City council approves water meter fix

Tuesday night’s meeting of the city council discussed a water meter reading system.

Ed Sadler, city manager, brought to council’s attention a pilot water program with Landys and Gyr that has been unsuccessful in allowing the city to read both electric and water meters through the same system. While the electrical system is working, issues on the water side resulted in meters not being installed.

Staff is requesting the city discontinues the program and continues with the previously used Neptune program. No funding has been used to install pilot program on the water side of the project. An already budgeted $200,000 would be used to install the remaining Neptune meters.

Mayor Mark Nienhueser and Councilman Wendall Gaston were concerned this was the first they had heard of the pilot program not working since an agreement was entered with the Landys and Gyr in 2012. Sandler says the electrical side of the program is doing exactly what it promised that it would do and staff is not interested in changing that aspect.

According to Sandler, staff has reportedly been “biting the bullet and hoping bugs would be worked out with the water system, but it hasn’t happened.” Sadler said there are still some water meters in town that require someone to manually read them.

Once the Neptune meters are done being installed, all meters will be on radio waves and will not require someone to read a meter unless there is a problem.

After a long discussion regarding budget items associated with the meters the Council ultimately voted to continue with the Neptune system and discontinue the pilot system.

In addressing a request for a liquor permit, Sadler said Love’s Travel Stop and Country Store hired a new manager. Walter Dewayne Porter will be the new manager for the business, after Love’s original manager finished his training duties here in Sidney. Sadler said with the new, permenant manager in place, Love’s presented its request for a liquor license. Council members approved this request.

The Airport Authority Board has requested $176,613 this year from the City levy authority, an increase from last year’s amount of $171,804. City Council members voted to approve the requested amount and requested that an Airport board member come to a future City Council meeting to give an update on the airport. There was no representative from the Airport Authority at the meeting.

Sadler reported there are two expiring terms and one vacancy on the Historic Preservation Board. There is also one expired term and one vacancy on the Housing Authority Board, and one Library Board vacancy.

City Clerk Geri Anthony said letters have been sent out to people who have expiring terms asking them if they would like to re-run for their current board position. The City of Sidney has posted the openings and encourages anyone who is interested to apply.

Multiple concerns have been brought to the City’s attention regarding the parking lot at the new Aquatic center. According to local residents the parking lot is hard to turn around in which makes parking difficult. A motion was made to pour concrete at the end of the parking lot to make turning easier.

City Council member Chris Gay expressed concerns that the parking lot was just installed not long ago and believes that the engineer who recommended that material to be placed should be responsible. With a three to one vote (with Councilman Joe Arterburn absent), council approved starting to fix the aquatic parking lot with funds that were already in the budget this year.