor told council. Council chose to continue course at $22,000.
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Based on current trends, both options would easily cover the bill. Because Ohio law restricts these funds strictly to streetlights, the surplus can't be refunded or reallocated—leaving the account to steadily pile up for years.
One fund, one job
How the village can spend its revenue depends entirely on which fund the money goes into. If you’ve ever looked closely at your property tax bill, you may have noticed a line item labeled "LIGHTING WESTON." That's the streetlight assessment. Each year, council sets a total for it, which the county divides across 828 properties based on their value—costing a typical home around $42 a year.
That bottom box is the catch. Most village money, like the income tax, lands in the General Fund, where council can send it wherever it's needed. Streetlight money can't go anywhere else—under the Ohio Revised Code, it "shall be used only for the purposes for which such fund is established."
Every dollar collected beyond the bill sits in the fund until it is spent on a streetlight.
The fine print: Ohio law and our numbers
- A village may charge property owners directly for "the lighting" of its streets, split by tax value, by benefit or by frontage. Weston splits it by tax value, about 1.17 mills. ORC 727.01
- An assessment can't exceed the benefit to the property. ORC 727.03
- For lighting, notice may be published instead of mailed, unless an owner's charge tops $500. No Weston parcel pays more than about $500 a year. ORC 727.14
- The county treasurer collects it "in the same manner as" property taxes, half in each payment. ORC 727.30, 727.33
- Money collected for a set purpose "shall be paid into a special fund for such purpose." ORC 5705.10(D), (I)
- The village may move General Fund money into the streetlight fund. The reverse is allowed only after "the termination of the activity" the money was collected for. ORC 5705.14(D), (E)
- One wrinkle: interest earned on the streetlight balance goes to the General Fund. ORC 5705.10(D)
The fund balances in this story are estimates, built from council minutes, state spending records and county tax records. The Weston Common has reached out to the village for the exact fund numbers and will replace the estimates when it receives them.
The six-year trend
In the visual below, each lamp represents a year. The amber glow is what property owners paid in. The white core is what the village spent. Scroll to walk down the street.
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2020 and 2021Back when the village still relied on old sodium-vapor streetlights, running them cost about $18,000 a year. Even in 2020, property owners were paying in roughly $26,000—well above actual operating costs. Because that surplus stayed in the account, the fund had continued to climb to around $42,000 by the end of 2021.
2022Council then got an opportunity from Toledo Edison to convert the streetlights to LED—a change that would have happened anyway, just one light at a time as repairs came up. Converting 97 lights cost $20,079 on top of the regular electric bill, making 2022 the only year since 2020 that the fund spent more than it took in. Expecting lower bills going forward, council trimmed the assessment to $22,000.
2023Yet the first full year with LEDs still cost $17,476—barely less than the old lights. And when council was told that September that the streetlight bill had crept up by nearly $500, it raised the next assessment to about $25,500.
2024 and 2025Then the savings finally arrived. What the village spent on the lights dropped to $16,700, and then fell further to $14,486—the lowest since 2020. Meanwhile, assessment collections kept outpacing the bills, running ahead by about $9,000 one year and $6,600 the next.
Added upLooking at the cumulative totals since 2020, the fund has collected $146,774 while spending $123,077. It ended 2025 with an estimated balance of approximately $50,000—a reserve sufficient to cover electricity costs for more than three years without levying any assessment.
2026Property owners are paying $22,128 this year. What the village spends won't be reported until the year closes, but if trends continue, it should come in well under $22,000. On Sept. 8, council set the next assessment for 2027: $22,000.
Hover or tap a lamp for that year's figures.
Put yourself in the councilmember's shoes
The fund is simple arithmetic: the assessment comes in, the Toledo Edison bill goes out. Start from the 2025 bill, assume it rises 3% a year, and choose what the village collects to see how the numbers play out.
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At $22,000, the fund keeps growing by $5,000 to $7,000 a year, and even at the lower $18,000 assessment, it would still grow. The lights don't start drawing the fund down until the assessment falls below about $15,000.
Why $22,000?
Council's stated reason for the higher figure was improvements. On the meeting recording, members say $22,000 would cover lighting upgrades the village wants to make while keeping the fund from building "an abundance like we did." Yet the fund keeps growing regardless of what is currently on the table.
The upgrade that's been priced is a plan for three new lights on Poplar, Beech, and Orange streets, quoted in 2024 at $1,900 apiece—$5,700 in total. That is less than a single year's surplus at $22,000 and a fraction of what the account appears to hold. Two years later, those lights still haven't been built. The mayor told council Toledo Edison hasn't followed through, and that work left unfinished from the 2022 LED conversion east of Route 235 should be finished at no cost to the village.
Nobody is proposing to zero out the assessment, and there are valid reasons to maintain a cushion. The village's locked-in electric rate of 5.29¢ per kilowatt-hour expires in late 2027, and aging poles or fixtures will eventually break.
For a single household, the stakes either way are small: the gap between an $18,000 and $22,000 assessment comes out to about $8 a year for a typical home. Village-wide, however, that gap is $4,000 a year, piling onto an account that already holds several years' worth of bills and can legally pay for nothing else.
What could the fund do?
If a three-light project is all that is on the table, it raises a fair question: why continue collecting at this pace instead of planning for substantial improvements? With a dedicated reserve sitting idle, the village has the means to tackle real lighting gaps—such as illuminating the Oak Street ball diamond area, a stretch with steady foot traffic heading to Dollar General and no accessible sidewalks.
Or council could lower the assessment and let the fund carry some of the load for a few years. Or it could hold steady until the next electric rate is known. Any of those is a reasonable answer, so long as there is one.
Councilmember Jessica Susor cast the lone "no" vote when setting next year's assessment. Council will have the opportunity to set the number again next summer. If you have an idea for what the streetlight fund ought to do before then, council meetings are open to the public—and we'd like to hear it, too.