Copperas Cove city council hears briefing from MetroNet
By LYNETTE SOWELL
Cove Leader-Press
Kelly Parker, City Relations Manager for MetroNet, updated the Copperas Cove city council on Tuesday evening on Utility Strike Reports as well as residential tickets that have been called in to MetroNet by Copperas Cove residents.
Altogether, there have been a total of 20 City water utility or gas/pipeline strikes by MetroNet or its contractors from April 1 through Nov. 30 of this year.
Half of the strikes were classified as “mismarks”, meaning that the mark for the utility indicator was not accurate.
“Basically, when we have Locates performed so we can find utilities in the ground, if that was off for any reason and that unfortunately resulted in a strike, we will classify that as a mismark,” Parker said. “An incidental contact generally means that we followed all of our best practices and procedures, but unfortunately, it was an unavoidable strike that occurred there.”
Three of the 20 incidents were classified as “Incidental” contacts and seven of the 20 incidents were classified as “Inquire.” Parker said that an Inquire is something that is at-fault for MetroNet.
For residential service issues that have been submitted to MetroNet from locals, there have been a total of 228 through the same time period.
According to the report presented by MetroNet, 40 were resolved within 24 hours, or 18 percent. Eighty of the tickets were resolved within 4-7 days, or 35 percent. For 23 percent of the tickets, 52, it took eight-plus days to resolve.
As of Nov. 30, there were seven in progress and two open tickets.
Haverlah added to Parker’s comments about the report shared with the council.
He said that Parker provided the document to the city on Monday, and that he hadn’t had the opportunity to have a discussion with her and review this with the city’s team.
He said that the City’s data does not match that data provided by MetroNet.
“She is providing what they have in their database, and she has definitely been very clear and direct with us. We’ve been very clear and direct.”
He said that one of the biggest situations the City of Copperas Cove had with MetroNet was a water line and subsequent sewer line strike at the corner of Shady Lane and Little Street. “It was based on the contractor proceeding without the directions that we had previously provided,” Haverlah said.
“By all means, MetroNet has been a very communicative partner,” he added. “Just today as an example, they met with our development review committee and reviewed one of their next projects of providing service, of installing fiber through the community, and we really appreciate how open they are with the communication.”
Haverlah said that the city has set some parameters since the Little Street-Shady Lane water strike that impacted nearly all of Copperas Cove, and that MetroNet continues to follow through with those parameters.
“And just so you are aware, based on a number of utility strikes in a day, once they are verified, we’ve come to agreement that they will shut down services so that we can respond to those utility strikes, and so it’s a matter of matching resources with activities as well.”
He said that the City receives calls regularly about services that aren’t fulfilled by either the contractors that MetroNet has or to the satisfaction of residents, and the City puts those people in touch with MetroNet, and nearly every one of them become satisfactory.
He said that the City hopes to continue positive communication, and that they will work on the data and share what it has with MetroNet, to match up those calls.