Transcription
Heat. [Music] Heat. All [Music] right. Okay, everybody. Thank you for chiming in. I want to welcome you to Freedom Files episode 5.
Today we're going to go over a lot of good uh subjects. Um I want to you all know Jimmy. All right. Jimmy Freeman of Freeman Custom Firearms sitting over to your right, my left, far. All right, we got Ben Eagleton right here of Sig Solar. All right, this guy's awesome. He's going to save us money like he did and we're going to talk about that in a little bit. And we've got Sher Barius over here. All right, to my right, your left, shear's into all kinds of stuff. um, Chamber of Commerce. She does a lot of the benefit dinners and the nonprofit organizations and she's the mayor currently of our town.
So, today we want to talk about um, Pen Energy. We want to talk about what else do we want to talk about? Jimmy's got a 1911 over there. We're going to talk about a little bit. I'm going to show a cool gun right here. And we're also going to talk about insurance. All right. The PG& one's probably going to be the biggest one. So, um, let me show this gun real fast and then we'll get into, uh, the insurance.
All right. So, man, I love that gun. Love this gun. Yep. This is a Heritage Ruff Rider. It's manufactured in Florida by Heritage Manufacturing. This is the American flag um, buttstock. It's uh, looks like about a 4 and 3/4 in barrel. It's a 22 singleaction uh, revolver. It shoots uh, six shots. Um, it's just a great little gun and it's great for the benefit dinners in town and Sher and I meet each other a lot at these benefit dinners.
Um, Sher, you want to go over some of the benefit dinners that we use them at? Yeah. So, we just recently had one at the A dinner and we ended up selling three guns, not only one, we sold three and so you spend 20 bucks a card and you clear about 980 bucks per gun. It's a great little gun. People love the American flag and uh just a It's a good shot, too. Little 22 pistol. Yep, it is. It's a fun little gun. It really is. So, you can come on in here. Um, you can buy one from Fred's Firearms if you'd like, or you could go to one of the many dinners that are hosted uh in town, and there's a good chance that one of these guns will be there for either a card cut or an ear tag.
Real quick, Fred, we're going to Before we get any further, cheers to you. Cheers to you guys. Cheers. We are going to have one. Cheers to you. Cheers. We are going to be having one of those guns at our All-American Bash at the end of the month, the last Saturday of the month at Dine Breed. And we're going to be having one of those guns. We got to have one. And while we're at uh Dying Breed, we got to get some beer here, too, so we can slug Dying Breed and drink some of their beer. We've been drinking Last Call for a long time. We don't want to stop drinking their beer because it's so good and we love it. And we're trying a new one, too. Also, the Wingless Wonder. The Wingless Wonder. Yeah. Kind of a cool Wingless Wingless. Highly recommended. Yeah. Very refreshing. And Dian Bre's got some good beers, too.
Um, okay. Let's go over insurance real fast. Uh, we do the CCW classes. I get everybody asking, "Hey, what insurance company do you recommend?" Because I'm going to be carrying a firearm with me after I get my CCW or I have been carrying a firearm with me and they say, "What insurance is going to cover me in case I get into a situation where I have to use that CCW?" Um, well, here's the the hard answer. I'm going to let Sher talk a little bit about insurance because she knows about insurance. She has years and years in the business of insurance, but as a CCW provider and a gun salesperson, um there is no such thing as CCW insurance in the state of California. There is a legal defense fund. Okay? And there is a difference there. And I'm going to read you guys what I've got my notes as the difference being. Um, in California, while there isn't a governmentbacked CCW insurance, many companies offering a legal defense plan that provide coverage for legal expenses related to self-defense scenarios involving firearms. These plans are often referred to as CCW insurance, but remember, they're not actual insurance. Um, more accurately, legal defense funds or policies.
