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Wi-Fi, LED Street Lighting, Digital Water Meters Coming to McKenzie

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McKENZIE (March 22) — The City of McKenzie voted to replace all of the city’s 2,000 water meters, 1,111 Carroll County Electric Department-owned street lights, and provide Wi-Fi to access as part of a major transition to more energy-efficient lighting and to reduce labor of manually reading meters.
During the regular monthly meeting, the City Council approved for Mayor Jill Holland to contract the City of McKenzie with Trane to install LED lighting and energy saving devices and equipment throughout the city-owned property and buildings, including Wi-Fi nodules and additional energy saving and safety technology. This includes electronic water meters and drive-by readers.
Representatives of Trane presented the $2,451,023 proposal, which guarantees $225,646 in annual savings over a 20-year period.
The program calls for replacing all water meters with new meters that allow meter readers to record the customers’ water usage from their vehicles as they drive the streets. Human meter readers will no longer have to stop at each meter and manually record the customer’s water usage. Other utility providers are also converting or have converted to electronic reading. Carroll County Electric Department is converting to electronic meter reading, eliminating the need for human meter readers. West Tennessee Public Utilities, the local supplier of natural gas, converted several years ago to electronic meter reading.
A second major aspect is replacing all Carroll County Electric Department’s street lights with city-owned LED (light-emitting diode) lighting, just as the City of Paris recently did. The lighting is to provide more lumens of light while consuming less energy. University Drive was converted to LED lighting over eight years ago.
The Wi-Fi system consists of 1,100 smart nodes plugged into the top portion of the street lights. The mesh Wi-Fi network will be controlled from a centralized location. The smart lighting system from Ubicquia consists of photocell replacement that provides advanced light control, utility metering, tilt/vibration sensing, connection to smart city sensors, public Wi-Fi and location bases services.
The City of McKenzie recently applied for $50,000 grant for Wi-Fi networking through the State of Tennessee. If the city receives the grant, it will go towards upgrades and offsetting some of the costs of the Trane Wi-Fi within the Downtown and Highland area of McKenzie.
City-owned buildings will be converted to LED lighting and the heating and cooling systems will be converted to more energy-efficient systems. The buildings include: city hall, farmers market, library, public works building (old National Guard), senior citizens building, waterwater plant, Park Theatre, railroad depot, water plant, and United Neighbors.

Project implementation will tentatively begin in May and culminate over a 10-month period.
Project cost is $2,451,023 with annual savings of $225,647 based on the city borrowing the funds at 3.5 percent over a 20-year period. Over 20 years, total costs are estimated at $4,163,789 with savings of $5,980,308 over current usage. Positive cash flow over 20 years is $1,816,519.
Trane representative Stu Shunk stated, “The project will help attract visitors and provide internet access to kids who might not have access to do their homework.”
Filters will be embedded into the system to monitor the network in order to block access through certain keywords.
“Since August of 2016, we have worked with McKenzie in establishing this project. People are fascinated with what we are doing in McKenzie. Real-time access is a game changer, and the timing could not be more perfect,” said Trane representative Jim Crone.
In other business, approved Resolution 19-001 for a TML bond no greater than $2.7 million to finance the Trane project.
The council also approved the second reading of Ordinance #527 setting standards and regulations for small-cell towers. It will control the placement of the small-cell phone amplifiers use for the implementation of 5G cell service. Other cities have complained of the location of the unsightly boosters in residential areas. Recommendations for the standards came from the McKenzie Regional Planning Commission. The new relations follow the guidelines set by the State of Tennessee and were patterned towards the ones set by Dyersburg.
Resolutions were passed limiting the City Park and Mulberry Park to recreational use.
The next regular meeting of the Board of Mayor and Council is Thursday, April 11 at 6 p.m. at McKenzie City Hall.

McKenzie, Updates, Changes, 2019