Additional water meter information soon to flow from City Hall
By Andrew Zwicker
Following recommendations at the most recent COW meeting that council answer questions put forth by Michael Geldrich, the discussion over water meters was re-opened on Monday night. Along with Mr. Geldrich’s delegation to council, there have been numerous questions to the city around this issue. It was noted that city staff are currently working on drafting a reply letter to Mr. Geldrich that would come back to council for approval before being sent out.
In response to that, and referencing the several month long process in getting last winter’s city newsletter out, Jill Spearn added, “It would be helpful to get that done as a priority because the issue is our in the community now. I don’t want this to go on for three months.”
In addition to the proposed letter, Councillor Andy Stradling suggested that the city might go a step further. “Is it possible for us to add common questions to our website on things like water meters so we don’t have to field the same questions multiple times?”
Attempting to answer one of these questions, Stradling drew from his engineering background. “The guidelines for installation at the moment say they have to be installed horizontally. I would suggest as an engineer that that might be questionable. There are many water meters I’ve installed that have been installed vertically. I would be surprised if that couldn’t be done. That’s the way studs go that’s the way pipes go. It would make a lot of people’s lives easier. Maybe we could check further into that?”
Members of the public have noted that the meters the city is selling are large and have asked whether there any other models the city could get to help people with difficult installation situations? One of the issues from the city’s perspective, said interim CAO Deb Tim, was that the city “spent a lot of money buying a remote reader. Any meters used would have to be useable with our reader or we’ve wasted our money on that.”
After further discussion the motion was made to refer staff to draft a report to council and a report to Mr. Geldrich for approval by council before sending out. ]
The motion carried unanimously
