GUILDERLAND — Poised to spend close to $5 million on new water meters for homes across town, the Guilderland Town Board on Tuesday delayed making a decision until its next meeting on Dec. 10.

Board members asked many questions of the town’s engineer, Jesse Fraine, who made the decision with Bill Bremigen, superintendent of water and wastewater management.

The board also heard from representatives of a rival company, which had submitted a proposal that they said was lower and included more than the chosen one.

The board had earlier agreed to getting proposals to upgrade Guilderland’s system to an Advance Metering Infrastructure, known as AMI, which would let the water department receive data on usage in near real time.

This system would also let the department notify customers within a day if there were to be a severe leak rather than waiting till the meter was read, perhaps months later; it is also expected to make billing easier.

In early September, the department started reviewing four proposals — from Core & Main, Everett J. Prescott Inc., National Metering Services, and  Ferguson Waterworks — ultimately settling on Core & Main.

“All the companies that submitted are good … We believe we found the best fit,” Fraine told the board, while noting it wasn’t the lowest price.

The original proposal from Core & Main, Fraine said, was for $5 million, but after discussion, that was reduced to not exceeding $4,850,000.

Sensus makes the meters used by Core & Main and they are to be installed by Vepo, which Fraine said was experienced.

Almost 10,000 meters are to be installed throughout Guilderland, which Fraine called “pretty daunting.”

He said Core & Main had  “a well experienced team” and added, “We also like their warranty of the meters, where it’s a 15-year replacement at no cost and then five years after that is pro-rated and, with the new meter installed, its warranty starts again."

Core & Main and Sensus guarantee that their network can be set up to read at least 98.5 percent of all the meters they install in Guilderland. The meters would communicate with base stations, which Fraine said would be placed on water towers in town.

The project was slated to begin next year, in late winter, Fraine said, with the goal of completing the installation of new meters within a year.

Fraine also said there is an option where residents can have an app on their smartphone to alert them if there is a leak but that is an additional cost.

Fraine said it would depend how many people would be interested in that feature whether or not the town would pay for it.

Representatives from Ferguson Waterworks said their price had been lower than Core & Main’s — at $4,666,000.

“I’m not here to badmouth anyone,” Rick Catuccio of Ferguson told the board. “But if some of the facts were dug into a little deeper, there might have been a different decision.”

He described Core & Main as “a holding company.”

“Tell me why you think you should have gotten the contract,” said Deputy Supervisor Christine Napierski. “What is it about your system that’s better?’

“We do everything,” said Catuccio. He said, for example, that the customer portal is not an extra charge as it is with Core & Main. “That’s included in Master Meter; that’s standard operating procedure.”

He went on, “How do I put this nicely? … We’ve had systems that have tried the Sensus brand,” said Catuccio, naming several nearby municipalities. “Now [they are] doing business with Furguson and Master Meter.”

Catuccio described the decision as like a 20-year marriage and said, “We felt it in the best interest of the town and the taxpayers of the town of Guilderland to at least have this brought to the forefront.”

“This is a huge amount of money, in my opinion,” said Napierski. “We don’t vote on something this large that often … I would love to have some more discussions about how you arrived at this decision.”

“I don’t know what you guys want,” said Fraine, “but we can give you all sorts of information.”

Councilwoman Amanda Beedle requested “the Cliff Notes version.”

“I’m not an infrastructure engineer, water engineer,” she said, “but I do like to see, like comparison shopping, right? Making sure what we’re getting truly is the best based upon professional opinion.”

Councilman Gustavos Santos asked Fraine if the delay would increase costs.

“Costs are going up,” said Fraine, “but right now, they’ve agreed to hold pricing,” he said of Core & Main.

The board ultimately decided to wait until its next meeting, on Dec. 10, to make a decision.