YOUNGSTOWN - With their trust running thin, Youngstown City leaders stormed out of a meeting Wednesday between those running the downtown SOBE plant and customers. 

“We’re dissatisfied with the service right now that we're getting from this company,” Mayor Tito Brown of Youngstown told 21 News. 

The plant is supposed to supply heat to 28 buildings in downtown Youngstown but couldn’t for two weeks when a boiler was repossessed.

“It shut down pretty much our entire operation where I had to spend tens of thousands of dollars just to keep our doors open,” Brandon Mccaskelo, who works for a downtown business called Domestic Uniform said.

Domestic Uniform is a company that cleans linens, an operation that can only happen with hot water. 

City hall is another customer that lost heat and water pressure. 

“There's been days and mornings where I'm in my office and I have to put a hoodie on because it's cold,” Mayor Brown said. “If it's sub below zero we can tell.”

Court appointed receiver Reg Martin is now in charge of keeping the plant running. He’s confident the primary boiler installed now is reliable but said they need to put a backup plan in place in case it goes down. His options are to get a second boiler or fix the line that connects downtown to Youngstown State University’s boiler. 

Last time crews tried the YSU connection there were too many leaks in the line causing steam to burst through the street on Rayen Avenue and Elm Street. Martin said fixing those lines would be less costly than bringing in another boiler.

“We want to be very proactive. We know exactly what we’re doing, we have a plan for it but we need your support,” Martin said. “This is only a receivership. This is a band aid.”

The heat was out for customers the first time while the plant waited for a new boiler to ship. Once it arrived their were several issues with parts. It was up and running within a few days of getting to the site from Virginia. The boiler went out again days later for a short period of time. Martin claims the outage was not their fault and was due to an outage in the area by Ohio Edison. A spokesperson for Ohio Edison could not confirm the outage but said they are working to contact the customer to better understand the situation. 

The City sent two letters to Martin on October 17 and 21. Both question the reliability of the services being provided. City leaders said they never received responses from Martin about the questions in the letters but Martin did acknowledge the letters by holding them up in the meeting. Martin said they have been the only communication between him and the city and questioned why leaders wouldn’t just call him on the phone.

Martin said several times in the meeting that they need funding for the backup plans. The city is firm on its stance that it is just a customer and they will not be joining into a partnership to help the plant.

“That is not our obligation,” Mayor Brown said about providing money to help the plant. “Now that we have a receivership, that is his role and responsibility.”

A spokesperson for the city said they did draft a letter after the meeting to request emergency funding from the state for the plant. That letter was not immediately made available to 21 News.

Businesses aren’t sold on the reliability of the plant either. Some consider dropping the SOBE connection and getting their heat from somewhere else. 

“Nothing is off the table for our company,” Mccaskelo said. 

Martin warned if customers leave and the plant loses too much revenue he will have to shut it down.

In the meantime, Mccaskelo is also looking for some compensation for his losses while the service was out. 

“I would hope that they do the right thing and that they do compensate our company,” Mccaskelo said. “We had employees that were not able to work for a certain amount of time because our entire operation was shut down so I hope just for my employees sake that they do.”

Martin said three of the 28 businesses would be getting an adjusted bill for October for the service disruption. He also started to form an advisory board of five customers in downtown to help decide the back up plan. 

Letters from the city to Martin can be found below.