BEVERLV
HILLS
AGENDA REPORT
Meeting Date: January 24, 2023
Item Number:
From:
Subject
Honorable Mayor & City Council
Shana Epstein, Director of Public Works
REQUEST BY MAYOR BOSSE FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
EDISON, AT&T, AND SPECTRUM TO REPORT ON THE MOST
RECENT SERVICE INTERRUPTIONS AND PROVIDE A
TIMELINE FOR INFRASTRUCTURE REPAIRS
Attachments: None
RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends the service providers determine the best course of action to improve phone, cable, and power service to the City.
INTRODUCTION
In 2022, Mayor Bosse requested Southern California Edison (SCE) to present to City Council on August 23, 2022, November 1, 2022, and November 15, 2022. Spectrum responded to a similar request and presented on August 23, 2022, and November 15, 2022. AT&T is included in this review of utility services for the first time in recent history.
The community has reached out in frustration through social media and calls to the City.
The goal is for the community to have reliable service into the future and proper communications during outages.
DISCUSSION
The New Year began with a power outage on December 31, 2022, at approximately 10pm; customers' power was restored around 2am January 1, 2023. SCE notified the City that due to the number of outages throughout their service area, the City would not receive regular updates. The next outage, January 4, 2023, Involved the Hilton Circuit and began at 4:27pm, affecting 812 customers and was restored by 11:05pm. The cause was palm fronds from a tree falling on electrical wires. The next day, January 5, 2023, there was an outage involving the Playboy Circuit that began at around Sam and affected up to 1,447 customers at the height. Within an hour, the number of customers impacted was reduced to just under 400. Ail power was restored by 4pm. The cause was a faulty underground cable. The last power outage involving the Harratt Circuit
G-2
Meeting Date; January 24, 2023
affected approximately 140 customers and began January 12, 2023, at 6:53am. Power was restored on January 13, 2023, at 2:22am with a temporary fix that wili remain until the final infrastructure upgrades, which are anticipated to be complete March 31, 2023.
The cause of this prolonged outage was failed underground equipment. Since the outage exceeded 12 hours, SCE elevated the prioritization. The Harratt, Playboy, and Hilton Circuits serve the Trousdale area.
In addition, the Trousdale area experienced a lengthy AT&T outage from January 10, 2023, through January 17, 2023. The cable that served up to 160 landlines was damaged by water and needed to be replaced. A significant amount of work was required to repiace the cable and then splice almost 1,200 pairs of copper wire. A few customers are still reporting outage as of January 19, 2023.
Regarding Spectrum, the City was not directly informed of the extent of any outage. The City did receive "chats" from three specific customers who were out of service for a period of time iast week.
One of the recurring concerns with the outages in 2022 was the lack of accurate communications. City staff has strengthened its network with SCE and AT&T to receive status reports. With respect to AT&T, they requested priority customer information so they could reach out with direct communication. The City has a dedicated webpage to share key phone numbers and links for SCE services. As of January 18, 2023, Centralized Customer Relations (CCR) received a total of 933 calls, of which 11 were regarding AT&T outages, four regarding SCE outages, and no calls regarding Spectrum.
The Information Technology Department received two calls in January regarding Spectrum, but none were about outages. These statistics do not include the calls directly to City Council and executive staff. When CCR receives outage information it is reported to the utility and customers are called back with updates if the customer requests. CCR can be reached at 310.285.2467 or [email protected].
FISCAL IMPACT
At this time, there is no fiscal impact to the City.
Shana Epstein,
Director of Public Works
Approved By