So, there there's benefits to them and and there's there's ups and downs, too. If you've got a legal defense fund and it makes you it gives you a warm and fuzzy, then hold on to it. And if you're following the rules and regulations that you learned from your CCW trainers and providers, chances are you won't even need to use that. But if if you did, you know, you should have 50,000 to a couple million bucks to help you with an attorney service. Just understand that they are not like insurance where insurance is mandated by a state to actually give you some type of a payout. And if they don't, you could litigate against them. the legal defense funds that you get are more of a policybased driven uh company offer that if something happens and you feel that you're in the right and they don't they don't have to pay out. It's kind of like a pot. So, right like like like a it goes into a pot like kind of like the association dues and stuff like that. Well, insurance would too though. Insurance is just terrible right now. Let's talk about that first. Insurance is just terrible. rates are going up 25 to 45%. A lot of the carriers have either left California or stopped quoting in California waiting for their rate increase. So, it's um it's really wild right now. Hasn't some of the big names left? Some of the big names have left and I don't like to mention names obviously, but yeah. And they've just stopped quoting you know these are very very great companies. Yeah, I mentioned names. Can I say I think State Farm? I was reading. Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. I think I was reading. They said they're like one of the biggest insurance companies. I heard Geico was leaving. They are awesome and we have a lot of them in Oakdale and surrounding areas, but the thing is they're just not quoting. Some of those agencies and carriers are not quoting new business. So, they keep their current business, but if you buy a second or third home, they're not able to quote you. So, it's hard. Now, you got to go to another carrier, another agent, you know, somewhere else. And then what you do is then you end up taking all your insurance there. So, you get a multi-policy discount. But the big thing with guns and insurance, um, we can't guarantee that a claim would be covered on your homeowner's insurance. somebody breaks into your home, you end up using your gun. Uh we would have to turn in a claim and see what happens. And that's, you know, so with insurance, okay, Shar, let me ask you this question because most of our customers in the CCW world and the gun carrying world. Yes. They're looking for, hey, I need the insurance that's going to cover me if I get into a situation, shoot it or something, right? What about that homeowner that does say, well, I've got $10,000 worth of firearms, and then that gets stolen. Would insurance cover something like that? Yes. If they have the firearms listed on their policy or if it's already built in as an endorsement and somebody ransacks the house. So, part of property. Yeah. It's personal property coverage. See, unless it's added by endorsement. Say you have $100,000 worth of guns at your home and say the um carrier um has a max limit of 10 or 20,000, then you add it by endorsement. Have you um ran into that? No. You haven't? Nope. And I've been in the business uh gez almost 18 20 years. Wow. Yeah. So, so it's not a common occurrence then, I would say. Uh, not with me. No. How about any of your colleagues in the business? Have they mentioned it or have they run into anything like that? None that I've heard of. Yeah. And you're actually working for a pretty decent sized outfit. So, I I think it's not a very common occurrence. Just like I think the usage of a CCW firearm is not a common occurrence. You know, we all have uh insurance for our automobiles. None of us go out there with the intent to get into a wreck. We're all doing our best to try and avoid that uh because it could mean devastating consequences. So, just beware, you know.
Um actually, Ben, you've got some experience with CCW insurance, right? Yeah, I actually did just join the um the big name out there. Um I don't know if you want me say a name for this CCA. Yeah. So, um I actually just joined that. I went to a little seminar here locally at the coffee shop down there and they had some good info and you know for the low cost of like 2030 bucks a month, it just kind of felt good and like you were saying you get that warm and fuzzy feeling of like hey I do have a phone number that I can call if something bad does happen and that's with CCW. Yeah, that's specific. Yeah, that's a legal USCA. Oh, okay. So, well, there let me tell you that just a bucket of money. So, you're paying 2030 bucks a month, right? If What is your payout? What is your uh what do you have as far as liability limits on that? Daddy's even got the card in the wall. Well, well, I'm not sure, but they gave me this thing. There you go. Should have your liability limits on there like, "Hey, we're going to cover you up to 50 grand." By the way, we are not advertising or paid