I believe that outside contractors would not require expensive pensions paid for by Turlock tax payers. I would be in favor of eliminating pension fat employees for TID and the City of Turlock. Contract out as much to private industry as possible would save Turlockers millions of $$$

Wow!!! TID Rate Payer 2 seems to be incredibly misinformed. First, TID pensions are not funded by tax payers.. TID employees contribute to their pensions every time they receive a paycheck! There is a percentage of their income that is withheld to help fund their future pensions so forgive me if I feel that after an employee serves the district for 25-35 years of their life and contributes to a pension fund they shouldn't be expected to live on social security and government handouts during their golden years. All full time employees of the district are eligible for pension benefits but the factors that come in to play are different for each position. Secondly, the outside contractors are charging TID over $100 per hour per employee for regular time and almost twice that for overtime so if you think we are saving money this way, you are surely mistaking. These are not people off the street willing to work for minimum wage, these are highly trained union workers that receive a standard wage for the industry. (You think there isn't a pension factored in there somewhere?) The only difference is that TID is now supporting the overhead of a company that is for profit instead of maintaining it's own staffing levels to serve the customers of the district at non-profit rates. This is going to catch up to us very soon. The reserve fund is not going to last forever. Bottom line, if TID wants to continue to provide reliable service at affordable rates to their customers for another 125 years, they need to reinvest in themselves by maintaining their staffing levels to provide that service. Remember, these 8 apprentices will not be certified line workers for 3 1/2 years... how many retirements will occur during that time? TID needs to keep hiring because qualified line workers are not as easy to come by as you may think.

This is why these lineworkers are like little girls and why TID has to contract real men. The TID lineworkers stranded customers by staging a power outage strike, some people almost died. TID is working to phase them all out which they should. http://turlockcitynews.com/index.php/news/item/1205-tid-gm-lost-respect-for-lineworkers-union-after-2012-outage

Listen to how they demand more than the rate payers. Linegirls make almost $200,000 a year! https://turlockcitynews.com/index.php/news/item/1226-tid-lineworker-union-dispute-dominates-turlockcitynews-com-forum