e good evening everyone like to call this July 16th 2024 Sebring city council meeting to order if yall staying with me the mayor's can lead us in a prayer and a pledge please B with me Lord thank you once again for the city that we live in we thank you for the staff that keeps it operating we ask that you watch over city council tonight to make sound and right decisions we also ask special prayers for our nation that we come together and act like humans and honor each other and get rid of all the garbage that goes back and forth and let's move forward as a nation so we can be positive we ask that all we do we do in your name Jesus Christ amen amen pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right thank you Miss Haley call the rooll please mayor shot here car here here M here Stewart here vious here all right if anyone has any that they would like to discuss that is not on the agenda you can fill out one of the forms here on the front table hand it in to clerk Haley and we will get to it at the appropriate time uh mayor's report uh a few things uh the July 4th fireworks here went off early thanks to the rain and uh actually uh had a good show again so it's really they put go on for about 25 minutes but they do a good job and really appreciate everybody all the businesses and individuals that uh participated and donating for that without the help it' be hard to put on such a good show but that honors our nation and I think we have to keep that in mind that we are one nation and that we need to honor it every day um for those of you that don't know that there was a chick play open so if you've been on Bay Drive and wanted to get in the parking lot for a while it just takes you only 10 minutes to get through so they do a pretty good job but it was a grand opening and thanks to all the council members that showed up it's had a good showing from the city side of it so but it's kind of exciting to see new businesses and I come into town and and open up and provide jobs I talked to the manager out there and he said that they had a employed 160 people as of the day of the opening so I mean that's a that's a lot of people for you know providing for families and that so it's pretty good and then uh last weekend James Wright is with the antique Automobile Association put together a uh fundraiser for Honor Flight out at the airport and it was a car show they expected he I asked him when he was putting it together because they only had like three or four weeks to put it together and I said uh how many cars you think you'll have and he says well the last show they had they had 25 so if we get 26 we be in good shape cuz we'll beat that out they had what lonard was out there with his over 148 yeah they had over 140 cars show up so it was a it was a really nice event and he did a good job and all the proceeds went to the Honor Flight program so it was a good good attendance and lot it was hot though wasn't it lonard it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but it was a good turnout had more more show cars than we had Spectators cars John where did the posts go again I'm sorry where did you say the Honor Flight the Honor Flight yeah thank you so that's all I have all right thank you council members Mr Carl no I was I was going to talk about the car show because and I talk to Mr Wright and he wants to start doing them downtown and so he'll probably be coming and talking to us had a good turnout they had when you you know it was a a donation thing and you just gave what you wanted to give and uh I guess I'm not sure what he what he uh got and it doesn't matter but they had the little goodie bags and this was in one of the bags and it says may you be proud of the work you do the person you are and the difference you make nice s that's a nice little say in there so that's it all right Miss mle um the sad con Park is looking just wonderful thanks to Steve Kramer and his crew and we've got some orange trees planted out there and new benches and sod put in and the bamboo trimmed up and it just looks great the con family is delighted and I want to say at the height of my political career uh last week I got my picture made with my husband with the Chick-fil-A cow and it was awesome it was awesome and uh another thing on a serious note I wanted to say again about the tragedy that happened really this weekend and how all of us need to be kinder and I know that's easier said than done we've all got strong opinions even here locally we want to be real careful when we disagree with people that were respectful and listen to them and I think up here on city council and our mayor and City administrator and city clerk we try to be respectful and listen to the people when they come and when when people come it takes a lot of nerve to come and stand up before city council with whatever your problems are and we want to be careful to be considerate and uh respectful to the people the citizens here and I'm not on Facebook but I've heard there's some uh mean stuff on there just about a lot of things and really that's that's not good if if you have a problem volunteer or do what you can to see that it's changed run for office but uh there's some rhetoric that that's not good on our media and we we should correct that but I think on the overall we live in such a wonderful area and there's a minimum amount of that all right thank you Josh no report har oh I don't know if you're all aware but several weeks ago there was an accident at pickleball court somebody actually had a heart attack um just want to bring this to attention and just say thank you to fire department First Responders um looking at Agenda item 8f The Firehouse Subs we got a grant for a Lucas device and I think sometimes with when we see these grants we can kind of just that's a cool thing but part of that gr part of that Lucas device was had a huge part of of saving that guy life um situation was almost perfect with all of the Departments where they were where they were located just to get really quick response um and July 