AgdaPkt 2008-03-10 - Laserfiche WebLink

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6.1A maintenance procedures, cost effective changes in irrigation equipment and better Page 2 irrigation scheduling. As mentioned before, both weather data and landscape area will be used to calculate landscape irrigation water use budgets and customers will be billed monthly. This will require that all dedicated landscape irrigation meter readings be collected and imported into WUAP for calculation on the first day of each billing cycle. Furthermore, and so that billing is fair and just to the customer, meter reads for these accounts need to be collected as near as possible to the first hour of the first day of each month (e.g., April 01 @ 12:01am). Approximately 550 dedicated landscape irrigation meters are distributed throughout Redwood City and Redwood Shores. With current staffing levels, manual reading of these meters on the same day of each month would be inefficient and impractical because it would require that meter readers drive from one meter to another, thereby skipping the meters in between. Reading of the meters as close as possible to the first hour on the first day of each month would not be possible using this methodology. Currently, of the 23,100 meters in the City, 1,068 have been converted to a technology called "Radio-read." Radio-read technology allows meter readers to simply drive by a meter and collect the reading automatically using a laptop computer. This reduced the amount of time it took to read these meters by 200 labor hours; saving the City approximately $22k annually. A new technology called Flex-net is now available that uses radio read meters but no longer requires a meter reader to drive by a location and collect the read. Meter reads are instead collected through a Tower Gateway Base Station (TGB) and fOlWarded to a Regional Network Interface (RNI) through either a standard telephone line or a wireless bridge. Incorporating the use of TGB sites would allow staff to download meter reads automatically and they could be collected on any day and at any time. A propagation study was completed to evaluate the feasibility of using TGB sites to collect meter reads within Redwood City and Redwood Shores. The study identified two City-owned water reservoir sites and the City Corporation Yard which would be effective TGB sites. With the installation of three TGB's, the existing radio read meters could be quickly and easily programmed to be read using a TGB. Furthermore, the installation of these TGB's would allow staff to begin converting the City's manually read meters to Flex-net technology. This would significantly reduce the amount of staff required for meter reading services. Staff is recommending that the City purchase three TGB's and the equipment necessary to covert the 550 landscape irrigation meters to Flex-net technology. Staff will recommend additional meter conversions at a later date. Staff did not advertise for competitive bid for this project; as it would have been impractical and impossible because the materials needed to convert the existing City meters to this technology are both unique to the type of meter currently used by the City and sold by Sensus Metering Systems. Sensus meters have been the standard in Redwood City for the past 28 years. Other companies do offer the same type of technology as Flex-net previously described; however, the implementation of another manufacturers technology would require that existing water meters be removed and replaced, would necessitate additional funds for the purchase of replacement meters, and would create project delays because of the extensive cost and time required for meter purchase and installation.