Another really interesting item was to approve a contract agreement with C.D.P Engineering to design a telemetry system for water, sewer, and electric for the City of Paris. They never stated out loud how much money the contract was for and I wasn’t told the amount.
For those of you who may not known what telemetry means in this case, here is a brief definition: Highly automated communications process by which data is collected from instruments located at remote or inaccessible points. Then it is transmitted to centrally located receiving equipment for measurement, monitoring, display, and recording. Transmission of the information may be over wires, or more commonly by radio.
Assistant City manager Matt Belcher told the commissioners “the system would be used to monitor and control pump stations, lift stations, over head storage tanks, and electric sub-stations.” Assistant City Manager Belcher also stated “money was in the current budget from each of 3 departments water, sewer, and electric of $ 40,000 each.”
That is a total of $ 120.000.00 I went through the copy of the budget the city manager gave me a few weeks back page by page. I could only find two line items on page 29 account number 506-telemetry for $ 35,000 and another on page 31 account number 575 for $ 40,000 These two items only total $75,000 ?? This telemetry system sounds like something useful, but were is the rest of the money coming from?
Commissioner Galbraith asked “In going forward with this project what could the city expect to save in terms of money.” The conversations that followed this question never gave any straight forward answers in terms of money, only what if scenarios with no exact savings.
Commissioner Galbraith stated “The whole scope of the project cost was unclear but a number that was tossed out was around $ 400,000"
Commissioner Horne stated “he agreed with Fryman that the proposal was kinda like pie in the sky with a lot of options with no estimates of on going expenses”.
City manager Nagy told the commissioners that he and assistant manger Belcher would get more details and bring the proposal back another time.
I certainly hope they get their costs lined out before starting a project of this magnitude of spending our tax dollars. That $400,000 could turn out to be double or even more if careful planning is not done.
Another item Mr. Nagy presented was three employees acted as interim department heads and were paid hourly during there service. Mike Withrow- code enforcement salary was adjusted to
$ 22.30 an hour. Mr. Rick Elkin was acting Police Chief, his salary was adjusted to $ 24.50 hour. Mr. Andy Roe is acting Fire Chief, and his salary was adjusted to $ 25.30 hour.
Sounds like working for the City of Paris pays a lot better than most other jobs around here.
Another item was financial business. Commissioner Fryman raised the question of “How is it that the estimated income was showing $ 6,405,000 and the expenditures showed $ 7,447,000. He stated “he knew they didn’t pass a budget that the expenditures exceeded the income by over a million dollars.” After further discussion the city clerk nor City Manager Nagy had an immediate answer for Fryman. Even though this error could not be explained during the meeting, all commissioners and the mayor voted yes to approve the financial as presented?
Sounds like we really do need a financial officer with the required background to keep track of things like the auditors suggested!
Until next time,
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
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Yours is a "textbook" definition of telemetry. To the lay-person it is merely a way of monitoring and controlling a remote location on a constant basis without needing to be physically present on site. It does not eliminate the need to routinely inspect the facility in person, but gives a 24/7 readout of the site's performance and will immediately notify you of a problem or if the site goes down. In the case of a lift station, if the site failed and raw sewage began to overflow into the water course, you would be able to minimize the amount of spillage or perhaps even eliminate the overflow by having advanced warning.
ReplyDeleteThe way that I read the budget, the million dollar differance was a transferring of funds from utilities to the general fund as a payment for services. The city manager, engineer and assistant city manger budgets showed a percent to be charged to utilities. It seems to me that it is merely a repayment to the general fund for providing these costs up front.
ReplyDeleteAll city employees are not so handsomely rewarded. I think it is just a differant "good old boy" system than the one we had previously. It is merely a matter of who is liked and disliked.
ReplyDeleteYou could very well be right. I personally do not know what the salaries are of other employees. Salary classifications of all city employees with min/max ranges is one of the items I asked to be posted on the city website, but city officials chose not to even though it is public information by law.
ReplyDeleteI like your definition of telemetry better than mine. I am not against the city doing this project. I am only stating they need to understand the total cost of the project before voting on it. This project is not free, it has to be paid for with our tax dollars. Our City Officals have to prove we can afford it first. This is going to be a Huge dollar item of the city budget for several years to come.
ReplyDeleteYour explaination of the million dollar budget difference may be right, I don't know. I merely stated that no city official or city employee could explain it in the meeting yet they accepted the financial report anyway. Since you explained it so well, you might be that financial person the auditors told city officials they needed to hire?
ReplyDeleteYou are incorrect in saying that utility projects are paid for with tax dollars. The utilities are a business and pay for improvements with the monies collected for services. NO TAX DOLLARS make their way into the utilities!
ReplyDeleteYou are right, it really isn't tax dollars. Now having said that, they still have to understand total costs of a project. It is not fiscally responsebile blindly spending money!
ReplyDelete