Downtown apartment on district cooling, the AC is weak and the bill seems high, what can we actually do?

District cooling works differently, so separate the two issues. On weak cooling: your apartment has fan-coil units (FCUs) fed with chilled water, not a split with its own gas, so weak cooling is almost always an FCU problem, a clogged filter or coil, a blocked condensate drain, or the chilled-water control valve, all serviceable. That's the part you can fix. On the bill: district cooling is a two-part tariff, a consumption charge plus a fixed capacity charge, so part of a 'high' bill is structural, not a fault, and your provider (across much of Downtown that's Empower) sets and explains those charges. So service the FCUs to fix the cooling, and read the tariff before assuming the system's broken. A team that services FCUs across Downtown towers will sort the cooling side; the tariff is the provider's. Fix the FCU, understand the tariff.