from this uh company. You know, we have our own about it. But like I tell all my students, yeah, check it out. Like I tell all my students, if it gives you the warm and fuzzy, honestly, 20 or 30 bucks a month is not a lot to pay. No, we're going to pay more than that on a beer or a soft drink or something like that if it takes a little stress away. Yeah, absolutely. And you never know. There are statistics of people actually utilizing that. I just don't know those statistics. I would love to be educated on this and we have talked about seeing if we could research that for a show to find out the uh statistics for that. Um so, you know, who did do that was the uh California Rifle and Pistol Association. Um, it was February's issue of their magazine. I think our first thing I or maybe it was Mike's. It was like episode two or something. I talked about it. That's right. It was when we showed and it was more or less statistics on um not so much the claims of the legal defense fund, but more or less like the actual usage where they said that out of all the shootings that happened in America. 03 were the percentage of CCW legal law abiding citizen. It's not freent. Yeah. I'd be interested to know how much that covers. Is it a $100,000 defense? Is it a million? Is it um I think it's upwards of between$1 and $2 million. Don't quote me on that. Hold it up. But there's a big pool of money there for lawyers. Okay. So, that'd be Yeah. And again, um I tell everybody we don't have like a sponsorship. Oh, flip it like that. What do you need me to do? Okay. Um we don't have a sponsorship or anything from them. I know that there's other providers that do. This is a huge organization. And when we go to the Shot Show, they have the largest booth. All right. It's massive. So, they're definitely very successful. They're definitely making quite a bit of money and they're out there everywhere. And I think they had a few booths this year. They had a bottom one. And how'd you learn about social media? They have a really big social media presence and I saw they they were advertising the local seminar and it was free and I just went there and they they got me, you know. So, that's great. You know, it was something that I thought would be valuable to have just as a added safeguard. you know, we're into safety and redundancy in the gun community. And so, that's just kind of something I thought would be helpful.
Okay. But this segment, we want people to know about the insurance. And we have an insurance professional here that's been in the business for almost 20 years. As far as CCW coverage and insurance goes, there really is no such thing. You get the um legal defense fund, and that going to give you the warm and fuzzy, and God willing, it's going to give you um some type of benefit if if you need it. Hopefully, you never do. But as far as insurance goes, the California State Commission has not recognized any CCW cover insurance. So there is no such thing. So when they say that that's insurance, it's mainly a legal defense fund. So So what we would do is if a client of mine had a claim, they would call the office, file the claim, and we would see obviously they would go to the claim process and see if it was covered. I mean, all different things factored into that. Yeah. Many different things. So I'm not going to say it wouldn't be covered, but you know, it would definitely open up a claim. So that's where I would start as home owners. And of course, if you have this type of policy, that's, you know, depending on what's on there and depending on, you know, do you just It's all legal. Is it a big Yeah, it's all legal assistance. It's not like they're not covering damage or anything or bodily injury or anything like you need a lawyer. We're going to cover that. So, just legalist and and they'll provide you with lawyers, okay? And that's that's huge, too, because you're going to need somebody that's an expert in that field. You know, you may get um a criminal defense lawyer, you may get another lawyer that doesn't understand about the right to carry and the rules and regulations, which in California are hard to keep up with. Yeah. No, they change every day.
Um, speaking of change, real fast before we move on to the next subject, I want to cover Assembly Bill 1127, which we talked about a couple episodes back or last episode. We were under the impression that that thing has uh definitely passed, and it may pass. However, I just looked it up yesterday. Um it it had some action on the 28th of this month in May and it has not yet passed the assembly. It's still under review. Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. So, um just to let you know that that assembly bill 1127 is basically the let's get rid of Glocks in California bill or the let's get rid of guns that may be able to be converted into a machine gun pistol or was that our our minority report or minority report law? That's a good way to put it. Um uh so that has not yet passed, but it is under review in the assembly and it looks like there's a very good chance that it may. So, um ridiculous.
