Orting — Council member Moore pressed city staff Wednesday to include a system printout showing every SCADA telemetry point and current alarm state in council minutes and future staff updates, saying the council needs a way to track whether the system and vendor work are reducing the long backlog of alarms.

“...the request that I put in writing to the public works director was to get a printout from the SCADA system of all of the points so that we could actually see what the alarms were, not just that we had 471 pending alarms still. We want to know what those are,” Moore said during the public works report. He asked that the printout be shared with the entire council so members can monitor changes over time.

Public Works Director Ryan McBee acknowledged the request and told the committee the status of the SCADA system would be included in the public works minutes; the director also noted earlier proposals from a vendor, Parametrics, had exceeded the original project estimate and had not yet been accepted. Moore said the council had previously approved nearly $500,000 for the SCADA system two years earlier and he wanted the council to track implementation and any budget variances.

Why it matters: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) telemetry and alarm management are core to water and wastewater system reliability. Council members said including the alarm point list in meeting minutes would let them see whether the city is improving operations, or whether persistent alarms indicate problems with installation, configuration or vendor responses.

Council direction: Staff said the request would be captured in public works minutes, and Moore asked that it be included in future memos to the full council. No formal motion was recorded; the direction was a committee request for a printout and ongoing reporting.

Clarifying details: Moore referenced a backlog number—“471 pending alarms” as the example cited in the study session memo. Staff noted that Parametrics had provided a proposal that exceeded the original estimate and that the city intended to share drafts of plans and standards with committee members as they matured.

Next step: Staff will include SCADA status and a printout of alarm points in public works documentation and distribute that to the full council so members can track alarm counts and states over time.