WELCH—The Welch Town Council met for its regular monthly meeting tonight and, as its first order of business after a presentation of new meter reading equipment, approved its purchase at a cost of not more than $5,500.
Since 2007, public works staff members have been using a third-party meter reading tool that is not approved by town water meter manufacturer, Sensus. The equipment approved for purchase today is manufactured by Sensus, thus it should have no interoperability issues. It’s also designed to work seamlessly with the town’s existing billing software. The new meter reading wand and mobile PC unit communicate wirelessly via bluetooth and are upgradeable if the town ever elects to add radio transmitters to water meters so that they can be read by radio signal rather than touch, as the existing system does. There was some discussion about possibly upgrading to radio transmitting meters now, but trustees opted to continue with the current touch system. The meter reading equipment upgrade would have been twice as much for the radio equipment, plus each meter would need to be outfitted with a radio transmitter at a cost of $155 per meter head, almost $62,000 for all meters on the town system. The trustees reasoned that such an upgrade was too costly at this time but expressed hope that a grant might be secured to make it possible in the future.
This new purchase should alleviate many of the problems public works staff has had with misreads and interoperability of the third-party meter reading wand. It will not give town workers the ability to read through snow, though, as that can only be accomplished with the radio transmitting equipment. The technology is rapidly advancing, though, and the representative who spoke to the council anticipates cheaper radio systems to be forthcoming. The newly purchased reading equipment will allow workers to know immediately whether a meter has been correctly read, rather than after the data has been offloaded back at town hall like the current system. That, combined with the anticipated new billing cycles, which will give a two-week cushion between reads and billing, should resolve many of the issues that have plagued the public works department of late and delayed billing.
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