The Turlock Irrigation District Board of Directors will meet Tuesday to vote on a variety of issues including a resolution to approve TID’s Strategic Plan with the goal of improving the District overall to be well positioned to serve customers in the coming years.
Included in the Plan is the development of mission and vision statements, core values and an assessment of the District’s threats, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.
Formed in 1887, TID is focused on the next five years of progressive actions to be well poised for the future in order to adopt changes to be adaptable and beneficial to customers. Their mission 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, a reliable water supply and electric service while undertaking additional efforts toward transparency accountability and trustworthiness while increasing efficiency of resources, infrastructure and employees. TID is also looking to partner with others with the goal of more frequent regional collaboration.
Core values include reliability, affordability, stewardship safety, quality employees, community vitality, local control and long-term vision.
In assessing strengths and weaknesses, TID notes 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.
Weaknesses as assessed by the District include the location in the Valley which poses challenging in attracting and retaining a technical workforce which lends to issues in succession planning. They also note the political landscape and population centers in the area as making it difficult to find influential and vocal advocacy partners.
They note as additional weaknesses 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.
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.
Additionally, the Board of Directors will meet to vote on a variety of other issues including:
- Approving applications for installations of side gates
- Approving a quit claim of easement
- Approving contracts between TID and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union to set 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 to provide organizational guidance
- Delegating authority to approve payment of warrants against TID for the period between Dec. 24, 2014 and Jan. 6, 2015.
The TID Board of Directors will meet Tuesday at 9 a.m. in the Board Room of the TID Main Office Building, 333 E. Canal Dr.
