September 28, 2021 |
The Town of Saratoga is moving forward with a project to replace 1,000 or more water meters in town next spring. The existing meters are 10 years old and need replacing. Some don’t work properly. Public works director Jon Winter told the Joint Powers Board this month that he had received two bids. One was from Core and Main, a Denver waterworks company. The other was from Mountain States Pipe and Supply in Colorado Springs. Core and Main submitted the low bid, according to the numbers that Winter presented at the September 8th meeting.
The option costing $667,000 included a cellular phone meter reading option which the board rejected. The bids in the half-million dollar range were for radio metering, known as Advanced Metering Infrastructure, or AMI. The discussion became technical and convoluted, and involved differences in the bid forms the companies used, their faulty cost calculations, as well as unknowable factors that might come up during installation. Once it was determined the metering hardware was the same, Board members Criag Kopaz and Russel Waldner brought the discussion back to the bottom line.
The board approved the Core and Main bid, which documents show was $553,152.65. Councilman Jon Nelson is the town’s representative on the Joint Powers Board. Nelson brought the board’s recommendation to the town council last week.
Pictured above: Neptune water meter. Photo by Jim O’Reilly/Bigfoot 99.
Town Council approved the motion for the purchase of the Water Meters from Core and Main. A second bid will be put out in November for third-party contractor to install the meters. Councilman Nelson offered an assurance that the meter replacement will not resemble the massive construction work that occurred ten years ago when the existing pits were dug at every property in town and the existing meters installed. Next year’s work will be fairly rapid and orderly, Nelson said.
The meter swap will take less than 15 minutes at each pit, Nelson said, making water outages brief. The Water and Sewer Board hopes to select an installation firm in December and have the work done in March or April. About 1,040 meters around town will be replaced, officials said.
