We assume most Park Ridge residents remember last August’s power outage, which left a good portion of Park Ridge powerless for as many as four days.  But we wonder if they still remember Mayor Howard Frimark’s dog-and-pony shows last year, when those non-committal public relations types from ComEd came to City Hall to tell us what a good job ComEd was doing overall and just how fine a job it did responding to the blackout. 

Almost eight months have passed and it looks like the City’s “strategy” for dealing with ComEd has turned into “out of sight, out of mind.”  As best as we can tell, the City is doing nothing – either on its own or working with ComEd – to update and improve the dependability of the City’s power grid or to help ensure that another similar power outage won’t recur.

We realize that hounding ComEd is one of those “grunt work” tasks that isn’t nearly as glamorous as announcing a new condo development, nor does it provide as nifty a photo op as cutting the ribbon at the grand opening of a new business.  But it’s one of those things that a good, effective City administration should be doing on a regular basis because dependable power is a signficant element of our quality of life.

That’s why it’s refreshing to see that at least one suburb (and one suburban mayor) has the gumption to actually do something more than talk about ComEd’s dereliction of its duty to provide dependable power in return for its virtual electric power monopoly.  Deerfield recently filed suit in Lake County Circuit Court, charging that ComEd violated the Illinois Public Utilities Act and demanding that the utility not only improve its service but also pay damages to both its residential and commercial customers.

As expected, ComEd spokesman Joe Trost – as we recall, one of the same talking heads who promised us a bunch of nothing at those City Hall meetings – immediately started whining about how “disappointed” ComEd is over the lawsuit.  Trost suggested that ComEd was hurt by such a harsh action in view of the cooperative (a/k/a one-sided) relationship the utility and the village have enjoyed over the years.

We tip our cap to Deerfield Mayor Steve Harris and the other Deerfield officials who finally decided that begging is not the most effective way to negotiate with a monopolist.  Whether the suit will be successful remains to be seen, but it sends a message that Deerfield finally has had enough of ComEd’s neglect, negligence and “public relations.”

Meanwhile, as the summer storm season approaches, those of us here in Park Ridge need to start checking the condition of our extension cords (to run across the street to a neighbor’s house with power); or for the more upscale among us, it may be time to start looking for a good price on a generator.

Because dog-and-pony shows haven’t made our electric power more dependable.  And we can’t count on this problem remaining out of sight much longer.