Mt. Prospect doing away with old-fashioned water meter reading

Mount Prospect residents who still read their own water meters and report what they find to the village will soon be relieved of that task.

The village board Tuesday agreed to spend $2.1 million over the next four years to install an automated meter reader system that would report water usage directly to the village.

Fergusson/Datamatic was chosen for the work from a field of seven vendors that bid on the project. Bids ranged from $1.7 million to $2.7 million.

Public Works Director Sean Dorsey said $960,000 is available in the current budget to fund the work. Funding in future years would be drawn from the available water fund balance, Dorsey said, and the village does not expect to increase water rates or issue debt to support the project.

Mount Prospect’s water system consists of 11,200 metered accounts. For about 10,000 of them, residents read their meters periodically and report the results to the village by mail, phone or email. Finance department personnel then enter the data into the village’s billing software program.

The rest — about 1,200 commercial and multifamily accounts — are read by a wireless drive-by meter reading system.

Dorsey told the board Tuesday that the wireless system, adopted in the early 1990s to replace a telephone-based system, is obsolete. The product has been discontinued by its manufacturer, which no longer provides maintenance support.

“Our existing automated meter reading system no longer works,” he said.

Officials said the systems for both residential and commercial meter reading are fraught with errors, leading to extra work for village staff.

“If we don’t receive reads, we have to go after people,” Dorsey added. In some cases, he said, houses are tagged or the village threatens to shut off water.

Finance department staff spends more than 1,000 hours a year transcribing data and entering it into the village’s software system.

The new automated system would allow the village to establish a consistent 30-day billing period, as well as identify leaks in the system or unusually high bills. Dorsey said the system is expected to operate effectively for 20 years.

Mayor Irvana Wilks noted the difficulties inherent in the self-reporting system. She said one of her neighbors, for example, has difficulty reading the meter.

Trustee A. John Korn added, “The existing system that we have is obsolete and so we have to move forward. The bottom line on this whole operation is that this will save time and money for the village.”