4th fire department put a they had a welcome home party for uh the for the gentleman who who came home after about 28 days in the hospital so they had all the the fire trucks to have grouses so it's a really cool thing for the the family the community and just want to say thank you to to um everybody at the fire department for putting that on um and saving this guy's life and it's what we're all the work that Carlos has done and Jared has done to get this Lucas device is huge and I think it's um a great Next Step um as we're looking at ALS and providing to a more higher level of service with adved life support so huge team effort thank you for thank you fire department that's it all right thank you uh um all right um consent agenda any questions or comments on the consent agenda I make a motion will you approve the consent agenda as present Hy pull the board yes yes yes yes yes all right next up is item 10A Mr bogas is going to give us an update on the fix based meter reading system yes thank you and good evening I believe it's been since last budget workshops that we spoke about this project so I wanted again to give you all an update some things have happened uh that I wanted to share with y'all uh the first thing is as you may recall we were planning to Pilot the program at the Country Club of SE we did not know at that time that there were going to be some issues and uh primarily it has to do with uh County regulations uh where they govern the height of a tower uh basically they treat everything as if it's going to be a cell phone type of structure um we also had a few residents that live nearby where this Tower is going to be erected that we're not happy with it as well so given the amount of time it was going to take to work through all these these issues if we could work through them uh we started looking at alternate sites and figured we would come back to more friendly territory which is inside the city limits and uh so we picked out three actually there three meter reading rounds uh it's route number two four and seven we had to come up with a combination to basically match the same number of meters that we were going to use out of the country club which is about 500 these three rounds gave us 507 I think or 504 something in that range very very close uh the areas uh stem from Park Street going North to Hemlock at on Lake View Drive that section in there uh it also encompasses this area behind City Hall in the uh The Scouting Sheriff's Office and also over by fireman's field him loock not him loock but uh pointa Hickory those streets over there anyway uh that's that was where we're proposing the pilot program to be Master Meter also had an issue supply chain issue providing 3G registers which is what we've always used through the driveby system uh we ordered them took forever and finally we got a a call from them one day and said look we we know y'all are desperate for these you need them we just can't provide them but we do have a deal for you uh they were going to give us the 4G registers which is what the Ami system utilizes at the same price the thing about the 3G and the 4G is they both can be read through our drive by system so really saw no detriment to to go along with that proposal what it did was it allowed us to change all the failing registers with these new 4G registers uh which expands the pilot program we don't know at this point how far the the towers will reach so we'll soon know that uh Master meters told us that their installer will be here on the 12th of August to install that infrastructure we talked to the we talked to Jimmy Mattis with Empire pipe just a couple of days ago he said that typically once they get the towers and repeaters installed uh it's not far after that before the system's up and running where the infrastructure will be installed is the base station will be on top of fireman still water tank there will be a repeater also down at Park Street we have a I think it's a 75 ft Tower uh somewhere in that range that we're using for our Telemetry system which monitors our our U water plants and uh sewer lift stations and then there'll be a repeater also located at Veterans Beach Water Tower so those are the three points that that will'll have infrastructure that that these meters will be set in signals to they repeat it back to the base station which at that point uh we'll be able to read these meters in the office another Advantage I think to the pilot program is that it gives your real time information uh if you have a leak there's a there's an app you can download a free app and uh you can pretty much tell it when you want to be alerted if you want to say I want an alert if I use 50 gallons today it will do that uh so it it gives the customer a lot more I guess information than they would ever have under this system that we've been using the driveby system the driveby system basically you're it depend upon when a leak occurs it may be a full billing cycle before you even know about it this will tell you right away if you got a problem the uh the also what i' would like to propose to y'all tonight is that we have enough registers I'd like to make sure that everybody on Council has one of these so y'all can test drive it yourselves to see if there's anything you don't like about it it's better to know about it now before we go down this road too too far uh presently we have 715 registers we've already changed through this uh deal that Master Meter offered us so the pilot today uh we're talking about 12200 meters probably that are will be equipped with the 3G system 4G system uh we've had a few issues uh not not our fault really it's the kind of a learning between the uh the company actually uh they're not all familiar with all billing systems that City uses bsna being our Billing System uh we found out a little bit after we should have perhaps that we needed another code in the Billing System to identify these 4G registers for when we had one register identified and that was 3G well they both use different I'll call it factors uh