When the lights go out, the impacts are far reaching from our city’s frozen commerce to our sweltering residents. Restaurants shut down, the elderly in our community are forced to deal with more difficult circumstances on hot days and it’s a general pain in the rear end for everyone.
Power outages seem to have become “routine” in Morgan Hill. PG&E always, of course, has an explanation. The latest example came on a busy Saturday, June 16, affecting more than 2,235 residents and many businesses.
It’s more than an inconvenience – it means thousands of dollars in lost business. The City Council should be hopping mad and so should the Chamber of Commerce. Morgan Hill residents deserve some answers from its monopoly power utility.
A request for a full report from PG&E on the state of local equipment, the maintenance schedule and the response times for the last 20 significant power outages should be demanded. And if the power utility is not cooperative, a strong demand letter to the state’s Public Utility Commission would be in order.
The truth is that the City Council has to make some noise, or Morgan Hill will be quietly ignored.
In this most recent instance, Staff Writer Michael Moore reported, “A PG&E spokeswoman said the cause of the outage was equipment failure related to a circuit breaker. But the circuit on which the outage occurred was recently replaced by PG&E, according to a report by the utility company to the City Council.”
So, what’s going on and what’s the plan to fix it. Morgan Hill businesses and residents should not be expected to “live with” summer outages and smile when writing checks for hefty power bills.
“It’s disappointing that a circuit that recently received upgrades failed its first big test of the summer,” city manager Ed Tewes said regarding the latest in a series of PG&E failures.
PG&E, after a huge and lengthy outage last summer that affected more than 7,000 customers, said it planned to improve or upgrade some of its circuits in Morgan Hill, and enhance system reliability with automated underground equipment.
With summer’s first heated blush, it’s apparent the plan is either inadequate or has not been executed. Call PG&E back to the public table and get some real answers for Morgan Hill customers before another fuse blows and shuts down businesses and gives rise to flaring tempers by the residents who pay the bills.
