In the regular meeting of the Spur City Council on December 19, the council swore in new police chief Ramon Golden and took two steps toward implementing “smart meters” for water and gas recordkeeping and payments.
Appearing before the council was Joe Wertz, director of sales at FastGov, a company that sells software that enables municipalities to integrate their financial systems with smart meters programs. The City of Spur usesFundviewandFastGov will automatically update the financials. In addition, it will allow water and gas users to make payments online or in-person. The cost quoted to the City of Spur for this service was $1,310 for the first year and $750 a year afterwards. There would also be a 3.5 percent merchant fee, if the bill is paid by credit or debit card, which may be passed on to the consumer.
The council voted 5 to 1 to approve the FastGov services with Laidy Vasquez voting against the measure.
In the next action, Ron Hinsley with Premier smart meters appeared before the council. He shared a price estimate for the installation of the Smart Meters for water and gas.
The cost would be $391,000 plus $5,000 to integrate with Fundview.
Council member Elaine Harris asked why their cost estimate had gone up $56,000 since their last presentation, and Hinsley said that during their previous presentation, they were not able to provide the smart meter service for gas meters and now they are.
City secretary Nanette Yanez said that $205,000 was earmarked from federal Covid funds for this program and the other $186,000 would be provided by the city and the city had the funds in CDs. There would be an additional $5,000 charge to integrate with Fundview.
Hinsley said that some of the advantages of the smart meters is that they provide continuous monitoring of utilities. Currently, if there’s a water leak, it may only be noticed after a monthly reading. That saves the city and customers expense.
Premier offers cities a discount if they have 1,000 meters and that would only come from using from Spur using them for both water and gas.
The life of the meters is 15 years, and premiere would come to Spur for three days of training. Premiere would do all the smart meter installations.
The council voted 6-0 unanimously to approve the smart meters.
Spur joins a growing list of cities that have installed smart meters including, Roby, Crosbyton, Paducah and Post.
It will take about eight weeks to get the meters in.
In other action, the council unanimously approved the two tax deeds bids—for Parcel 5587 by Armando Barrera for $1,200 and for Parcel 5519 by Genuine Investors, LLC, Lubbock for $1,050.
The council then approved a request for a six-month RV extension by Cameron Tover at 617 Keeler.
The council then approved extending from 30days to 90-days the demolition of 1015 West Harris by Jamie and Joya Braly and 816 W. Harris by Rene Frausto. The vote was 5-0 with Glenda White abstaining.
The council voted unanimously to table the request until the next meeting from Peter Neudorf at 215 S. Carroll to rescind the demolition decision. Discussion centered upon getting more information from codes enforcement and getting the property owner to come to city council to discuss the
In department reports, police chief Ramon Golden reported that he had investigated four cases that were before Child Protective Services, and that he had to get with the district attorney on witness intimidation. He has reported that he had investigate 11 domestic disturbances and had one welfare check.
For the fire department report, in a submitted report that Mayor Louise Jones read, they indicated that they had seen a drop in grass fires, but they did work two separate fires, last month, one vehicle fire and one hay trailer fire.
In other fire department news, most of the plumbing lines have been installed for the new fire station, and they held officer elections, and all positions remain the same.
In the codes report, Barry Ferguson reported on the Dickens County Sheriff’s Sale he said that nine properties would be purchased by American Holly Properties; one went to an individual; and eight would go back to Texas Communities Group for public auction.
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