Okay, Jimmy, you want to talk about a 1911 or anything? Uh, sure. Go for it. This one here is one of the customers builds. uh thing is when we build a full 1911, uh we also offer when they want a deep cleaning, they can bring it in and we'll uh give it a good deep clean. This one is a 38 Super that I built for the customer. It's a hybrid cuz it's built on a Colt officer frame and the slide and barrel are a commander sized. Uh again, it's 38 super and the customer wanted something completely different not you know a carry pistol. He just wanted something cool that not people really have out there. So what we did is we bobbed off the Beavertell safety and blended it in with the frame tangs and then we blended the back of the slide with the frame and then cut a flat hammer. It just doesn't add to it. It just looks has a different look. And then we serrated the rear of the slide, matched the serration to the rear of that site. And I custom cut these sights. The rear sight, this front sight is a a custom cut uh front sight blank that we put a 14 karat gold rod in there. So that really shines like in light. It just bing. Yeah, I can see it. Yeah, it's nice. And we did a flush cut and deep crown on the barrel. That looks tight. Oh, yeah. We did a ball cut that matched with the bottom of the frame dust cover. And I mean, we did a lot of stuff to this. I opened up the mag well for him. Uh he really doesn't like checkering like grippy stuff. So we just blended the back of this main spring house. was oversized main spring house and we blended the back of it and chamfered the bottom so it helps if you were to carry it. It kind of breaks up the silhouette a little bit. Uh gave it a little bit of an undercut. And the mag release, what I like to do is with extended mag releases, I cut a back angle on it and then serrate it because it gives you a kind of a more of a natural feel when you're releasing it. Um, it's a tight fit. It's right at three lbs. But yeah, it was a fun build to do cuz it's just something different. Not really anybody has it. It's It's uh shoots like a dream. Yeah. I mean, it really accurate for a compact for a smaller pistol. It was accurate. I mean, I think you shot it and Oh, it's smooth. Anthony shot it and it's it's surprisingly accurate for like a smaller it you would think of it as a fullsized or even maybe a you know a six or seven inch handles real well. It's an incredible balance on it. It's really accurate. Well, some of the stuff you do with the rails and the frame to fit to slide. That's something that um I think you have a video on that now, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's and that's the longest video too, isn't it? No, it's like seven minutes. The Kimber one is longest one. Yeah. Well, it's it's incredibly educational for those that don't understand uh the type of handwork that goes into these pistols when they are crafted in such a way. Currently, a machine just can't do that because you're you're literally sitting at a vice with a hammer for long long periods of time getting each angle to this level of perfection for these things to slide. And you're getting the microns and the measurements down to where they're in the negatives. Yeah. Well, yeah. Like, well, with the Kimber, that's when uh the customer wanted it old school, so we did the peen and and squeeze of the frame. Uh cuz usually like this will uh we uh TIG weld the frame or the frame rails and then cut it down. I true the uh inside the slide rails and and the raceway. So, I true them so they're not different, you know, width or one size bigger than the other. I make sure that it's all one square and then I will cut the frame rails to match the slide raceways after they're TIG. So we take it make them oversized and then we cut it down to match. I mean, it's not zero cuz zero doesn't go into zero basically. So you know you have one side the the rails are cut about a thousand less than the raceway so it'll fit in there and guide smoothly. And the way you want to get it is you don't want to make it feel like it's grinding or so tight. You want to get it where it actually feels like it's riding on ball bearings so it has that natural glide to it. Yeah. When you were when you were doing the action, it looked smooth. Yeah. I've learned quite a bit from Jim in here with his 1911 craftsmanship. Um I've been shooting 1911s for years and years and years, but I've never been down to the molecules. No scratchiness or anything in an incredible piece of machinery. We glued the whole thing. The flats are uh the mirror polish. The rounds are the matte. It's clean. I like that.
