05-17-21-WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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AGENDA ITEM – 1F MEMORANDUM DATE: May 17, 2021 TO: Honorable Mayor and City Councilmembers Dave Perrault, City Administrator FROM: Gayle Bauman, Finance Director SUBJECT: Water Meters Discussion Budgeted Amount: Actual Amount: Funding Source: N/A N/A Water and/or Sewer Utility Fund Council Should Consider Council should consider discussion of water meter interference issues the City has been experiencing since November 2020, and direction regarding two utility bill disputes presented to the Council during recent Public Inquiries/Informational portions of council meetings. Background Sometime around 12/31/2020, when staff was working on the 4th quarter utility billing for 2020, it became apparent that we weren’t receiving reads on about 300 of our 2600+ meters, mostly in the southern portion of the City. Staff needed to complete the billing cycle per City Code and went about estimating the 4th quarter reads for properties based on usage amounts from the past 3 years. Staff met with employees from Metering & Technology Solutions who deal with the meters, transmitters and collectors in conjunction with Badger Meter. It was determined that the collectors and meters were operating properly and that the likely cause was signal interference. Metering & Technology Solutions suggested that the city have Ancom conduct an RF Study in an attempt to locate the source of any potential interference to the automated water meter reporting system. Ancom had recently worked with another City on identifying interference issues. As staff was preparing the 1st quarter utility billing for 2021, it became apparent that we were still not getting reads on about 150 properties. A note was included in the 03/26/21 Admin Update indicating that letters were being sent out to these properties in an attempt to get accurate meter reads for the billing cycle. The City received about 95 responses to their inquiry so only about 55 accounts needed to be estimated. The Ancom Study has since been completed and it was determined that the only likely source of interference was an elevated noise floor as there were no other discernable sources of interference present during the testing.