Belle aldermen tabled a discussion on Dec. 8 to replace water meters within the city limits — opting to comb through the product warranties — before deciding how to proceed with the project that is expected to exceed $300,000 before it is finished.

Following discussion, aldermen agreed 3-1 to have a special meeting at 6 p.m. on Dec. 22 at the Board Chambers to discuss the warranties and decide on a meter bid.

The discussion began when Public Works Director Tony Baretich told board members in November that the city’s meters were only half working, and that 2.4 million gallons of water were unaccounted for between meter usage and the billing system.

Baretich proposed that officials vote to update the water meters. It was approved to send the project out for bid and open them at the next meeting. Baretich warned officials prior to opening the bids to not be shocked at the prices of the meters themselves.

“Before you open it, I have generated the numbers — I don’t know what (the bids) are, but I can promise you they will be shocking,” Baretich said. “I also generated some numbers of what the cost is versus what we have billed if you want to know what we are potentially losing.”

Baretich said he wished he had the exact numbers to quantify the cost of the project versus how much more income the city would generate with new meters. He wouldn’t be able to say how much for sure unless they pulled and replaced at least six of the old meters with new ones, then kept track of the usage for a couple of months. He added that the $69,952 installation bid from TNT Underground Construction in Bland doesn’t allow the city to be hands-off on the project. They would still have to complete quite a bit of work.

Alderman Sundi Jo Graham asked Baretich how long it would take the Public Works Department to install the meters themselves.

“In all honesty, if you really wanted us to do it, you are looking at 12 to 14 months,” Baretich said.

“We don’t have a borer, but we have shovels and spades. We could do it, but we are looking at a year plus probably for us to make that happen.”

The board made a motion to table the installation bid until after they heard the meter bid.

“We have three bids on the water meter systems,” said Mayor Steve Vogt.

Baretich said they bid the meters two ways -- one a complete basic system (AMI system) that would allow readings, disconnects and reconnects to take place at city hall by the clerk. The other is a drive-by system with a computer that remotely reads the meters, similar to what is there now.

“Like now, we would go out with a little machine that reads the meters, drive around in a truck with it and bring the information back. Then Frankie uploads it to a computer,” Baretich said. “On each one of these, we broke them down into a line item: how many one-inch meters, how many two-inch meters, how many of the three-quarter-inch meters and how many of the three-quarter-inch meters did we want with the option of the automatic shut-off.”

The first bid is from Core & Main in Columbia, Mo., for a Sensus Meter system.

“Part of their bid, they had to provide us with references that we could contact to see how these meters worked for them,” Baretich said.

The bid included the warranty for the meter as well as yearly maintenance since the readers require yearly attention.

“The Sensus Meters have two options on the maintenance,” Baretich began. “The monthly option to maintain the software and meters is 79 cents a meter which works out to be $690 a month. The second option is a flat rate of $2,495 yearly for the software support fee. None of these are required.”

Alderman Tony Gieck said option two broke down to $207 a month versus the $690 monthly fee.

Core & Main bid the following on the two meter systems.

“The base read system from Sensus is $275,288 and the drive-by radio-read system from Sensus is $258,394,” Baretich said. “Not as much as a difference as I had expected.”

Baretich said they provided references for communities similar in size to Belle and both are close enough to visit to see what they have or what they are doing.

The second bid is from MidWest Meter in Denver, Ill., who bid on a fixed network system and drive-by system. They bid on both options with two different levels of meters.

“Midwest bid the base-read system at $246,689.50 and the drive-by system at $230,779.50,” Baretich said. “Drive-by mobile reading maintenance, like the type we normally do, is $2,665.44 for a year and the fixed net-work yearly maintenance is $2,927.40.”

The third bid was from Schulte Supply out of St. Peters, Mo.

“Their base-read system is $237,044.30 and their drive-around system is $199,164.30,” Baretich began.

The software maintenance warranty is $2,100 annually.

Baretich said Core & Main’s system is expandable, so if they decided in five years that they are tired of doing the drive-by system the company can come out and put up an antenna to make it radio read.

“The only thing I can say about going with the base-read system is that, yes, it is kinda cool, kinda nice, kinda efficient — but you still have antennas on top of towers — lightning, and other unforeseen storms and lightning strikes you are going to get into in the future. Not saying it can’t be fixed, but I would hate for lightning to strike two days before we are supposed to be putting in a budget read meter,” Baretich said.

All three company options are upgradeable.

“Before we make a decision on this, I would definitely like to call and get some information from people who are using them day in and day out,” Baretich said.

He added that the company the city is currently with has not responded to their request for support.

“They know we are having trouble and they have still not gotten back with us — the current meter people,” Baretich said. “Most cities around us have gone with Core & Main. I feel that they would be better with problems. I also think we should look at the warranties.”

Baretich explained some of the mechanical differences between the meters to the board, and the support available for each company.

