04-18-22-WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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ARDEN HILLS CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION — APRIL 18, 2022 9 Councilmember Holden said if the purpose is to pay for the water meters, they could use the money now for water projects and they would still have money for the meters when they decide to replace them. Mayor Grant elaborated that they have water projects now they could use the ARPA funds for which means they won't spend money out of the water fund, so when they do get to water meter replacements the funds will be there. Finance Director Bauman said they have to be entered into contracts by the end of 2024, and costs had to be incurred after March, 2021. There's a possibility it could get used for the Glenpaul project and for both 2022 projects. Councilmember Holmes said she would like to know exactly how they were going to spend the money. City Administrator Perrault said they would lay it out during the budget process. Council had requested staff have an idea of where to spend the money at this meeting, and they had internally talked about using it for water meters as a starting point. The water meter project is coming, whether it gets started this year or next. Councilmember Holmes said she wants to know when the meters have to be replaced. Finance Director Bauman said the meters are working, but some of them are up to 30 years old. Councilmember Holmes asked staff to let them know when the meters project would need to start and meters be replaced so they could start making decisions. Councilmember Radziej noted the efficiency of the contract would be to do all the meters at once, not just ones that fail. Finance Director Bauman said they would need to hire someone to analyze all the products out there to determine what the best product is for us. There is a lot of prep work to decide which meters and which program, and a firm would get hired to do the installations. Councilmember Holden stated they had talked about doing work at the dog parks, was that money coming from the City budget for fences, a shelter, trees etc. Councilmember Holmes said the Spring Lake Park Lions donation would be used for that. Mayor Grant asked if staff recalled what the PMP Edgewater neighborhood (2021 PMP) costs were. Public Works Director/City Engineer Swearingen thought sewer and water combined was probably close to $1 million. The total project was close to $3 million. There is a decent amount of lining that could be done on upcoming projects, and he could come up with others fairly quickly.