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ARDEN HILLS CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION – JULY 19, 2021 5 City Administrator Perrault stated this was simply a placeholder item. He explained this item was not used much in the last year. He commented further on how the used vehicle market was at this time. Finance Director Bauman discussed the expense of replacing all of the City’s water meters and noted staff would have to work on how to fund this project. Councilmember Holden suggested some of the federal government money be used to assist with covering the expense of replacing water meters. She asked if Federal funds can be used for stormwater expenditures in 2022. Finance Director Bauman stated she would have to research this further to ensure that this type of project could be covered by Federal ARPA funds. Mayor Grant questioned if the City has received the Federal ARPA funds. Finance Director Bauman explained she expected the City would receive the funds next week. Councilmember Holden asked if the City applied for an I&I grant from the Met Council. Interim Public Works Director Swearingen stated he had applied for a grant in the amount of $250,000. He reported the City would be receiving a grant, but he would not know the grant amount until later this fall. Councilmember Holden recommended $250,000 in sewer lining be added to the CIP for 2023. Finance Director Bauman questioned where the fund balance from the end of 2020 ($548,000) should be placed. She indicated the Council typically puts this surplus into the PIR Fund. The Council supported the surplus being placed in the PIR Fund. D. Water Meters Discussion Finance Director Bauman stated sometime around December 31, 2020, when staff was working on the 4th quarter utility billing for 2020, it became apparent that we weren’t receiving reads on about 300 of our 2600+ meters, mostly in the southern portion of the City. Staff needed to complete the billing cycle per City Code and went about estimating the 4th quarter reads for properties based on usage amounts from the past three years. Staff met with employees from Metering & Technology Solutions who deal with the meters, transmitters and collectors in conjunction with Badger Meter. It was determined that the collectors and meters were operating properly and that the likely cause was signal interference. Finance Director Bauman commented Metering & Technology Solutions suggested that the City have Ancom conduct an RF Study in an attempt to locate the source of any potential interference to the automated water meter reporting system. Ancom had recently worked with another City on identifying interference issues. As staff was preparing the 1st quarter utility billing for 2021, it became apparent that we were still not getting reads on about 150 properties. A note was included in the 03/26/21 Admin Update indicating that letters were being sent out to these properties in an attempt to get accurate meter reads for the billing cycle. The City received about 95 responses to