and that factor tells the a meter what reading how much of a reading because it the 4G reads it down through tenth of a gallon whereas our 3G only reads it down to one gallon so you have a different uh ratio there to work with so once we knew we had to do that we got in touch with bday they went ahead and added the extra component to the billing system which now we're Kim spent I don't know how many countless hours uh setting these things up but uh we we've got it set up we did have a little bit of a hiccup Scott was one of our pickups he and three other customers but uh we found out then also that whenever the meter alerts us to whether it's a leak a backflow or a tampering kind of alert it loses its factor and goes back to what it knew last which was the 3G Factor so that caused the the new meter to send us an extra digit in the reading so instead of billing Scott for 6,000 we the building for 66,000 did he pay it he would no no he brought it to our attention pretty quick and we we we've got him a corrected bill now but uh there were three other people the same way and believe it or not there was one gentleman in fact I think Kim she spoke to him he says oh I had something break I just thought that was how much the the break cost be to use so he was happy to hear that it was not that bad but anyway if once once we get through this pilot we figure maybe 6 months months of testing and if everything goes well we'd like to ask councel for your blessings to continue on and and eventually change out our entire system to the 4G U meter reading system uh and maybe by that time we we we planned it for a a fiveyear trans you know a transition and hopefully when we get a little bit later on in the uh the program technology will advance maybe we don't need 100ft Tower at the Country Club to make it work there are some cell phone connections that they promised they would allow us to have a few I know Roland kind of lives out a little bit we figured you'd be a good candidate for that see how how well that works plenty of obstacles up in the air around my house so but anyway they they want they want this to be a success they're working really hard with us uh to make sure it's a success and I I feel pretty good about it moving forward we have a few hiccups but I don't know that that uh is not to be expected I'm sure it's a huge uh Savings in Manpower and time and the whole thing it it it will be eventually right now for the next 5 years we'll have a hybrid system whereas we're still reading the registers that haven't been changed yet with our driveby system and then the ones that have been changed they'll be reading those fixed Spas providing they can make connection with the towers but it will give us a good idea uh pretty shortly how far out are infrastructure that they're going to Sol force will reach so Bob am I understanding correctly then there's no plan or way to to get to Country Club yet then until you're hoping that they can get a smaller profile Tech package that we can put out there in the future uh Josh that's pretty much correct we they do have the cell phone connections now they're not even available right now okay and and I don't know what kind of expense we're looking at for that um so that would just be at the end of our proposed install timeline and hope it catches up perhaps and and we're hopeful uh Pope County had a summer problem but Pope County has their own utilities so when po County Utilities went to their County Commissioner says we got a problem with what way we've got our rules written they just changed them so we could Lobby our County Commission and fix this problem for you is what you're you're saying that's a possibility yes okay all right we still have a few customers out there that probably aren't going to be happy if we move forward they live real close to the plant and that's where the tower would be erected what is the maximum height requirement of the county did I miss that I think their Max requirement is 50 or 60 ft so would essentially double it yeah and I think the folks out there worried about it how ugly it's going to be it it's looks like a a TV antenna on steroids it's just a little bigger than you'd have with TV tower on antenna on so they we attended the uh the County Commissioners meeting when they were talking about this and there were a bunch of people there board got around pretty fast there's not a way to camouflage the tower and make it look a little better there there could be Terry I I we we spoke a little bit about that to Master Meter and and uh they've never encountered a problem like this before they've got these towers everywhere and they said we've never done it or I'm not saying it can't be done but never done it and I'm not sure how that would even look well you can drive by harder Hall and see it's not very good camouflage yeah looks like an antenna with some stuff on it right well but it's still better than just a plain antenna all right but anyway but any any questions no okay all right thank you well next report I give you it be a real live workin report all right thank you appreciate your time we have no business from the audience Mr Swain you have anything else no sir thank you Mr yes sir um I do have one item I'd like to try to schedule a shade meeting um with you all in reference to the uh police BBA bargaining agreement okay negotiating with them i' like to schedule a meeting sometime maybe between the 23rd and 31st of this month this will be during the day it it could be it could be in the afternoon or I would prefer I don't know about anybody else during the day not at night I'm open okay I'm fine with schedule whatever works for everybody else is fine with me I'm open the 25th I'm not available that's the only day in that time frame we do Wednesday the 24th at what 2 o'clock sounds great 2 o' yep Wednesday the 24th got it between what dates again we're going to do it the 24th 2 p.m. 2 p.m yeah I can do that I'm good thank you that was easy all right Miss Haley so move second P the board yes yes yes yes yes