New street sweeper, auto meter reading unit get council okay

    Members of the Imperial city council spent some money Monday night in purchasing a pair of items for the public works department.
    A new street sweeper and a computerized utility meter reading system amounted to a combined spending of $318,482.57.
    The 2022 Elgin Pelican street sweeper was purchased at a net cost of $219,288.82.
    Its original $227,788.82 price tag was reduced $8,500 with the city’s trade-in of its current 2007 unit.
    Public Works Supt. Pat Davison said the current unit with 9,700-plus miles and 2,200 working hours on it has required a lot of costly repairs. The city has owned the current street sweeper since 2013.
    While the city was offered lease options, the council chose to purchase it outright using city street funds.
    The city was not involved in bidding for the unit, Davison said.
    The city is a member of Sourcewell, a group that seeks competitive bids for governmental agencies to get the best negotiated price from dealers, “instead of cities taking the time to bid,” Davison said.
    The purchase proposal listed an additional documentation fee of $250.
    Davison said he did not seek prices on used units because they are hard to come by.
    He expects delivery of the new street sweeper in February or March.
    With approval of a second purchase Monday, city residents won’t be seeing city workers reading their meters in the future.
    Council members approved purchase of an automated metering system from Core & Main in Omaha for $99,193.75 that will automatically collect all customers’ water and electrical usage in about 30 minutes, Davison said.
    Now, using hand-held readers, the meter-reading process takes about two days, he said. He wonders if he’ll be able to replace the hand-helds in the future.
    “This is the next step in our new metering system,” Davison added.
    He noted city workers have installed 1,800 new meters in the city already, and are waiting for another pallet of 112 to finish installation.
    An antenna will have to be placed on the city water tower, but all of the reading of meters will be done from the city office with the push of a button, he said.
    One concern council members had was the annual fee of nearly $26,000 as part of the Core & Main package. The paperwork says the fee would continue each year with a 3% annual increase.
    Davison said the annual fee includes upgrades, new software and cloud storage.
    The AMI system will be able to show an individual customer’s usage every hour of every day for both water and electricity, he added.
    Funds to pay for the system were budgeted in the water and electrical departments.
    Both the street sweeper and meter reading system were approved on 4-0 council votes.
Park development costs questioned
    Some of the costs for a new park development in the Cornerstone property were reviewed by City Clerk/Administrator Jo Leyland.
    After receiving drawings for three ballfields and a U12 soccer field at a meeting last month from Engineering International, the plans were sent to the city’s engineer, Miller & Associates for review, she said.
    She said M&A engineers found several areas in which they believe cost estimates were too low, including site grading, lights and the concession stands and restrooms.
    “I really think we’ll be looking at more money than what the Park Board estimated,” she said.

Chris Miller of Miller & Associates told her the estimates from Engineering Internationals were about $1 million short.
    Last month’s estimates given to the council at $2.1 million for the proposed project is closer to $3 million based on Miller & Associates estimates, Leyland said.
    To prepare specs for bidding, costs from Miller & Associates would be $60,000 to $65,000, Leyland said.
    Council member Doug Gaswick said spending money for specs was a lot to “get a bid we know will be higher.”
    Davison was given direction to proceed with the repairs needed now at Schroeder Park for the 2022 season, including fence, lights and poles, and will use some of the budgeted $500,000 in the 2021-22 park budget to pay for it.
    In other business, the council approved Jonathan Klentz as a volunteer firefighter, okayed the purchase of two temperature kiosks for the senior care facilities for $13,890, wrote off $2,430.90 in unpaid utility accounts and continued discussion on code book updates.