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STAN HUDY / LEADER-HERALD Exterior photo of Gloversville Town Hall at 3 Frontage Road in Gloversville. August 1, 2021.
By JASON SUBIK
The chief herald
Gloversville city council is due to vote tonight on a $ 2.2 million bond to purchase 6,000 new water meters.
General Councilor William Rowback Jr. is the sponsor of the resolution to borrow money for the new meters, and 1st Ward Councilor Marcia Weiss is the co-sponsor.
Rowback serves as a liaison with the city’s independently elected water board, which does not have the authority to borrow money on its own. He said the new meters are needed.
“The last time we received water meters was in 2010, and some of them were defective” he said. “We are getting approximately 6,000 water meters, which will cover all residents of the Town of Gloversville and water users in the Town of Johnstown.”
Gloversville Water Superintendent Anthony Mendetta said the faulty water meters were made by Master Meter Co. and the new ones will be made by the Neptune Technology Group.
“[The Master Meter water meters] were supposed to have a limited battery life of 20 years, but what we found, which is similar to what most people, the municipalities that I spoke with, saw, was that the batteries were on. to die “, said Mendetta. “When the battery died it was just a digital readout with no manual backup, so what we’ve had to do for five, six, seven years now is estimate people’s water bills based on from their previous use. “
The independently elected City of Johnstown Water Board also reported similar issues with Master Meter Co.’s meters. In July, Johnstown City Council approved a bond worth $ 7. $ 3 million for capital projects for its water board, including $ 850,425 to hire Ti-Sales from Sudbury, Massachusetts, to change all of the city’s water meters and replace them with Neptune meters.
Rowback said Gloversville was one of three municipalities in the state to receive a $ 850,000 drinking water grant, which will help offset part of the cost of the bond.
Mendetta said the city needs to borrow money for the project up front, but the grant will help pay off costs, bringing the total debt down to around $ 1.3 million. He said taxpayers would pay the full cost of the bond.
“To be clear, we charge all of our customers about $ 7 per bill cycle, which works out to about $ 1 per month, and that charge will fund the $ 1.3 million obligation. “ he said.
Rowback said the new Neptune meters will allow water utility personnel to remotely read meters without having to leave their desks.
“So they won’t need to have someone to go around the city”, he said.
Rowback said there will also be a mobile internet device “application” that taxpayers can download to their mobile devices allowing them to track and document their water consumption in real time and detect any “Instantaneous leaks”.
“There will also be electronic invoicing there”, he said.
Mendetta said that another good feature of the Neptune meters will be that they have an external power source, so Gloversville residents will never have to deal with the inconvenience of an employee of the water department. city needing access to their home to change a water meter battery.
Mendetta said that once the water meter replacement project begins, he hopes all water meters can be changed throughout the city within two years.
“We’re going to hire a company to do it, so hopefully it’s faster than that, but to be conservative, [assuming] cooperation with customers and that sort of thing, we expect it to be a two year project ”, he said.
The municipal council will meet at 6 p.m. in town hall.
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