Um, I want to talk about electricity. Um, a It's butter, baby. It's Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's an awesome gun. It feels great to shoot, too. It's incredible. Um, I want to talk about electricity. There's big things going on in our little town. Um, so Ben knows a lot about this, Sher knows a lot about this, and let me just tell you my experience as a consumer, okay? Uh, you know, PG& is the largest private, uh, electrical company in America by far. It's possible. It's the world. Um, been around for a long time and there's been rapid changes as of recent with rate uh, changes and different ways that they draw your energy and give your energy back and solar has a lot to deal with that. Um, solar has been sweeping mainly California. I think there's a lot of stuff that this state does uh that kind of makes it the tip of the spear. You know, some of it I disagree with and some of it I agree with as a as a resident here. Um, but there's definitely been a lot of benefits offered by the government um to try and get uh consumers to go to solar for clean energy. I did my house um in 2018. I believe it was 2018. Um and I have not paid for a kilowatt since uh until last month I had my trueup bill and it surprised me. So I asked Ben to come on over and last year. Um I also noticed that my shop bill was incredible. Well, you guys can feel I've got the AC on right now. I feel nice and comfortable on 103 day today. And it's the second month, I'm sorry, the second month that I've had um the SIG solar uh panels installed. Um, I'm down, I think, to a quarter of the bill. So this time last year, I was at almost $700 and um yeah, so it's even less than a quarter, right? Because now I'm only at 168 projected for my payment on the 9th um last month. So the it solar got completed in April, late April. Uh the May bill was 156 and this June bill is um yeah on June the N. So I'm sorry the the April bill uh and May bill because I guess they combine them was 156. This next upcoming bill is projected for 168. So it's quite a bit of savings. Um PG& has uh made a lot of changes very very rapidly very recently. Um, I'm going to let Ben talk a little bit about it and then I want Sher to talk about it as well because, um, the city of Oakdale has recognized that. Um, and they've entertained possible an MID change, which in my opinion, that's kind of a long shot, but I'm very happy that the city is at least entertaining that. Wait, switching to MID? Can Can I chime in a little bit? Yeah, please, please.
All right. So, thank you for having me here today. I got a lot of information to share. I'll do the best I can to share it all within this short amount of time. So, even though this came to council right now and it's all over social media and it's a hype, this actually didn't start right now. This started uh with Steve Medlin, Rob Gilbert, Vent Zamaron, and this is straight from Steve Medlin's mouth. So, he he he, you know, the man downtown 20 years ago, and they analyzed it and they were going to use the railroad track uh for the easement obstacle was under the tracks by 108120 by the cowboy museum. um that was their big obstacle there. So, that stopped that. Another thing, uh, when we did, uh, Third Avenue project, which you and I, we know what we went through with that. Yes. And then P. Jenny, um, said, "Hey, now you got to put underground wires and do this and do that, and then it extended that, um, uh, project." If anybody doesn't know what Shar's talking about right now, um, the Third Avenue project was on the books for a long time. When I got onto the city council with her, and she was already on the council, she was very well educated on it. We ended up implementing that and going through about a year and two months, right, of It was a long time. Yeah, it was a long time of of restoring uh Third Avenue and then Pinny came in and said, "Hey, you have to do this now. We have to put all different wires, all that." So anyway, it prolonged our project, but that's a big thing. So it was also talked about then. So this has been talked about for years. Nobody's been able to do it, but I'm really glad that our um I'm glad that our interimm city manager brought that up. So you want me to give you some highlights? You want to let Ben chime in? Yeah, absolutely. I want to let um Ben chime in on this as well because he's he's more educated. He's been doing SIG solar for a long time. So he he when you give these highlights, you know, as far as PG& goes and as far as your utility goes right now, right now the city has not uh switched over and don't think that we got fire going by. Don't think that um this is something that is definitively going to happen. This is just the city entertaining uh an alternative other than PG&E. Uh so with that, you know, solar has been very important to try and deter some of these raises and these costs uh from the consumer. So yeah, you guys you guys go for it. Yeah. Um I think that would be amazing if it was attainable. Um and I think there's a chance there. Um and you know, everybody says, "Oh, wouldn't that hurt your guys' business?" No, we're we have such a big footprint. I want people in Oakdale in my community have the best rates