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VIENNA -- The Vienna Utility Board voted unanimously to submit a proposal for Vienna City Council to allocate the city's remaining American Rescue Plan funds to the utility board at Friday's meeting.
Mayor Randy Rapp said the remainder of the ARPA funds were valued at approximately $1.18 million, which had to be allocated by the end of 2024 and spent by 2026.
Board member Kim Williams said she emailed city finance director Amy Roberts, who said $1,120,897 remains unencumbered. Williams then said the money should be used for a utility related project.
"We need to use it here. Everytime we take money away from water and sewer, we're looking at a rate increase. Considering the 12/31/2024 deadline, we need to figure out what we want to do, be proactive, and send something to council to grab this money. Because it will disappear. Quicker than you think," she said.
"There's a lot of projects we could be working on," Public Works Director Craig Metz said.
Metz then asked Rapp how the board could ask council to vote on allocating the ARPA funds to the utility board. Rapp replied the board could vote to submit the proposed allocation to council.
Williams moved to create the proposal and board member Steve Eaton seconded. The board voted 4-0 to pass the measure, with board member Joe Thorpe absent.
Later in the meeting, Metz spoke to the board about replacement water meters. He said the city installed new water meters from Neptune Technology about 10 years ago that had a 20 year warranty.
"They are honoring the warranty issues on the meters, but they are not supporting the data collection part. The meters go to our data collectors, read the data, send the numbers to our billing software. That's how we get our readings," he said.
Metz said about 200 water meters in the city aren't functional. The meters are read by four different data collectors around town and one is currently out. He said a new meter could usually cost $310 a piece, but because the meters are under warranty, Neptune quoted him $179.
"We have around 5,400 units. Take the $179 and times it by 5,400 and it's about $967,000," he said. "If we don't do this, we'll have to go back to manual reading. It's not what I want to do."
Kristen Hainkel can be reached at khainkel@newsandsentinel.com.