Following repeated outages in the Trousdale Estates neighborhood of Beverly Hills, some residents are considering a class-action lawsuit against Southern California Edison, Mayor Lili Bosse said during a Nov. 1 City Council study session.

Bosse did not provide details, but during public comment, Trousdale resident Randy Simon warned that, if the outages continue, the utility should “not be surprised if we collectively refuse to pay our bills.”

The City Council only allotted about 30 minutes at the end of the study session to question SCE principal manager Rudy Gonzalez about the outages, and the council members insisted that other senior SCE representatives return to discuss the issue at the Nov. 15 meeting.

David Mirharooni, a board member of the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce who lives in lower Trousdale Estates, said that although the quality of electricity service has been worsening for four years, the recent outages have been unacceptable.

“We’re not in a third-world country. We are in Beverly Hills, and in Beverly Hills we demand the best. And we expect … that [Edison] should do their job,” Mirharooni.

Gonzalez said that the most recent outage on Oct. 24 was the result of an “unfortunate incident.” He declined to go into detail, but said that the outage has triggered a report with the California Public Utilities Commission and an Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation.

After 2,215 customers lost power at 5:08 p.m., the utility restored power to all customers by 12:33 a.m. on Oct. 25, Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez added that the utility is conducting improvement projects on individual circuits that they expect to complete by March 2023, including installing fault indicators that will “allow [the utility] to narrow the scope of an outage more quickly.”

Eight fault indicators have been installed on two circuits, and the utility expects to install 30 by the end of the year, Gonzalez said.

The utility is also working on a project to tie two of the neighborhood’s circuits together, which Gonzalez said will make it easier for the utility to reroute power.

None of the council members were impressed with the utility’s efforts to enhance service in the area.

“This kind of feels like Groundhog Day,” Councilwoman Sharona Nazarian said. “Over and over, the same issues, the same nightmares keep happening.”