Dave Burrows, a Dayton Development Coalition vice president, said an AES Ohio legal team has approved a project for the base, choosing from “five or six” proposed projects.
“Probably this overall project will exceed this money,” Beavercreek City Manager Pete Landrum asked Burrow.
“It could be a little less,” Burrows replied.
The base has to accept the money “as a gift,” he added.
A project will be bid out, Landrum said.
In February 2022, AES Ohio agreed to provide a shareholder contribution of $250,000 to fund projects that increase energy resiliency at Wright-Patterson, an AES Ohio spokeswoman told the Dayton Daily News in March. That money will come from shareholders, not ratepayers, she said.
The Regional Council of Governments was formed in 2020 as an alliance of several local governments — including Fairborn, Beavercreek, Dayton, Huber Heights and others — to work in concert with the base, protecting mutual interests. Wright-Patterson, with some 38,000 military and civilian employees, is the biggest single-site employer in the state of Ohio.
The Wright-Patterson council is considered a municipal government in Ohio. It can pass laws and spend money like other municipal governance bodies, such as city councils.
In a 2022 letter to members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) — the body that regulates utilities in Ohio — an attorney for AES Ohio said the company had agreed to work with the Natural Resources Defense Council on projects “in neighborhoods surrounding Wright-Patterson Air Force Base that increase energy resiliency.”
The utility’s attorney identified the Council of Governments as the recipient of those funds until specific ways to spend the money could be decided.
Council members have sought to say as little as possible publicly about Wright-Patterson infrastructure needs, fearing such talk may reveal potential base vulnerabilities.
“We can’t have Vince giving us a detail of their weaknesses,” Landrum said, referring to Vince King, a base liaison to the council and Community Partnership Program manager for Wright-Patterson.
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