possible. There's people in like Riverbank and Modesto that that have you guys too which is MI. We we sell a lot of MID. They're raising their rates too. Um but one thing I kind of wanted to highlight on why this is such a big top of topic of conversation the mid switch and hand inand the reason why we're so busy right now is traditionally historically it's been about a 5% rate increase every single year. And then in 2021, um, ironically, when the new CEO just got hired, it went from 5.1 in 2020. In 2021, it went to 8.7. And then our new CEO got to work. Um, her job as the CEO of a publicly traded company is to increase the share share holders value. So, what happened in 2022 is an 18.1% increase. In 2023, a 13.2% increase. And 2024 to present, we're at 17.76. So in 5 years, the utility rates alone have gone up 62.8%. So we're projected to be a dollar a kilowatt hour by 2030. So what are we right now? We're at about 70 cents per kilowatt hour in peak rates in the summer. And do you know what MID is? Um MID is a fraction of that. So people in mid are enjoying low low energy bills but they are increasing their rates just like big brother PG Genie is. So a lot of the reasons people call us is they're saying hey I'm not I'm not struggling with my mortgage. I'm not struggling with my household bills. P Gen is going to put me out of my home. And so when I talk to these people and I say, "Hey, look, I can offset that bill with a lower bill and it locks it in and insulates you from rate increases." That's the reason that solar is so big. You know, they they talk about the environmental impacts and all that stuff. That's all great, but the bread and butter of solar is to save money. So I always ask people, I'm not that old, but I do remember when gas was $2 a gallon. I really miss that, right? It was like that in Arkansas last week. Yeah. Yeah.$2.45. That's right. Yeah, that's got to be nice. I just drive over there just to fill up my tank. Yeah, I know. Um, but yeah, you can do that with your energy. You can lock in that price where right about where you're at right now and insulate yourself from the rate increases. So, you know, the record profits, you know, $2.5 billion last year, record profits, and they're still justifying over 15% rate increases. It's just wrong. So, I know PG& is like everybody's big boogeyman in this area, but there's really only one other option, and that's to produce your own energy. So, that's the reason we're so busy. That's the reason I'm here to talk about, you know, financed the solar in 2018. Um, I'm on a very low interest rate. I think it's like 2.9% fixed or something. And those interest rates were available back then. I want to say my entire um unit a 20 or a 25 year loan. I'm not sure, but $50 something,000 for that thing for my home. I paid cash for the one here because the interest rates aren't what they were before and I have a much smaller um panel base and everything here. Uh, but yeah, my payment per month is like 319 and it's fixed. And um I would say that uh judging by some of my comparable neighbors that complain about their rates for the house the same size and everything, you know, they're they're just atrocious. You know, $1,000 and all that, you know, I mean, that's a mortgage. Um I get people that come in that utilize their PG& bills uh for the state of California Department of Justice uh for their secondary proof of residency and these things are exceeding their mortgage. You know, it it's incredible where you get people um in the greater side of town that have the mid already with a larger home and um their PG& bills are a quarter. I'm sorry, not their PG. They're mid, thank you, are a quarter of the cost of of some of these comparable homes. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. MI Well, yeah. Jimmy's got Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you don't have solar. That's why I keep it. That's why I keep How much was your bill? He's got kids and dogs and everything else. And two stories, six bedrooms, a pool, all that. It's uh right about it's been actually which is weird. It's feels like it's dropped cuz it's been about 180 a month. Are you kidding me? I'm dead serious. I'm dead serious. It just started summer, so it'll probably jump up, but the last uh just paid it two weeks ago was about 180. Yeah, that's not bad. Yeah, we we we don't do a lot of MID jobs, but if if we're looking at like agricultural properties with like wells and, you know, trees and things like that. A lot of people in the rural areas of MID are still utilizing solar and, you know, getting those big giant ground mounts to to cut those costs even with MID. So, I mean, it would be great for our community to have that opportunity to to pay less. Oh, yeah. Like that. That would be that would be amazing. That's why you've asked you've you've said why'd you move to Oakdale? I was like, are you kidding me? Yeah. Hey, before that election to talk to you about too, Jimmy, the other day we were talking about the bills and um he as a riverbank uh resident he literally said like, "Well, that's a good reason not to move to Oakdale." Yeah. Oh, man. I hear that all the time. That's rough, Jimmy. That's rough, Jimmy. Just saying.
