06-20-22-WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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Page 1 of 2 AGENDA ITEM – 1D MEMORANDUM DATE: June 20, 2022 TO: Honorable Mayor and City Councilmembers Dave Perrault, City Administrator FROM: David Swearingen, P.E. Public Works Director / City Engineer Gayle Bauman, Finance Director SUBJECT: Water Meters Budgeted Amount: Actual Amount: Funding Source: N/A N/A Water Utility Fund Council Should Consider Council should consider hiring a consultant to evaluate the City’s existing metering system to provide a recommendation for replacement and transition. Background The City currently has 2,813 meters in its system. 2,512 are designated as Cycle 1 (mainly residential) and 301 are designated as Cycle 4 (mainly commercial). After reviewing our records, it appears as if 28 meters have been installed since January 2021 (19 new installs and 9 replacements). During this same period, we have also replaced 64 registers and/or endpoints in addition to the 19 new installs. Commercial meters in the City were replaced in 1997. Most residential meters in the City were replaced in 1999-2000. Residential meters were not replaced at that time if they were in good working order and less than 10 years old. This means that the majority of the meters in the City are at least 22 years old with some possibly being up to 32 years old. The Galaxy readers were replaced throughout the entire City in 2012. In late 2020 or early 2021, the City was notified that the Galaxy radio transmitter endpoints that were installed in 2012 would no longer be manufactured, therefore, there are no parts available for replacement if needed. The next option was to utilize endpoints that use cellular transmission. Public Works has been transitioning to the cellular endpoints as the radio endpoints fail. The radio endpoints are said to have a 20-year life before the batteries begin to fail, but we have also learned that if an endpoint struggles to send information to a “collector”, it will continue to try and send a signal which will use up battery life. This might be one of the reasons why Public Works has had to make replacements recently. A map has been included showing residential properties where we have had difficulty getting reads since May 2022. Registers and endpoints have been replaced on the majority of these.