Council Meeting Turns Cold for Ridgewood Water – Council Still Not Impressed with Bonding Proposal

The village council again said it had to upgrade from antiquated telephone-based meter reading technology to new radio-based meter readers, a stance individual council members and village staff maintained as they drank Poland Spring water bottles from behind the dais.

Director of Operations for Ridgewood Water, Frank Moritz, appeared before the council to provide an alternative to the $4.2 million switch-out of 14,600 meters proposed last week, a proposal the council found didn't fiscally hold water.

The problem stems from the utility , which leads to estimated bills that can vary wildly in accuracy. Inaccurate bills are squared to the proper amount when Ridgewood Water is notified and the meters switched out but customers are irate and it does lead to costs in managing, Moritz said.

The new proposal would still involve bonding but Ridgewood Water would be essentially bidding the project in-house for less money than a traditional outside services bid. The new figures–roughly $3.6 million–would bring aboard a temporary staff of secretaries as well as pickup trucks, which would be needed to install the equipment. The water company expects to switch over ten meters a day over the course of 39 weeks.

The period to pay the cost of the bonding would be between two and four years, depending on how the village would like it spread out, Village Manager Ken Gabbert said. Each ratepayer would receive about $25 per customer per year under the proposal, Gabbert told the council.

Things took a strange turn when Ridgewood Water officials said that the prospective installer of the radio technology would have been Neptune Technology Group, the same manufacturer under tremendous scrutiny in Atlanta for supposedly supplying radio meters that simply don't work.

Director of Operations for the local utility, David Scheibner said actually, "that system is already in place for radio reads" throughout Ridgewood, Midland Park and Glen Rock. But, Scheibner argued, "We're getting nearly 100 percent accuracy reads."

"How do you argue that?" he asked, challenging the council. "We've been using Neptune Meters for decades and they're excellent meters."

Utility officials again said the telephone meters that haven't been switched out are already at the end of their lifespan. Tackling this "would be a benefit for the whole system" given the amount of other things still needing upgrade or fixing at Ridgewood Water, according to Gabbert.

But the council members again couldn't see the justification, with the most vocal opponent, Councilman Paul Aronsohn, saying he recognized the value in having accurate meters. But, he said, "it seemed more a matter of convenience" and argued that Ridgewood Water officials have already admitted that the actual dollar and cent cost between those receiving bills that are overcharging and those being undercharged are negligible.

"The question comes back to . . . there are some things we want and there are certain things we need in this town. And I'm not convinced we need this. We're looking at very tight times here." Councilman Stephen Wellinghorst tacked on that he too was not convinced it was needed.

Moritz retorted, "I don't know how else I can convince you only for the fact that we can be sitting here a year from now and there will be 8,000 people being estimated [incorrectly] or the server can fail in a year from now and we could be looking at 15,000," referring to 1997 when the same server still in use suffered a massive failure, a system he's previously said could be fine for years or destruct tomorrow.

Mayor Keith Killion found only one compelling argument to grant a large bonding request.

"I can think of only one compelling reason and that's rate users are entitled to an accurate bill. It's just good business," he said. "How we go about it is another story," he added.

Deputy Mayor Riche again brought up the possibility of Ridgewood Water selling off some of it's real estate holdings to pay for the plan, which Moritz said he was "looking into."

"Get your 'For Sale' signs out," Killion said.

The council will continue to review the proposals set forth before next week's public meeting.