{"id":156506,"date":"2026-04-03T18:10:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T18:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/156506\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T18:10:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T18:10:06","slug":"city-meets-water-meter-reading-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/156506\/","title":{"rendered":"City meets water meter reading goal"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we close out March of 2026, I would like to take this column to thank all the men and women who helped to achieve our lofty water meter goals. We started out with 31% estimated and no-read\u00a0meters,\u00a0and I tasked City Administrator Radley\u00a0Williams to\u00a0change the way we were running that division and put an emphasis on changing our direction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

We started in August of 2025 with the goal to reduce the estimated read meters and\u00a0ultimately reduce\u00a0the cost of water,\u00a0wastewater\u00a0and reclaimed water. If we could reduce the estimated and no-read meters, we could reduce the rate increases for 2026 and 2027.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

We also needed to update our tap fees, credit card fees, reduce overtime, add meter reading\u00a0towers\u00a0and codify our tampering fees.\u00a0The all-the-above approach\u00a0of\u00a0increasing non-water rates, reducing\u00a0fraud\u00a0and decreasing the estimated\/no-read meters would drive down the cost of water,\u00a0wastewater\u00a0and reclaimed water.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Radley accepted the challenge,\u00a0and we agreed to reduce the estimated and no-read meters down to 8% by March 31, which\u00a0is well within the norm of public utilities. As we began to see the trend going in the right direction, our rate study consultant was able to adjust our rates downward by\u00a05.5% this year and another 3% next year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Without these decreases in expenses and estimated meters, our consultant\u00a0Raftelis, \u201ca collaborative partner to local governments,\u201d could not have recommended that we reduce the rate increase due to jeopardizing our pristine credit rating. This collaborative effort was spearheaded by Radley with the help\u00a0from\u00a0utility\u00a0billing,\u00a0IT\u00a0and\u00a0public\u00a0services.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As we close out\u00a0the month of March, I am proud to announce that we met our number of 8% estimated reads. We\u00a0could\u00a0not\u00a0have done it without our dedicated staff. With almost 30,000 water and reclaimed water meters across Apopka, we still\u00a0have to\u00a0be diligent to replace the non-functioning meters,\u00a0as well,\u00a0making sure our new buildings are properly\u00a0set\u00a0up.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A part of the water, wastewater and reclaimed water rate increases are due to $15 million in unnecessary spending by the prior administration on an expensive fertilizer plant that\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0cost-effective and a wastewater plant that was built a decade before it was needed.\u00a0Both of these\u00a0expenditures will cost water\u00a0customers $600,000\/year or almost 2% per year for the next 15 years to\u00a0pay\u00a0off\u00a0the loan.<\/p>\n

\"Bryan <\/p>\n

Bryan Nelson has served as mayor of Apopka since 2018. Before his service as mayor, he worked for the family business, Nelson’s Florida Roses, and founded Nelson Insurance Services. Nelson served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2006 until 2014 and in the Orange County Commission from 2014 until 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As we close out March of 2026, I would like to take this column to thank all the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-156506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}