Attached for your review and consideration for approval by the City Council is a proposal from Core and Main LP in the amount not to exceed $849,231.35.  The proposal contains "sole source" unit prices and is in accordance with the City's purchasing procedures and guidelines.

Staff also requests that City Council approve the attached budget amendment in the amount not to exceed $850,000.  Ultimately, the budget amendment uses 2019 Bond Proceeds to fund the 2023 AMI Project, moving funds from the Building Improvement - Fleet & Utility Purchasing Warehouse Project.  Delays in the bidding process for the Building Improvement - Fleet & Utility Purchasing Warehouse Project has moved this project into the 22/23 fiscal year (FY).  The 2019 Bond Proceeds budgeted for this project will be moved to the 2023 AMI Project.  It is expected that the balance of the Fleet Warehouse project will be funded out of the City’s 22/23 FY budget and that a new funding source will be identified as part of next FY’s budget.

As Council may recall, the AMI Project Phase I was completed in 2014. The purpose of the project was to replace the City’s existing antiquated water meter inventory and in the process convert to a meter system that would have the ability to integrate meter data management software compatible with the City’s newly acquired Tyler Technologies/Munis utility billing software.  The City’s system at that time had approximately 12,400 residential services.  Approximately half of this total were in need of replacement due to the exceedance of their useful life.  The remaining meter inventory in service were Sensus SRII meters with approximately eight to ten years of recommended service life remaining.  It was determined at that time, to replace the oldest meters with iPERL smart meters and to retro-fit the remaining Sensus SRII meters due to their remaining useful life of eight to ten years.  In addition to the meter replacements and meter retro-fits, meter boxes were replaced where needed and all meter boxes were upgraded to accommodate transmitters.

The purpose of this proposed project is to remove and replace the remaining retro-fitted meters with AMI IPERL smart meters.  Due to the current economic conditions, materials for this type of project are in short supply and lead times are expected to be as much as 36 weeks from order placement for delivery.  While this project is not in the City’s current fiscal year’s budget, approval of the request would lock in the price of the water meters and ensure that the project could be completed in the City’s fiscal year 22/23.  Finally, Public Works administrative staff has worked with Finance administrative staff to identify funding for the project and has determined that funding is available and its expenditure would not have a negative impact on the utility.