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Regular City Council Meeting Monday,November 17, 2014 Page 16 At the request of Councilmember Willmus, Finance Director Miller defined the annual income thresholds needed to retain the revised utility rate discount as pre- viously determined by the City Council. To limit staff time needed to administer the program, Mr. Miller advised that the income thresholds were set to mirror those set by Ramsey County for their financial assistance programs, or 65% of federal guidelines: $19,700 for a one-person household, and just under $27,000 for a two-person household under their current adopted criteria. In seeking to ad- dress how that compared to the discount program currently used by the City of Little Canada for Councilmember Willmus' edification, Mr. Miller advised that theirs was several thousand dollars above this threshold, at approximately 75% of federal guidelines, in addition to adding for administrative costs for city staff to perform the analysis; and further noted that he had found few cities in the metro- politan area that offered a similar discount program other than South St. Paul and Little Canada. In those instances for communities using different criteria, Councilmember Laliberte noted that residents were then required to submit their financial data to City staff for verification; and reminded her colleagues that this was the rationale in utilizing an existing county program for the City's discount utility rate pro- gram. Councilmember Laliberte expressed her lack of support to ask Roseville residents to submit their financial information to various agencies; even while recognizing that the income thresholds were low. In providing some of the City of Roseville's rationale for its rate structure, Fi- nance Director Miller noted that residents were not assessed for water/sewer mainline replacements, which was the practice of many other cities; but those costs were covered in the base rates, while making Roseville's rates higher in comparison with those other peer communities. Councilmember Willmus expressed his dislike of the annual comparison for other utility costs used for the property tax and levy hearing; with Finance Director Mil- ler offering to remove it from the presentation if not of benefit to the community and/or City Council. Mr. Miller advised that those nine peer communities used consistently for com- parison purposes were identified as first-ring suburbs with populations between 18,000 and 50,000 and with stand-alone utility systems. Mr. Miller noted that lo- cal priorities and funding philosophies could create a wide disparity in rates; with Roseville having chosen to capture direct and indirect costs through rates rather than through the use of special assessments for its residents. Mr. Miller noted that Roseville water rates were higher than the peer cities, but noted that the water de- livered to customers in Roseville was already softened, and due to the new infra- structure replacement cycle enacted by the City Council a few years ago, those higher funding levels were necessary. Mr. Miller further noted that Roseville sewer rates were below those of the peer cities, and while overall combined water