The Shoshoni Town Council approved its fiscal year 2024-2025 budget ordinance on second reading last week, with two amendments.
The first amendment increased the annual fee for a business license, from $20 up to $35.
Town staff estimated the change would result in a $1,125 annual increase in local revenues and noted that it’s been more than 20 years since the fee was raised.
The other budget amendment the council approved last week moves $25,000 of depreciation funds into the water enterprise account to cover water meter repairs and replacements.
There are currently 35 locations within the town water system where meters are not working, are partially broken, or need to be replaced, according to a memo from town staff.
The depreciation funding will allow Shoshoni to bring all of those meters back to “readable and functional” levels, Shoshoni Police Department Chief Chris Konija said.
“We started a depreciation fund and funded it for this exact reason,” he said. “(It) fulfills the goal of getting all the current meters that are not working functioning.”
Remote-read meters
At the suggestion of Councilmember Bob Zent, the council modified the second amendment to stipulate that the broken meters would be replaced with newer versions that can be read remotely.
Konija said that was do-able, since both types of meters cost about the same amount.
“It’s not much more (money) to get those versus the ones we have now,” he said. “We can do it (with) radio-reads.”
Over time, Konija said, the town would like all of its water meters to have remote-read capabilities, but it would cost more than $470,000 to replace the entire system at once.
“We’re still looking at options for funding for that,” Mayor Joel Highsmith said. “We haven’t chased anything down as of now.”
Zent agreed that Shoshoni “could not replace all the meters in one year,” but he said it could be a “five-year project.”
“I’m looking at long-term … down the road,” he said.
Town employees spend about 16 hours each month manually reading water meters, Zent estimated, and if remote-read meters were in place staff could use that time to do other work.
Water rates
Later in the meeting, Zent proposed another amendment to raise water rates by an additional $5 in order to generate funding to install more remote-read meters in town in the coming years.
Other council members said they would rather look into alternative sources of funding first before deciding on a rate increase, however, so Zent withdrew his motion.
“I don’t think I would support it as of now,” Councilmember Mike Dimick said. “(I’d rather) do something like this if there was a grant that was out there that (required it).”
For more information, call the Town of Shoshoni at 876-2515.