City preps multi-year move to radio-based water meters, monthly billing

It's a reasonably quiet week for City Council -- though Rolling Hills will see some action in the form of an option to developer McCormack Baron Salazar for the first phase of its redevelopment proposal, currently in an funding application phase (more on this tomorrow.)

One item that caught our interest at BCR: A bid report and acceptance memo for the first phase of the proposed residential water meter replacement program.

Those folks you see walking through your neighborhood, pickin' up your water meter plate and readin' off those numbers every two months? A thing of the past -- at least in pedestrian form.

The City is prepared to let a contract for first of four phases to replace existing water meters with new automated meters that vastly reduce the labor required to collect the data.

The revised program will see a fleet of ten vehicles and drivers/meter readers cleaved into a force one-third the size, equipped with technology that will allow all 80,000 water meters to be read in a 5-10 day period.

Currently, the ten-person fleet gets around to those meters every two months, meaning it takes longer for the City to get paid for its water -- and that residents see how much water they (or their leaks) are consuming only every other month.

City staff also note the greening function the readers will have, reducing the mileage driven to collect water usage data.

The cost? The first phase of the project, for roughly 20,000 meters, will run $4.4 million.

The project's expected to be completed over the coming two to three years -- and the tab is being picked up by water subscribers, courtesy of last year's water rate increase and tiering program.

No word yet on what technology the automated meter reading technology will be used; some allow readers to just walk by the meters without stopping to lift, bend and read, while others literally allow a car to just drive up the street and use radio frequencies to pick up water usage levels.

(If the City's using the latter method, a friendly amendment: any chance those drivers can scan for potholes, nuisances like commercial vehicle parking, and other zoning violations while they drive? 

Given the GPS and technology integration in many automated reader systems, it's often possible to have drivers just motor on down a route and have the computer alert them if they have any missed stations in their zone. Seems like getting drivers on double duty would help the City in a number of ways.)

Comments

[Philip]

"The first phase of the project, for roughly 20,000 meters, will run $4.4 million."

It should be pretty easy to extrapolate the total cost of the project from this, which leads to the obvious question: What is the ROI for the pilot or a full roll out and how was it calculated?

[Myers Sugg]

I really like this idea. The ROI will take some time I'm certain. I'm hoping that with monthly billing, the City will provide electronic billing to customers, as monthly paper billing will be more costly (postage, paper, etc.)

As many of you know, Duke Energy & PSNC Energy already use this method for meter reading.

Myers

[Todd P]

Hopefully this will put an end to the 60 day billing cycles that slip into 63 or 65 days. Those few extra days are at the highest rate and may make some extra dollars for the water department, but are a sneaky little penalty for homeowners.

[crc]

If it's the vehicle method, then the water-meter readers can be attached to garbage trucks... have the meter reading data read weekly with NO additional fleet.

[Ellen RN]

HAH! I'd like to see what happens with this but I'm not holding my breath that it will be successful. We had an outdoor irrigation system that was connected to a separate water meter turned off (as in, officially disconnected) more than 5 years ago and once every six months we get a notice threatening us with service cessation if we don't pay the bill for that meter. This summer, after repeated emails, calls, and letters, we succeeded in having the meter removed (as in, dug up). In the past 3 months the curb in front of my house has been dug up multiple times by water department employees looking for the meter because they can't get a reading for the bill! It would be funny if it weren't so pitiful. I hate to be pessimistic but if I were a betting woman I wouldn't bet on such a huge, costly change being managed well.

In the meantime, I keep putting the notices in the shredder...

[Eric W]

I'm right there with you to both integrate GPS and have the drivers serve a higher order purpose than just collecting meter data. With proper training, these city workers can be going by every house in Durham and checking on basic quality of life impacts in the street and between the street and the house. Now, if only we knew whether those potholes they spotted were supposed to be filled in 3 days, 5 days, 7 days, or 10 days....

[Jeremy T]

Good deal. I'd always wondered how this process worked before, but by some astounding coincidence I caught the guy reading the meter on the last billing cycle. Pretty surprising how low-tech the old technique was, although I wonder how much real savings will be realized by the modernization; even if they can cut the number of employees in half, that's only 5 people off the payroll, and I'm guessing they're not super high paying jobs either.

Now they just need to give me a way to pay this bill automatically, and without having to know sekret codes to find my bill online. I'm usually several months late paying since there's no automatic billing option and the penalty for being late is trivial.

[Myers Sugg]

Jeremy T:

The City does offer an automated payment option, so you could avoid being late. I participate in this, and every 2 months, my checking account is drafted 2 weeks or more after my bill arrives in the mail. It is indicated on my bill "DO NOT PAY." I've been doing this for years, and have never had a billing/payment mishap. It is called that Automatic Draft Option, or something like that.

Myers

[Jeremy T]

Myers:

Intriguing, I'll look into it. Does it work with credit cards? There's surely some reason I'm not using it, though that reason could easily be that I looked for a few minutes without finding it before becoming distracted by a shiny object and giving up.

[Myers Sugg]

CC's are not a part of the bimonthly checking account Automatic Draft Program. You provide authorization on a form, and give the billing office your routing & checking account number from your financial institution. You continue to receive your bimonthly billing as you normally do, but a note it provided that says "DO NOT PAY, Account will be drafted on or around XX/XX/XX." If there is an issue with your The rest is magic....

Myers

[S Gwaltney]

They take 3 weeks to cash my check. I'm not sure why. I probably only get my bill 4 times per year, too.