Town gets rid of unused water meters

After a year of avoiding the unpopular issue of individual meters for the apartment building on North Little Horn Avenue, the council has chosen to remove the six meters that had been set in place to eventually be plumbed into the building waterline, adding to the existing six to cover each unit. Currently, the town is unable to shut off an individual apartment as each meter serves two.

The meters have not, as yet, been activated and have sat within the pits for almost a year. Because this work had not been completed, Public Works was unable to lay permanent covers over the pits, leaving the equipment vulnerable to damage.

A vehicle recently drove over and into the pit, damaging the $3000 meter.

Public Works Director Cory Allison brought the issue to last week's council meeting, asking, "What are we going to do?"

There were a number of suggestions from council members, but no resolution.

When Town Attorney Pat Carpenter asked if the governing body had decided what they wanted to do with the ordinance, the silence lasted a moment before Mayor Ben Glen acknowledged, "No, I don't think it has been decided, just to be blunt. There was the commercial rate talked about, single meter or every apartment has a meter so we can shut it off and bill individually. This has been an issue since Moorcroft, I bet."

Councilman Dale Petersen spoke to the immediate question of the 12-plex, "We either have to change our ordinance to require hook up to the meters or pull the meters."

"We for sure need to tackle this at least," Councilwoman Heidi Humpal spoke. "I visited with Cory and looked back in my email and the last time we discussed this was almost a year ago and we did nothing and here we are again and exactly what he said was going to happen if we didn't do something, happened. I think if we're not going to make a move on doing the other stuff right now, we get them taken out and fill it in until we decide how we're going to go with that."

After some discussion on a viable answer, Councilman Austin Smith suggested pulling the meters and running the waterline for all 12 meters to one, that of the landlord.

Allison considered that a workable solution, "We could do that, it might even be easiest. We could just dig a line, tie every one of those meters into that one at the end of those lines and it would be underground."

Carpenter stymied this idea: "What do we have for deposits and agreements on those meters?"

The mayor recognized the full deposits and agreements on the original six meters and the necessity of returning the funds to the landlord as he receives the water bill from the town.

Humpal asked if that was the consensus of her fellow councilmen, but Petersen did not agree with this plan.

"I would say no. Right now, we go pull the new ones and keep the rest as it is until we figure out what we're going to do. Let's not put in a single meter, let's just pull these...and then, we decide what we're going to do."

Allison concurred, "If we want to dig those other ones up and dig a line there, now is not the time to do it."

The council agreed. The five undamaged meters and the one broken will be removed within the next couple of weeks, weather permitting.