The Turlock Irrigation District Board of Directors met Tuesday approving their 2015 Strategic Plan for overall improvement in order to be well positioned to serve customers in the coming years, in addition to adopting a variety of other resolutions.

The Plan develops mission and vision statements, core values and an assessment of the District’s threats, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.

Formed in 1887, TID will focus the next five years on progressive actions to be well poised for the future. In adopting these measures measures to better serve customers, their goal will be to provide reliable and competitively priced water and electric services while being good stewards of resources and providing customers satisfaction through innovation.

Their vision is to leverage technology to benefit customers, maintain competitive rates, reliable water supply and electric services while undertaking additional efforts toward transparency accountability and trustworthiness while increasing efficiency of resources, infrastructure and employees. The District is also looking to partner with others for more frequent regional collaboration.

Core values include reliability, affordability, stewardship safety, quality employees, community vitality, local control and long-term vision.

TID has noted strengths including their longstanding relationship with the community, senior water rights, diverse portfolio of electric assets lending to competitive rates, as well as a highly-skilled experienced and loyal workforce.

Location in the Valley which poses a challenge in attracting and retaining a technical workforce, lending to issues in succession planning are perceived weaknesses according to TID. They also note the political landscape and population centers in the area as making it difficult to find influential and vocal advocacy partners.

Their need to become more dynamic as technology changes, and their need to update aging water and electric systems which will increase debt and affect rates are also perceived as weaknesses.

TID sees opportunity in enhancing billing systems and leveraging advanced metering technologies to improve service to customers as well as optimizing energy resources portfolio to better leverage means of competitive reliable rates. Additionally, the District believes that developing new programs to utilize new technologies will enhance customer’s experience.

The District views threats including changes in state and federal laws and regulations, the need for upgraded infrastructure to meet security requirements, weather, and the movement toward distributed generation, energy storage and other mandates or trends to change their longstanding business model.

TID will emphasize on distribution, finance and rates, workforce, customer service and government and community relations as main components of their vision which include a series of strategies, goals and benchmarks.

Director Ron Macedo praised the final results of the Strategic Plan and the work that went into it by TID staff.

“Very good, not always easy talks to have, but I think we’ve come up with a really good document to help us in the future,” said Macedo.

“[The Plan is] something we can be very proud of TID, and show all the other entities that we work with that we’re very serious about what we do here.”

TID General Manager Casey Hashimoto stated that the plan would be prepared as a professional document should it be needed for any legislative business visits and rating agency visits.

The Board of Directors also unanimously approved a variety of measures including:
Applications for installations of side gates
A quit claim of easement
Contracts between TID and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union setting wages, hours and other terms of employment
Amending the TID job classification manual and a series of District employee salary and benefits
Approving Board governance policies for organizational guidance
Delegating authority to approve payment of warrants against TID for the period between Dec. 24, 2014 and Jan. 6, 2015.

The Dec. 30 and Jan. 6 TID board meetings have been canceled and will resume Jan. 13.