No, I I'd like to chime in a little bit. So, I already told you the history in that. So, uh Gary Lamar, our intern city manager, brought this up, and I'm just going to give you a little bit of highlights from his background. Uh we're with P Gen of course um and causing inconsistencies in service and pricing. MID offers lower electric rates. um interim city manager met or had conversations with MID SSJID oid Vel Bernett and Associates Oakdoer Modesto B Telmundo ABC10 and um and just gathered a bunch of information. So the average uh cost PG& per household per year is $5,046. Okay, annual cost for mid $1,962. So, this could be the annual savings of about $3,84 per household. But the big thing, that's huge. But the big thing I want to make sure everybody is aware is sure that sounds good, but a lot of these people that are reading on our social media are thinking this is going to happen to them today and tomorrow. And that is not a because let me tell you, if you're gonna say I'm gonna save 300 bucks a month on just switching from one company to another, take AT&T or Verizon. If you're going to switch from one or whatever company uh to another and you're going to save that money, you're going to want to do it. But guess what? That other company or that company that you have is going to charge you an arm and a leg to get, you know, to cancel that. So, so just some highlights there. So, there Sher just to give you guys an idea what she's talking about these savings per household. If you if you got approximately 7,000 households in here with PG&E, the total annual savings would be $21.5 million. Well, it would take quite a while to get So, I'm going to get into the nuts and bolts of that. So, that's a big thing and people are seeing this all over social media and they're getting excited. They're going to save all this money, but I also want to make sure and be very sensitive. So, I have been talking to different reps, different places, and a few MID reps. One guy said that he he had an Escalon a pump, a very easy pump and it took over 18 months to get this connected. Said it was an a pump with 40 acres across the street. The fac the facility was already there but it took that change 18 months for a very simple pump. So there's a lot of different things that go in involved in this. So the first is a challenge. PG& department would have to uh would charge the customer to depart from the system. The formula is very complicated. um he couldn't even explain it to me. It's very complicated. We didn't go into that. Next thing is there was an easement or a rightaway encroachment permits. That's a challenge to um existing and minimize conversion. And then uh another thing is cost of mid extending lines each home and business. It's a huge huge huge cost. We don't even know how to put a number with that Freddy. Then the timeline challenge, right? How long will it take to do this? Another thing is power quality. So MID is now in Oakdale served by the substation at the old Hershey plant. Remember that way back when? The old Hershey plant. And then uh if say there's a power pull, somebody hits a power pole there. So that whole area of MID customers goes out because there's not another subservice station. So that whole area goes out. So that's this is like a multi-year thing that would have to be in like stages or or phases if it you know how much is it going to cost to bring another build a new substation and one that would back it up. So that would be a big thing and then um you know an ID cost could be tens of 20 millions. um that's a totally unknown cost right now. So that's pretty much the guts of it. It can I ask you is is MID buying the grid? Is that this is we're just dipping the toes in the sand right now. We don't know anything. It's so we don't know if they would get PG&E stuff or if they would have to buy their own. All you've done is the city is say, "Hey, we want to entertain it." Yeah. We want to see how much it's going to cost for that feasibility study. And that's coming up to council this Monday night, 7:00 p.m. This Monday night, 7:00 p.m. to say, "Hey, it's going to cost $75,000 to even do the study." So if once we do the study, if the council approves it, right, citizens go there and give their P, you know, peace of mind and if the council approves it and then P Gen or MI comes back and says, "Oh, it's going to cost you $2 billion or $5 million or whatever it is." It's still got to come back to council and it's still got to go through the P Gen process. So this is just like I said, it's if like wildfire on social media, people think they're going to save money right away. And if it even happens, if right a big if, I mean, it would be awesome, right? Kudos to our interim city manager. Kudos to the people in the past that have brought this. Well, kudos to all you guys for at least entertaining this. I'm really happy. I mean, it would be, by the way, anybody that's listening to this, you're probably listening. And the uh Monday night uh agenda meeting that Sher's talking about right now probably happened like a day or two ago because this episode won't be released until Tuesday or Wednesday and that'll be after the Monday night. So, yeah. So anyway, it's all over social media. But but the big thing is is it's getting people excited and people that are already worried about their pocketbook and looking to put put food on their table. And that's one of my concerns is it's wildfire right now. And you're thinking, you and your wife are