ComEd has failed us once again. As I write this, my building has been without power for two full days. Absence of electricity could go on for another day or two.
Many Oak Park lives have been totally disrupted while ComEd continues to rake in the profits. Rate hikes by the utility company earlier in the year resulted in my electric bill increasing by about 70 percent. Perhaps some locals have been hit even harder.
But does ComEd care about Oak Park customers like me and my neighbors? Apparently not.
Not long ago, ComEd offered extremely attractive early retirement offers to many of its employees. As you can imagine, a significant amount of its more experienced workers took the utility company up on the enticing deal. The reason why they made the offer? To increase ComEd profits, of course.
Now, after a storm that realistically should have only remotely affected Oak Park, their barebones crews undoubtedly have been sent out to tackle outage problems in the City of Chicago. After all, they surely wouldn’t want to incur the wrath of the Mayor, would they?
Meanwhile, countless Oak Parkers spent their weekends in the dark while their food rotted away in the not-so-icey box. Oak Park has been dissed by ComEd, and I’d like to hear how they rationalize their horrible response to power outages that shouldn’t have occurred in the village in the first place.
I suppose it wasn’t really their fault, right?
Mark Dwyer
Oak Park
