A Florida company could help Jackson determine how to best fix its beleaguered water billing system.
The Lumumba administration has tapped Connected Cities Integrators (CCI), to conduct an assessment of the city’s meter system and offer a plan on how to repair it.
“We’re trying to assess what works, what doesn’t and whether we’re going to need a long-term partner to help us address those needs going forward,” Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said.
The company is already working with the city on an unrelated project. The mayor would not share details of that work.
Chief Administrative Officer Robert Blaine said he hopes to take a contract to the council in time for its August 18 meeting.
He was still working out terms of that deal at press time.
Blaine and the mayor say they want the study to be completed by September. If the study is wrapped up in time, improvements to the system could be implemented as part of the city’s 2021 budget.
“They’re going to give us a plan of remediation – what we need to fix, what we need to keep and what we need to replace,” Blaine said.
Between six and seven CCI staffers are already working on the assessment, Chief Operating Officer Jack Hanley said.
“It’s a multi-pronged initiative. We have people with special skill sets looking at different aspects of the system,” he said. “Our objective is to get Water Sewer Business Administration to the place where it should be - to make it a profitable enterprise for the city and to provide accurate billing to residents in the city of Jackson.”
The contract will be funded with proceeds from a $7 million bond the city issued last year to make emergency billing repairs.
About $3.5 million of those funds remain, Blaine said.
At the heart of the matter is Jackson’s much maligned water billing system.
The system was installed as part of a roughly $90 million energy performance contract with Siemens.
Jackson brought on Siemens in 2012 to completely overhaul its billing system.
The overhaul included replacing some 65,000 residential and commercial water meters across the city, creating new billing software for the water/sewer business administration office, and installing a network of repeaters and transmitters to carry water meter data from the meters to the billing office.
At the time, Mayor Harvey Johnson said the contract would be “revenue-neutral,” meaning that savings generated by the improvements would pay for the project over time.
The idea was that the new digital meters would be more accurate than the older analog devices that were previously in the ground.
With the ability to communicate directly with the billing office, the meters would help the city pinpoint leaks and system breaks in real time, cutting down on water losses.
The new technology would mean additional savings as well, because the city would be able to cut out meter readers - a major personnel expense.
Work wrapped up in 2015, and those promises never came to fruition.
Instead, the system has been plagued by a myriad of problems. In some cases, meters are not recognized by the billing system. In other cases, meters might report significant changes in water usage, which the billing system doesn’t accept.
Additionally, repeaters or collectors can be taken out by lightning strikes, meaning data for hundreds of customers is not transmitted. When this happens, meters repeatedly attempt to transmit the data, running down their batteries in the process.
Because of these malfunctions, thousands of customers are not receiving regular statements, and the water/sewer enterprise fund, which is funded through water usage fees, has dried up.
Since 2018, the Lumumba administration has spent millions to patch the system, but no permanent solution to the problem has been implemented.
Lumumba said CCI will help the city determine if there is a way to fix the current meter system, or whether a new one is needed.
“We needed an independent evaluator that isn’t in the meter business,” he said, adding that the company does not sell meters, meaning they’re not going to skew the results of the review to pad their pockets.
CCI was founded in 2019 by Adam Corwin and Hanley. The Tampa-based firm grew out of a separate design firm that specialized in utilities and resource management, Blaine said.
Blaine was introduced to the company at a previous Innovate Mississippi conference.
He said the group has been involved in numerous utilities projects across the country and helped design a water meter build-out for DeKalb County, Ga.
In 2019, DeKalb began a three-year program to replace 102,000 aging water meters, according to the county’s website.
Prior to the implementation of that plan, customers there were dealing with problems similar to ones experienced by residents in Jackson, Blaine said.
REPAIRS TO METERS
Yet another problem has cropped up with the city of Jackson’s water meters.
This time, it’s faulty communications devices, and its going to take $100,000 to replace them. Last week, the city council approved transferring $100,000 from the meter service and repair division’s overtime budget to the division’s parts budget.
The funds will be used to purchase the replacement parts, which will be used on 600 meters.
“There are communications devices on the meters that popped off when the meters were installed,” said Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba. “There is a more stable version of that device and we’re purchasing those.
“It’s another one of those issues we have to fix on the meters right now.”
The devices are necessary because they communicate water usage data to the billing system. Without that data, the city is unable to issue those customers accurate statements.
The city planned to purchase them upon approval of the transfer of funds, city documents show.
While Jackson is moving forward with that purchase, it still is reviewing proposals from potential meter readers.
The administration is planning to enter into a temporary agreement with a firm to take over meter reading services.
The city did away with meter readers when it brought on Siemens to overhaul its billing system.
However, because of complications with the new system, Jackson is having to bring meter readers back on to help boost water revenues.
“A number of companies have submitted proposals. I have read those proposals, but I have not had the opportunity to talk to all of the companies,” Lumumba said.
Lumumba hopes to have a contract in place in the next 30 days.
