Albany City Commission approves $18.3 million smart meter loan

ALBANY — The Albany City Commission, at a called meeting Friday morning, approved an $18.3 million loan that will finance the city’s $20.8 million advanced metering infrastructure project for Albany Utilities.

The vote was 5-0, with commissioners Tommie Postell and Roger Marietta not in attendance,

“I feel like this will bring us into the 21st century, pushing us forward like other cities that are progressing with their utilities for their customers,” Mayor Dorothy Hubbard said. “So once we get this in place, we will have the ability to know when there are issues.”

During a recent commission retreat, City Manager Sharon Subadan presented various potential financing options to the board and received a consensus to move forward with requests for proposal by the city’s Finance director, Derrick Brown.

“This is the single-largest investment in infrastructure made by the mayor and commissioners toward utilities. They should be commended for making this approval,” Subadan said. “I’d like to thank the commission, the mayor and staff for their hard work and support in this project.”

The total project cost of is $20.8 million, and the $18.3 million loan note will be underwritten by Regions Bank. The terms are for six years with a fixed interest rate of 2.93 percent. A down payment will be made with $2.5 million in Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia credits, which leaves $18.3 million to be financed. That balance will require six payments of approximately $3.37 million per year over the life of the note.

That initial down payment is due in December of next year.

“This is a huge move for our city, putting us in a better place now and into the future,” Hubbard said. “We will be able to tell what’s going on with our power grid from one location downtown. … This really changes the curve. If we had waited longer, then this move would have cost us more money.”

There had been talk in the community that the advanced metering infrastructure project was just a new toy and yet another waste of taxpayer money.

“This is not a shiny new toy for our toy box,” Subadan said previously. “It allows us to address and replace aging infrastructure before it fails.”

City officials said the infrastructure project will involve more than electricity. It will also include gas, water and LED streetlights. Meters for gas, water and electric will all provide communication through smart meters. All the data will be transmitted to a meter data management system, which is software that performs long-term data storage and management for the vast quantities of data delivered by the meters.