MOUNT VERNON — On Monday, Mount Vernon embarked on a project to replace nearly 4,000 water meters, but it will not use money from the rainy day fund to do it.
Instead, council members approved using money from an investment fund at Park National Bank.
Financing the water meter replacement project known as H2Overhaul is a multi-step process.
First, council members authorized the administration to rename a little-used rent account to “Infrastructure Improvements.”
Next, they authorized the city auditor to make supplemental appropriations of $2 million to the Infrastructure Improvements fund, taking the money from the Park National investment account.
Council members then authorized the city to issue up to $2 million in bonds. The city will use the $2 million from Infrastructure Improvements to buy the bonds from itself.
Administration officials will then use the $2 million in bond revenue to buy 4,000 new meters and 400 SmartPoint MXUs.
MXUs wirelessly transmit meter readings to utility staff and eliminate the need for manual data collection.
Safety-service director Tanner Salyers said the city will go through a Request For Proposal (RFP) process to order the meters.
He anticipates receiving the equipment in mid-October, with an “aggressive deployment through the fall and winter.”
Of the city’s 7,471 meters, nearly half have reached or exceeded their life expectancy of 15 years and are no longer capturing reliable data.
Salyers previously told the council that 68 percent of users are billed at a minimum usage of 2,992 gallons of water monthly. That is vastly under the 10,000 to 12,000 that a typical household of four uses.
This trend, he said, raises questions about meter reliability and accuracy. Based on that, the city is potentially losing thousands of dollars in water revenue.
Inaction could lead to lost revenue
Council member Tammy Woods voted against issuing the bonds and buying them back using money from the investment account.
She advocated installing dual meters on around 100 accounts to verify the old meters are misreading data, rather than assuming they are and spending $2 million to replace all the old meters.
Public Utilities Director Aaron Reinhart said that once the city’s water engineer learns the meters are 26 and older, he says it is not worth the time to dual monitor.
Woods also questioned whether it would be worth replacing 1,000 meters a year for four years vs. the financing plan the administration proposed.
“The situation with that is we’re losing revenue every month that goes by on these meters that aren’t registering,” Reinhart responded, adding that “it’s pretty much a given” they are not reading correctly.
“But we can’t prove that with the newer ones because nobody can go back and see if there was an increase once you put these newer meters on,” Woods said.
“Because we’ve been missing millions, potentially millions of dollars in revenue, as an administration, I don’t think we want to continue that and drag it out even further,” Salyers said.
“And if we don’t invest in it now, and we don’t become more intentional about paying attention to these meters, then we’re going to see that revenue leave, especially as we have major capital costs coming.”
Salyers cited the example of a new commercial meter installed in 2024. The average monthly reading for seven months before replacement was 173,214 gallons.
After replacement, the average monthly reading for seven months was 323,248. Before replacement, the city was losing an average of $1,524 a month in water revenue.
Possible lost revenue from outdated water meters spurs action
Salyers said the city is losing 500 million gallons of water, and there is no apparent reason for it because camera surveillance shows no leaks or massive gaps in the system.
He acknowledged that some residents’ bills might increase if their water meter was under reporting usage.
“I think that dual testing would have gone a long way with consumers, too, to say here’s examples of why we see we’re losing water,” Woods responded. “Where now I think the bills are going to go up and they’re like ‘Maybe it wasn’t my meter,’ and ‘You can’t tell me it was my meter.’”
Councilman Mel Severns said it makes sense to do H2Overhaul.
“If we’re losing potentially millions, and the data seems to indicate that, it’s really not fair to the residents if we don’t do this because we will essentially pay ourselves back with interest,” he said.
He said the council needs to ensure it sets money aside to start replacing meters again in 15 years when the new meters reach their life expectancy.
“We don’t want those people scratching their head saying why didn’t they do something to put money to cover this now?” he said.
Council takes other legislative action
The council adopted a deer management process for the city on its third reading.
Council members Amber Keener and LeNan Hager were absent from Monday’s council meeting, so the council could not suspend the rules and take any items to a third and final reading.
They therefore gave a first reading to several pieces of legislation:
•Supplemental appropriations
•To dispose of unneeded police vehicles
•Participate in the Online Ohio Checkbook
•Rename a fund to better state its purpose
•Vacate an alley on East Vine Street