“What we currently have now is a 10 in 10. We have a 20-year warranty, but we have a 10-year replacement and a 10 year pro-rated,” Baretich said. “I believe they all boast the 20-year warranty, I’d really like to dive in and comb through that.”

He added that he believes Sensus has a full 20-year replacement on their meters.

Graham asked Hicks if she wanted the base-rate or drive-by meters. Hicks said she didn’t have an opinion. Baretich said he didn’t think the base-rate system would be that beneficial since they aren’t spending that long to drive around and read the meters.

Vogt argued that the base-rate meters would save time and money because the clerk could disconnect and reconnect water at the touch of a button from the office instead of sending out city employees. Baretich said that benefit would be on a very small portion of their clientele, and would not benefit the city based on the cost difference.

“The price for a composite meter with no moving parts from Core & Main is $236 brand new,” Baretich said. “The price for a remote activation meter that we can turn on and off is $514.They are quite a bit more expensive and that is why I wanted to limit the amount we got.”

He reiterated that they are not removing all meters from basements, just replacing the drive-by system with the automatic system at residences that are regularly problematic. This will be especially helpful in apartment complexes, that way if apartment A doesn’t pay, they can shut off the one line instead of not being able to shut off any lines because there are four apartments on one water line. With the new system, they could shut the water off at just apartment A and not the others.

“This is also one of the places I brought up some years back because you can’t get in there to shut them off,” Hicks said. “Some of the landowners requested that they be able to shut off the water to those apartments, but they do not get shut off because the line runs to multiple apartments. Everyone else gets shut off, but these people get phone calls and get to carry on.”

Baretich added that they also don’t get the shut-off or reconnect fee that everyone else is charged.

“Not that we are about the reconnect fee, but other people are paying the fee,” Baretich said.

Baretich said the last time they used their system to get the water information, they spent five hours driving around, the system crashed, and they had to start over.

“It’s taking two to three days, two to three guys a day, to go through and read the water meters on our current drive-by system,” Baretich said.

Hicks said the system reads a little bit better than half and it is not the same meters that work or don’t work every month. Some months are better than others, and there is no rhyme or reason to what works.

“One month it showed that we were billing a trillion gallons of water, and we went back and found the mistake,” Baretich said. “If you are interested in more numbers, we can talk about it later.”

He showed the board that the difference between what Hicks is billing and how much well number three says it is pumping — asking them to keep in mind that the city buildings, parks and churches are not metered. He adds that they should be metered to keep track of water usage, even if they are not billed to account for the water.

“Take the month of August, according to our numbers, we used 6,824,000 gallons of water,” Baretich said. “Frankie’s bill was for 3,900,986 gallons of water — almost a difference of 41 percent.”

In September, they pumped 5,800,049 gallons of water and billed 3,100,078 gallons for a 54 percent difference in loss of water. The park was still open in September.

“To just be good stewards of our water and know where our water is going, it would be awfully handy to meter that,” Baretich said. “We still have a bunch of places that don’t have meters and I am not one-hundred percent sure how we are billing those. I have included those residences on the install bid too.

Alderman Jeanette Struemph asked if it was safe to say that about 35 percent of the city’s water is not being billed? Baretich said they could estimate less than that at 10 percent and still see a $30,000 increase in billing. He would like to say it would even double that.

Graham asked what the next step is and Baretich said he wants to comb through the warranties and maybe visit one or two of the cities that have meter systems they are interested in.

“It depends on how much you want me to dig into this,” Baretich said. “I will say the longer we take, the longer it takes. Probably a couple of months to get the meters and getting the guys scheduled. There is still a lot of leg work.”

Vogt asked if he knew of any grants or low-interest loans that would apply towards the project? Baretich said he spoke with Terris Cates from Integrity Engineering about the project and any grants would set them back at least two years and require a raise in water rates. He already estimates accurate readings will cause water rates to increase.

“I would accept a motion to accept the installation bid and table the meter bid for two weeks,” Vogt said.

Struemph said they could work on bank bids as soon as possible. Baretich said they could then make a final decision at the January meeting. Alderman Courtney Abel made a motion to approve Baretich to go through the warranties and bring back his suggestions to Vogt.

Gieck said he wasn’t going to vote to spend $360,000 at a special meeting. Abel added the special meeting to her motion. It was passed with a 3-1 vote with Gieck against.

Abel made a second motion to approve the installation bid from TNT Underground Construction to lock in the rate, which passed with a 4-0 vote.

A third motion was made to go out to bid for a loan for the project with a ballpark of $365,000 to $375,000 and passed with a 4-0 vote.

“You are sitting here talking about spending over half a million dollars in a special meeting — to spend that sum of taxpayers’ money at a special meeting —,” Gieck began.

Abel and Struemph said anyone can come to a special meeting too.

The special meeting will be held at the Board Chambers at 6 p.m. on Dec. 22.