The McMinnville city Water Maintenance Department seeks a new roof and updated meters.
Business Development manager of Performance Services Brian Stone met with the city Water and Sewer Committee at the Water Maintenance Dept. to offer what they can to improve the city.
“When Nolan (Ming) and I first started talking about this, the urgent issue was obviously this roof,” said Stone, “So we walked up on the roof, fully understood the urgency that comes with this roof.” He said that the company’s goal was to see how they can help while retaining as much capital funding as possible.
“When we look at things such as lighting, HVAC controls, that have a short, good return on investment versus a roof which has a long return on investment,” he added, “we can merge those together into a reasonable project where the savings can cover the cost.”
Stone continued, “When we started looking and talking to Ricky (Morton) and Heath (Collins), we found there’s not only some operational efficiency that we can recommend, but there are some water meter opportunities.”
Water and Wastewater Dept. director Ricky Morton told the committee about the problems with some of the current meters. “What we’re seeing now, a lot of meters are just stopping. We’re seeing some larger meters within the system, commercial units that just stop.” Some of the meters have been replaced with cheaper manual readers rather than the newer automatic ones that were in use.
Stone continued explaining that after five years of use, water meters lose a percentage of accuracy, and many meters in McMinnville are only at a 94% accuracy reading. Stone said that replacing the meters could mean that some bills would rise while others wouldn’t, but the reading would be around 99.5% accurate for up to 20 years, meaning the customers are more accurately paying for what they use.
Stone said that Performance Services is offering to use the increased revenue from the updated meters to finance the new roof. He also said that the roof-building process would occur in different phases with the first three to four months as the designing and development stage.
Stone added that this would be a separate service than the capital project, and if the city backs out after the first stage, they would just have to pay a fee. If they decide to continue after the design and development stage, the fee would be included in the final price of the project.
With the three to four month design and development stage, Stone thinks the roof can be built by the summer of 2023. He said the water meter replacements would take an estimated six to eight months.
Aldermen Sally Brock, Deitra Dunlap, and Keri Morton unanimously approved the first stage of the project to replace the roof of the Water Maintenance Dept. building and to replace the water meters.
This item will come before the Board of Mayor and Alderman for approval.
