Water was still a top issue at the Jim Thorpe Borough Council meeting Thursday evening at Memorial Hall, but a proposed noise ordinance was also heard.

Last month's meeting brought up issues with inconsistencies in the water meter billings, along with problems with the billing software, so a special meeting was scheduled to talk with outside vendors regarding fixing the problems. Borough engineer Kim Mazur gave a report from that March 31 meeting with Ken Christian from Pennsylvania Rural Water Associates and Tom Tobin from Diversified Technologies.The proposal given to council put a comprehensive plan in place to cover everything from checks and balances to finding problems in the water, sewer and garbage billings, making fixes to the software, optimizing reports, creating new billing procedures and better revenue collections procedures, and recommending a representative from borough council to oversee the work by the vendor and make sure it meets the borough's standards and ordinances.Mazur said that the job would take between 100 to 125 hours, and that the total bill would be between $7,500 and $9,000 for all work and consultation.The council agreed that the price was good, but Councilman John McGuire brought up the fact that there was no borough manager in place to also help oversee the work when a council representative couldn't be present."We have no way of judging how they do the work without a borough manager," said McGuire."Are we going to hire a manager? We budgeted for it?" he asked.After some debate, a motion passed to accept the water vendor proposal and to appoint borough council President Betsy Ahner to work with Pennsylvania Rural Water Associates on the project. Council started the process to research the hiring of a new borough manager.Louis Hall, of the borough planning commission, brought up the possibility of instituting a noise ordinance in the borough. Currently, noise complaints fall under disorderly conduct calls for the police, and if bars are involved, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is usually called to deal with the complaints.A noise ordinance would put enforcement on to the borough's police department. An example of Summit Hill's noise ordinance was brought up by Mayor Michael Sofranko, which bans excessive noise from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.Council decided to move forward and look into adopting the ordinance, though a thorough study would have to be done first. A noise ordinance has been suggested before, including in 2011, though one has yet to be adopted.In other news, manhole inspections have been completed on the roughly 660 manholes, leading to better tracking, and possibly raising some that are buried to current street levels. Also, the police department announced a youth fishing contest for children at Roger's Grove on May 17.