The power bill one Residence of Fox Meadows tenant received in July 2024 would be a shock to anyone.

The McHenry apartment dweller had a power tab of $8,382.15 from ComEd for the first four months of living in a brand-new unit.

That is just one of the issues McHenry-based rental housing developer Cunat Inc. has seen since it began construction on and later leasing for the complex at Route 31 and Veterans Parkway, according to John Cunat and staff there.

Cunat called the ongoing issues – from connecting power to the site to getting billing set up for tenants – “a systemwide epidemic.”

The family-owned rental development company has 4,500 rental units in the northwest suburbs. Issues with power happened “on and off” and were “frustrations through the years,” he said – but not like what the company has experienced in the last 2½ or three years with the south-side McHenry complex.

Once the McHenry City Council gave Cunat the thumbs up for the development, the developer sent ComEd plans. The company then “went through three or four [ComEd] engineers getting the project off the ground,” Cunate said. “We would get started, then nothing from them, for months” as roles at ComEd changed and a former contact was no longer reachable.

Buildings were eventually connected – there are 12 now built and leased out. But plans were submitted, and resubmitted, as Cunat waited for crews to bring in new lines to buildings as they were completed.

“The underground wiring was supposed to be finished a year ago” but is still sitting above ground in spots, unburied, Cunat said. “We have not had a building open on time.”

As of the first week of September, the company had been waiting on 30 ComEd meters for months – meters needed to allow tenants with signed leases to move in, construction manager Jenny Grippo said.

Cunat representatives have talked to McHenry city officials, including Mayor Wayne Jett, who said this week he’d made calls to ComEd about the issues on their behalf too.

Frustrated with a lack of response from the electric utility, a Cunat representative emailed the Northwest Herald on Sept. 3.

Following a reporter’s call to the ComEd media relations line, Grippo had a meeting set up with representatives to discuss some of the ongoing issues on Sept. 5.

”ComEd is committed to providing reliable power to all of its customers,“ according to the company’s emailed response. ”We are working closely with the developer and have already resolved many of his concerns. Meeting the developer’s needs is a priority for us and we have ensured that he has a contact to provide information for this and any future projects.”

Now Cunat has a dedicated representative for meters and someone for underground trenching to get power to the buildings still under construction, Grippo said.

They appreciate the problems they’ve had are getting addressed, Cunat said. “We don’t want to crucify them if they are making changes.”

Still, there are 120 tenants having billing problems, the company said. Those issues range from ComEd not recognizing there is a power meter for a unit, to a meter reading that it is in a completely different part of ComEd’s coverage area.

That is what they believe happened with the $8,000 bill last year, and what Grippo said was another $12,000 bill for the site’s trash compactor, which the meters erroneously told ComEd was installed at a warehouse in another county, not a McHenry County apartment complex.

According to the Residence of Fox Meadows leasing office, there have been tenants who moved in and were unable to get their billing set up with ComEd. Those tenants then moved out at the end of a one-year lease, having never gotten a bill from the utility.

Now ComEd is billing the apartment complex and Cunat, Inc. for those unpaid bills. The tenant is long gone, and others still there cannot get their bill’s sent.

“There are 120 customers not accounted for on ComEd’s side,” Cunat said.