thinking, man, I'm going to save 300 bucks a month at least and my neighbors are going to save it and this is going to help my family. But in reality, if it even happens, it's going to be years and years and years down the road. So it's a big hype and I get it. Everybody wants to save money, but there's a lot more that goes into it. So, sure, you know, I would just encourage people that watch this to reach out to your city council, reach out to your intern city manager, you know, show up at the meetings and really get on the city website and and read the agenda. And you can even do it uh an email works if it's in writing. It happened, you know. So, anybody, you know, one thing when I was on council, I told everybody, look, if it's not in writing or recorded, it really didn't happen. So, make sure that it's in in writing. You don't have, we encourage you to go to the the meetings, but we understand everybody's busy. When you have time off, you want to have your time off. Um, an email works as well because they'll archive those emails. They'll take them into consideration and they'll even mention some of them at those city councils. So, if you get a group of people or enough people, please um I think it's great that the city's entertaining this and I look forward to seeing the the result. Yeah, I look forward to it, too. Yep. Fingers crossed. For sure. I'd love to save some money and I love for my mama to save some money, too. and everybody else. You know, funny story. There was a a lady that came into my office the other day and she was talking that they have solar panels now at the uh the senior complex here on A Street. Excuse me. And she said now she gets to bake her family cookies and turn the cooler on when not having to worry about turning it on. Yeah. And you know, for me or you us, we can't imagine that, right? We really can't because we do our thing without even thinking about it. But for a lady coming into my office saying that, that's really a big that's really a big deal. We don't think about that. So, just being able to bake cookies for her family or turn the air on when it's hot like this, it's a big deal. So, it really is. Kudos to solar. Kudos to solar.
No, it helps. I I see my customers and they come up to me with hugs and smiles and they're like, "Ben, you you freed up so much money." Yeah. Right there. And you only have eight panels on this shop right now. We're gonna expand that and we'll get that bill down to zero, just like my house, you know. And um and everybody that does have solar too, please there's um I'm so terrible with electronics and everything, but there's apps that you can get to where you can monitor your usage. That kind of needs to happen these days, too, because even if you get like 110 120%. There's times when they may not be clean or, you know, the system may not be working properly or something like that. And that's when P Gen comes in and they bam, they get it. And uh like I said, I've had those suckers for years since 2018. Last month in April was the first time I actually had a positive true up where I had to pay a little bit of money. So this month it's looking like it's going to be negative and it's projected until next year actually in 26 where it's projecting a negative uh result so I won't have to pay anything. But no solar is really good. Um I definitely encourage it. We've we've got some really great software now. Um the way that it was when I got into solar was I just take your yearly kilo kilowatt hour usage and I build a system based on that. Now, the programs that we're utilizing, um, it's down to increments of 1 hour throughout the year. So, I can custom tune just like you do that 1911 right there with a solar system. Good comparison. That gets you Yeah. Right. gets you as close to that money spot where we want to be. So, like, you know, things have changed and and now the big thing on those apps, it's not so much the monitoring, it's the alerts. So, you're able to get a text message if there is a problem with your system and then you call your friendly neighborhood rep and I go to battle for you and I get the service guys out there within a day. So, there is no more, oh, my system hasn't been working for a year if you're utilizing the software properly. So, it is very very user friendly. Even even my 90-year-old customers are looking at their phones and they're understanding what's happening in real time. So, my people love just sitting there and going, "Oh, I'm cranking out 11 kilowatts right now. Isn't that awesome?" And I get texts like that every day and I'm just like, "Yeah, good." You know, I told you. But it's it's a great thing and it's an industry that I love being in and I just like making people happy and saving people money, you know? It's that's the nuts and bolts of it. It's the way to do it.
So, hey, anybody got anything else? No. I just want to say thank you for having me on here today. It's pretty cool. I get to be with you three guys. Four guys, sorry. And I wore my hat just for you today. And I want to say thank you, Ben, for my new Sig Solar hat. Absolutely. Heck yeah. Thanks for timing. Thanks for my Fred's Firearms hat. Yeah. All right, everybody. Well, thanks for chiming in. Uh FredsFire Firearms.com, gunbroker. Go to Fred's Firearms and Fred's Firearms at 136 North Yuseite. So, other than that, thanks everybody for being here and subscribe. Thank you for choosing Oakill. Yep. We'll see you on the next episode. Bye everybody. Take care. Bye. All right. [Music]