Board agrees to meter costs
By Steve Herring
Published in News on August 3, 2016 1:46 PM
MOUNT OLIVE -- The Mount Olive Town Board Monday night unanimously approved borrowing $226,053.80 to purchase 1,000 radio read meters.
The meters were the only item on the agenda. The meeting started at 6 p.m. instead of the usual time of 7 p.m. to allow commissioners to tour recent work at the Mt. Olive Pickle Co.
Two commissioners, Kenny Talton and Jerry Harper, were unable to attend, but both contacted Mayor Ray McDonald Sr. to voice their support even though they could not vote.
"We are asking you to spend some money to save some money," Town Manager Charles Brown said. "We know that we have aging water meters in the ground -- about 1,000 that are 30 to 40 years old."
It currently takes four to five days to read the meters manually. It is possible it could be done all in one day with the new system in which a signal from the meter is transmitted directly into a computer.
The town has already replaced 1,600 of the 2,600 mechanical water meters with radio read meters, he said.
"These meters become far less efficient over time," Brown said. "We have been attempting to replace about 100 of these a year."
The town has been budgeting about $25,000 annually for that, he said.
"We have looked at the water loss (reading) from these meters, and it is substantial," Brown said.
With that in mind the board is being asked to approve the loan through Southern Bank and Trust to replace the remaining 1,000 mechanical meters, he said.
It is a five-year loan with an interest rate of 3.25 percent. Annual payments will be $45,210.76.
"As I mentioned, we are currently budgeting $25,000 a year for water meter replacements anyway," Brown said. "We have done a conservative estimate on our water revenue loss (because of the old meters).
"We estimate from the 1,000 old meters in the ground that we are losing about $48,000 a year in revenue from those meters. So this will actually be a net gain in revenue for the town."
It will help the town stabilize its water and sewer rates so that the town does not have to look at rate increases going forward, he said.
The additional revenue will also help satisfy the state Local Government Commission by making the water/sewer system self-supporting, Brown said.
"Another reason we need to do this now, these old mechanical meters require somebody to go by, lift the lid off, take the reading off that meter and record that in a handheld computer," he said. "Those handheld computers are now outdated.
"They are getting ready to stop working. In order to replace those to keep the old meters in the ground, we are still going have to spend a significant amount of money, probably $20,000."
It just does not make economic sense to continue to use the handheld computers and keep the old meter in the ground, he said.
"I think it makes good business sense to do this," McDonald said. "You can put that computer in a car with someone who does not know one earthly thing about the water department and just ride the roads of Mount Olive and read every water meter in town."
It is "way less labor intensive," and it is more accurate, Brown said.
A conservative estimate is that it will take six months to replace the 1,000 meters. Brown said he thinks it can be done quicker.
For the customers the new meters will mean a substantially more accurate measurement and lessens the likelihood of an error, he said.
But that could mean an increase in the bill.