Our neighborhood lost power yesterday – again. Within minutes generators were humming up and down the block. While most people lost power due to the deadly storm cell that spawned the tornado outbreak, we lost power at 9:00 a.m.—well before the heavy storms hit.
It’s a situation we’re familiar with in our Palos Hills neighborhood. There’s a pod of a dozen houses that lose power all the time. We rarely lose power for more than a couple of hours, so most people just dismiss our complaints. They seem to think the only reason to be concerned about not having electricity is when it drags on for days.
They are wrong. The next time it rains, feel free to go into your basement and unplug your sump pump for an hour. You can just sit on your stairs and watch the water flood your basement. One hour without a sump pump during any kind of rain can cause a lot of damage. I can testify to how much damage one hour without electricity can do. We’ve cleaned out our basement several times since we moved to Palos Hills.
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Our neighbors reported talking to our aldermen and Mayor Jerry Bennett about the problem throughout the years. Every time they received that “It’s Commonwealth Edison’s problem. What do you want me to do about it?” deflection.
A few years ago I was really frustrated because we lost power several times in the same sunny, summer month. There was no reason to lose power that month. It wasn’t storm related. It wasn’t construction related. I emailed Mayor Bennett to ask him to advocate for us with Commonwealth Edison. Mayor Bennett responded by emailing the phone number of a regional Commonwealth Edison contact and telling me to call her. I got one of those "It's your problem. You should talk to her" responses. I guess I should have expected his refusal to help the citizens he supposedly represents.
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It turns out Mayor Bennett receives campaign contributions from Commonwealth Edison’s Political Action Committee. For the last campaign (and remember, he was unopposed), Com Ed PAC donated $400 to Mayor Bennett’s re-election campaign.
Of course he’s not going to bite the hand that feeds him, as the saying goes. Why would Mayor Bennett make any effort to provide relief for a few Palos Hills families when he risks annoying the corporations who write him checks?
We realize we're extremely lucky that all we did was lose power yesterday. We realize there are entire towns that were destroyed and lives were lost. I am certainly not comparing our short-term power loss with their total devastation.
Yesterday was just one more example of a long-term, frustrating, solvable situation. In our neighborhood we recognize that we’re on our own with this ongoing problem. We know we’re not going to get any help from Palos Hills elected officials as long as the Commonwealth Edison PAC keeps writing Jerry Bennett checks.
Still, we hope for a day when we have an elected official who will actually try to help the people he or she represents. Until that day comes, we’ll keep our generators ready.
Nov 20 NOTE: After this went live, it was promoted on the Palos Patch Facebook page. An astute reader noted that the post sounds like no one in the neighborhood ever contacted Commonwealth Edison for help. In fact, we have all called Commonwealth Edison numerous times over the years. In addition, I contacted other elected officials for advice including a friend who is the mayor of another suburb and our Illinois State Representative. Each one suggested asking Mayor Bennett to help us escalate the issue. I want to thank the reader for pointing out my omission.
