Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
City council members on Feb. 14 voted to spend $7 million on an automated metering system for city utility customers.
The ordinance directed the city manager to award a contract to Core & Main, a San Antonio company, for automated meter infrastructure for the city.
After the agenda item was announced, Mayor Al Arreola asked for a motion. Councilman J.P. Sanchez made the motion to approve the ordinance, and Councilwoman Ernestina “Tina” Martinez gave the second.
When Arreola asked if there were any questions, Mayor Pro-tem Steve Webb asked, “These are the meters that we don’t have to have anybody go out and read, correct? And if we put this in place, what happens to the employees who go out and read meters?”
City Finance Director Alberta Barrett fielded the question.
“This plan is going to take about 18 months. Nothing’s going to change right away. It will take awhile to get all the meters in place. At the end of the day, when the project’s fully functional, the plan is not to terminate any employees. They’ll be relocated to a different department.
“Most of those are your billing, your meter readers, and they would more likely go to the water or wastewater departments, but we would not terminate their employment,” Barrett added.
“I guess the biggest question is, have we already budgeted for this amount?” Arreola asked Barrett.
“It was not in the original budget, but as I included in here, the options for funding, to pay for it,” Barrett replied.
In an informational packet provided to the council, Barrett outlined methods that could be used to pay for the new meters.
“And the options were?” Arreola asked.
“So, the biggest portion being the water. So, there’s a couple options here. One would be the $5 million that we’re including in the $27 million (certificates of obligation) would pay for the majority of the water portion of the project. We’re also applying through the Texas Water Development Board for a low-interest, but hopefully a grant, but we won’t know if it’s a grant or a low-interest loan, so we’re applying for that this next month, in March,” Barrett said.
“We will find out some time in August or September if they accept our project. If they do, then we have to make a formal application and at that point they’ll tell us what interest rate or if it will be a grant, so at that point we’ll know how we can proceed there. That would help pay for this project as well.
“And if that’s the route we go, then the money that we borrowed, that I first mentioned, through our COs, would go to other water improvements throughout the city, various projects, water or sewer.
“The gas portion, it would be the latter part of the project, and that could be funded from the excess fund balance in the gas fund, and that was included in there. So there would be no borrowing for that,” she added.
“Are we going to do it in layers or is it going to be all at once?” Arreola asked.
“It’s going to be in layers. Of course, they will start with the water portion first, and we’ll get it finished and then we’ll start with gas. Some of the meters that we already have, they’ll have certain sections of the town that they’ll do first, and some of those they can just do the attachments to the existing meters and then we already have the smart meters so we don’t actually have to go buy new meters,” Barrett said.
“For the older meters, yes, we’ll have to get new meters and they’ll have to be pulled, the old ones and installed with the newer,” she added.
“Are these going to be connected to phones, to smart phones, people who choose to?” Arreola asked.
Barrett asked a representative from Core and Main, the company that will do the meter work, to address the mayor’s question.
As the company representative made his way to the podium, Barrett added, “I know that we’ll have the software for the portals for the citizens to actually look at their meters and see if there is abnormal consumption, to see where they’re using their water or gas, what certain times of the day.”
“Now if there’s abnormal consumption would that be flagged and the consumer notified?” Arreola asked.
“I’m not exactly sure how to answer that except that I know that there is an app that you can access on your phone and also the customer portal. I’d have to confirm if they can go in and set notifications up, but I don’t know about the meter automatically emailing the customer or something like that. That’s something that would have to be set up, I believe, so I’d have to get more clarification on that. But the customer would have access to real-time, anytime,” the Core and Main rep told Arreola.
“The individual that made (a previous) presentation to us, I believe she said it would detect if there were issues on the line, like leaks and stuff like that,” Mayor Pro-tem Steve Webb noted.
“Yes, like on the main line, I believe so,” the rep told the council.
When Arreola called for the vote, six of the seven members of council voted in favor of the ordinance, with only Councilman Jim DeReus giving a dissenting vote.
After the meeting, DeReus said he had voted against the ordinance because he felt the measure was too costly and he had many questions about how long the meters will last, where the reassigned employees will go and the system’s cost-benefit ratio over time.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com .
