Village of Frankfort is buying new water meters to replace failing system

The village of Frankfort is getting new water meters. 

The village board decided to make the move after years of dealing with repeated failures of the current meters. 

“We decided to go with Ti Sales,” said Mayor Richard Adams.  

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The $350,000 price tag for the Neptune R-900 meters will be covered in part with the $130,000 the village received from the American Rescue Plan Act, he said. The village is securing funding for the remainder of the amount. Ti Sales will retrofit the system and coordinate the installation. 

The village did not seek bids because of the specialized product and professional services required.  

The new meters should be arriving within the next three months, said Adams. 

In the meantime, he said, the rate of failure for the present meters remains high. 

The availability of parts is an issue when making repairs, said Superintendent of Utilities Michael Irons, but added, “We don’t want to invest more money in them right now when we’re in the process of getting a new company in.” 

Frankfort has been struggling with the water and electric metering systems Mueller Systems sold to the village since they were first installed around a decade ago. 

The system was designed to eliminate the need to have village personnel read the meters, but the failures have made manual readings necessary in many cases, Irons said. “It’s a lot more strain and stress on the office and on the power and light and water departments.”  

The present meters are designed to send an electronic signal through other meters showing how much water or electricity was used, but nodes, or batteries, in the meters failed at a high rate. Mueller was initially replacing the batteries at no cost to the village, and at one point even hired a contractor to replace the batteries, but then the batteries began failing again and the village bore the replacement costs.  

“Almost all of the ones they fixed three years ago have failed again,” said Adams. 

The electrical meters are also failing and the village could be dealing with those in the future, he added. 

Water system improvements 

The village is also looking toward upgrading its water distribution system, according to the mayor. The project is currently in the engineering stages. “Some work was done in the 1990s, but the rest of the system is very old.” 

Frankfort is among the municipalities that are part of the planned $24 million Eastern Mohawk Valley Regional Water Transmission Main project to carry water from the Mohawk Valley Water Authority (MVWA) from Schuyler to Herkimer. While the village is not having problems with its current well and storage system, village officials wanted to ensure there would be another source of water available if needed. 

Adams noted that Ti Sales carries the same kind of meters that MVWA has. "We decided to go with the brand they use in case we team up with them in the future.” 

Donna Thompson is the government and business reporter for the Times Telegram. Email her at donna@timestelegram.com.