"What was the temperature inside your house when you left for dinner?" we asked Girard city council president Renny Paolone. 

"I'm gonna say...80?" he answered.

The hottest day of the year had Paolone and thousands of others across the Valley running hot under the collar.
Several power outages plagued neighborhoods across Mahoning and Trumbull Counties Wednesday afternoon.

"I'm frustrated because it doesn't happen on just the hottest day of the year, it happens all the time>

The power has gone out 20 times in his neighborhood over the last year, Paolone says.
The outages can last a few seconds or a few hours.

"They need to just update their system to the point...in grids, where if my power goes out, three blocks down the street they don't," he said. 

But FirstEnergy spokeswoman Lauren Siburkis says the company has been working on those upgrades for years.
She promised the Valley's grid is ready for a long, hot summer.

"FirstEnergy is part of the PJM shared electric market, which means we can pull power from 13 different states," Siburkis said. "The automated technology has already helped many customers in the Youngstown area recently because we're able to automatically restore their power without sending a crew to investigate, and we're also able to switch them over to a backup line in the event they experience an outage on their primary line."

But Paolone and others say those upgrades haven't helped them.
And while FirstEnergy says Wednesday's outages weren't because of the heat, "in the year 2022, we should be way ahead of the curve," Paolone said. 

We followed up with FirstEnergy about these concerns; the company promised us a response on Thursday.