Belton’s City Council on Tuesday approved a contract with Utility Service Group Inc. to replace the city’s water meters with an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system and approved a separate maintenance contract for the new system.

Why it matters: Council and staff said AMI will provide faster leak detection, customer portal tools, improved consumption reporting and the capability for remote shutoffs. City staff and the finance director told council the project will require a budget amendment before signing and will reduce but not eliminate longstanding manual processes for meter reads and shutoffs.

Contract and cost: staff presented a not‑to‑exceed implementation contract amount of $8,250,672.40 with Utility Service Group and a maintenance agreement with an annual not‑to‑exceed figure of $169,000. The system includes new electronic meters, sealed remote shutoff assemblies, network endpoints and seven data collection towers (MTUs). The maintenance contract is structured as a one‑year agreement with multiple renewal options covering a 15‑year anticipated equipment lifecycle; the company and city negotiated annual escalation language capped in the contract.

Timeline and operations: staff said the full program is expected to require about 15 months from contract start to completion. The vendor will perform a multi‑step rollout: initial inventory and site survey, equipment order and staging, and staged installation. Staff said the system should begin serving live meter reads roughly six months after a formal start and that the full swap will be phased so the old and new systems run concurrently during installation.

Customer features and safeguards: the AMI meters are solid‑state devices that do not rely on mechanical moving parts; staff said the endpoints and batteries are sealed and expected to be serviceable for roughly 15 years. The system will offer a customer portal with consumption history, usage alerts and near‑real‑time reports; staff said it will not be truly instantaneous but will provide frequent reads that can reveal continuous flow and other abnormal patterns much sooner than current monthly reads. The vendor will run monitoring and alerting and notify the city of potential leaks or anomalies.

After‑hours operations and policy implications: under the new system, the ability to remotely turn water service off and on will be administered by finance staff rather than public works crews. Councilors and staff discussed the need to establish written policies for after‑hours remote turn‑ons to reduce flood risk (city staff said the usual practice will remain: require a resident to be present when water is restored). Council members also discussed that the AMI change could allow the city to move from several billing cycles to a single cycle, and that the city’s ability to absorb wholesale purchase cost increases for water in the short term may change; staff said a finance recommendation on rate treatment will be part of future budget work.

Budget impact and funding: staff said the project is not in the current adopted operating budget and that a budget amendment will be presented at the next council meeting before the city signs the implementation contract. The finance director identified proposed funding from existing fund balances: approximately $2,000,000 from capital improvement sales tax funds, $3,000,000 from wastewater funds and $2,250,000 from the water fund (figures presented in council discussion). Staff estimated the city’s ending cash for the water fund would decrease from $8.9 million to about $6.06 million if the full project executes as proposed; wastewater cash would fall from about $11 million to $8 million and capital improvement balances would fall accordingly. Council members discussed whether the city can continue to shield customers from wholesale price increases and noted the AMI data might help reduce future loss by detecting leaks earlier.

Maintenance and lifecycle: staff emphasized the maintenance contract will include regular monitoring, endpoint repairs and replacement of equipment as batteries and endpoints reach end of life. The vendor’s service obligation includes a goal of maintaining meter network communications at or above 97 percent availability; staff said endpoints and batteries are commonly replaced as sealed units after long service rather than field replacing internal batteries.

Votes and follow up: council approved both the implementation agreement and the maintenance resolution. Staff said they will return with a budget amendment and the city will not execute the implementation contract until the amendment is adopted.

Ending: Council members praised the customer features and leak‑detection benefits while noting operational challenges the city must address — policy for remote shut‑ons, staffing for after‑hours requests and how much of the short‑term cost increase, if any, the city will absorb. The council directed staff to return with the budget amendment and with clear operational procedures before the system goes live.