Recommend approval to award a sole source annual contract for water meters to Badger Meter, Inc. in the amount of $585,000. This contract will provide meter accessories for the City of Savannah Water Distribution System.  Water meters are continuously needed for replacement and change out of existing water meters that have met their useful life to automated meter reading (AMR) and advanced meter infrastructure (AMI) water meters, along with purchase of new meters by developers and customers for private development within the City.  

The City of Savannah AMR system is the Badger Meter Orion and Beacon Systems and consists of water meters, encoded registers, radio read/frequency endpoints (transponders), and the Beacon Mobile Software and Advanced Meter Infrastructure (AMI).  Standardization on Badger Meters will allow efficient water meter inventory, operations, maintenance, and redundant metering capabilities, for both AMR and AMI Smart Water Metering applications.      

This contract is being recommended as a sole source for the following reasons:

1. Reduce complications caused by multiplicity of different meter brands which can affect MS Govern data input and output, specifically from different coding requirements for differing meter brands;
2. To effectively address technology and systems supporting metering and billing processes, along with vital software integrations needed to effectively assimilate City IT, billing and Utility Services processes;
3. Badger Meter, Inc. is the sole manufacturer and distributer of Badger Meter utility products for the City of Savannah;
4. The City of Savannah KPMG assessment, completed in October 2017, identified the varying types of meters as a factor which creates meter reading difficulties for meter reading staff;
5. Continued investment in the already over $6 million in the City’s Badger Water Meter and AMR system and software. 

Approval