The water meters in town, they are a changin’.
On Dec. 17, 2015, Siemens Industry Inc. was awarded the project management contract for the Water Meter Replacement/Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Project by the city of Benicia. This project will replace 9,580 aging meters throughout the city and be completed sometime in mid to late July.
There have been no major issues in the project, but Siemens says the company wants any reference to Tyler Munis be eliminated from the project due to the delay in the implementation of the Tyler Munis Utility Billing module. The Benicia City Council will vote on whether to deny or approve an amendment to the project’s resolution on Tyler Munis at its meeting tonight.
“Ferguson Waterworks will work with the City and with Tyler Munis to test and validate sample files that Tyler-Munis provides to us, to help the City with its overall implementation of this new CIS,” Eric Tracy of Ferguson Waterworks wrote in a letter to Christian Di Renzo, assistant public works director. “Tyler-Munis is integrated with the Neptune AMI System at dozens of other utilities across the country, and thus this should be fairly easy for them to implement at the City of Benicia.”
In another letter sent to Di Renzo, Siemens staff voiced their support of the amendment.
“The costs associated with integrating Neptune with Tyler would be part of the cost the city would pay Tyler for the billing integration/Migration and was not included as a cost within the project.” Siemens Project Manager Stephen Reese wrote. “Because the City is Tyler’s customer, they generally don’t allow us to be a party to this work. Tyler would need to work with Neptune to create a “V4” file that is used to synchronize data between the two services. Should additional clarification be needed please consult Tyler Munis or Neptune/Ferguson for integration support.”
City staff is recommending the City Council approve the amendment. If approved without any changes, the amendment proposes there would be no cost of removing the city’s integration system for the up billing cycle with Tyler Munis and also authorizes the city manager to execute the amendment on behalf of Benicia.
In other business, the council will review the Benicia Business Improvement District (BID) and fixing the time and place of a public meeting and public hearing. Benicia downtown merchants formed the BID in 2012, with the goals of improving the installation and maintenance of decorative tree lights. Staff recommends that the resolution be put forward to allow the BID to have a fixed time and place for public meetings and hearings.
The council will meet at 6 p.m. tonight at the Council Chambers of City Hall, located at 250 East L St.

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