City officials delay vote on SCE outage resolution, seeking tougher terms

The Palm Desert City Council voted 5-0 Thursday to table a resolution asking Southern California Edison to minimize planned outages during high-temperature summer months, instead directing staff to bring back a revised version at the November meeting.

The resolution, as originally drafted, asked SCE to schedule routine, non-emergency maintenance outages outside of June, July, August and early September when operationally feasible, and to provide the city with earlier notice and coordinated support for affected customers.

Richard Cannone, assistant city manager, told the council that from 2022 through this year, about 55 of the 62 days in July and August reached 105 degrees or higher, with roughly 40% of those days reaching 113 degrees or higher. He cited a planned outage affecting about 878 Palm Desert customers that was originally scheduled for July 28 and rescheduled to Aug. 9-10 after concerns over high temperatures, along with additional planned outages during the overnight periods of Aug. 8-9 and 9-10.

Resident Donald Ziegler urged the council to broaden the resolution to cover unplanned outages as well, citing a May 24 outage that closed businesses along El Paseo, a car crash that knocked out power in Palm Desert, and an outage in Indian Wells. He said Edison data show the average Palm Desert customer lost power for almost two hours at least once last year, a 50% increase from 2023, with about half of outages attributed to equipment failure.

Jeremy Goldman, SCE principal manager for the Southeastern Region, told the council the utility is committed to providing advance notice on outages and offered to set up a follow-up meeting with city staff and council members.

“We do try and limit the work that we do in the summer months, but the system does require 20 24/7, 365 day a year maintenance. We just have to do everything we can to keep the light lights on,” Goldman said.

Councilmember Jan Harnik questioned whether SCE’s 105-degree threshold for limiting planned outages was too high, saying it could endanger frail residents.

Councilmember Karina Moreno agreed, and added SCE should work harder to get the word out about planned outages “We are discussing the unique needs of areas with extreme heat. We’re talking life and death,” she said.

Mayor Pro Tem Joe Pradetto said the future resolution should push SCE toward infrastructure investment and redundancy, not just better communication.

Cannone said staff would need to work with SCE before the November meeting and confirmed the city intends to share the resolution with the California Public Utilities Commission once adopted.