The Utilities Committee met on 07/27/2021.
It was a 5 minute long meeting but still had a discussion of some interest.
The two actions items on the agenda were increasing two Stormwater Management Plan Review contracts by $20,000 each. Staff had nothing to add to the memo about the items and none of the committee members had an questions, so both of those items were approved quickly.
They then moved on to monthly reports for April May and June
Alderperson Metzler (District 2) noticed that the water main breaks this year are quite a lot more than in 2020 asked if there was something about the weather or the conditions this year that accounted for that increase.
A staff member answered that he didn’t really know what the reason was. It could be any or all of the things Alderperson Metzler asked about. The city hasn’t changed anything from a pumping or water pressure standpoint, and the weather has been fairly mild overall. So there wasn’t a reason for water main breaks to be up, but he acknowledged that they were definitely above their average. He said they hoped it would level off.
Alderperson Metzler asked if the numbers could have anything to do with the city simply being better at detecting breaks this year.
The staffer said one of his coworkers seems to find a lot of breaks when he’s out for his daily runs. He also thought some of the equipment we have could be helping, but the thing that usually starts them looking for a break is somebody hearing or seeing something. A lot of the breaks came up on Friday afternoons which was the worst time to try to get a crew together because they would be ruining the start to someone’s weekend. So if they could detect them better/earlier, they would.
Alderperson Metzler thanked them for constantly staying on top of these breaks.
They finished by reviewing the DPW mid-year report, the contents of which no one had any questions about other than to confirm that this report was different from the DPW report presented at the Municipal Services Committee.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=860970&GUID=122C98FB-6CD7-416F-8CAF-596D99C66AC6&Options=info|&Search=
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