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it would be interesting to see how that directly impacted and hopefully reduced the <br /> City of Roseville's flow, since that was applied to Roseville's calculations. <br /> However, overall, Mr. Freihammer reiterated that the city had made significant <br /> gains in I & I to-date. <br /> At the request of Member Seigler as to proportional percentages, Finance Director <br /> Miller advised that staff always built in a cushion in rates intended to protect utility <br /> customers;but admitted it was an imperfect science affected by customer usage and <br /> past history. Mr. Miller advised that staff assumptions were usually accurate, rates <br /> sometimes were purposely held off versus increasing those rates in favor of another <br /> utility if funding for that particular utility was falling behind another. Mr. Miller <br /> noted the healthy cash reserves in the Sewer Fund resulted in staff intentionally <br /> recommending that rates not increase as much in that fund. However, with the <br /> significant investments of late for the Water Fund(e.g.infrastructure improvements <br /> and water tower rehabilitation, and automatic read meters), Mr. Miller noted staff <br /> had applied some science and art in the overall rate structure to keep increases to <br /> homeowners and businesses somewhat stable, resulting in the recommended 5% <br /> overall increase for 2017. Mr. Miller noted this would balance some of the bigger <br /> increases and soften the blow and sequence timing to offset each other long-term. <br /> At the request of Member Seigler, Finance Director Miller confirmed that the <br /> Metropolitan Council's fee would increase by 19% in 2017 and was based on <br /> estimated flows; but noted staff had built in a cushion in the fund in past years to <br /> provide some cushion for customers. Mr. Miller advised that staff uses historical <br /> and projected data from real and estimated flows to adjust City of Roseville rates <br /> accordingly; keeping in mind Metropolitan Council rates are always one year <br /> behind. Mr. Miller noted that,relative to 2015, even though City of Roseville flows <br /> have decreased, the other 100 communities collectively had decreased their flows <br /> even more. <br /> Member Seigler questioned how many other companies could increase their rates <br /> by 19% and expect to stay in business. <br /> Finance Director Miller advised that when viewed system-wide, the Metropolitan <br /> Council's rates didn't constitute that much in the big picture. <br /> Public Works Director Freihammer concurred, noting that the Metropolitan <br /> Council continued to ramp up their infrastructure asset management and <br /> replacement rates based on the age of their infrastructure, similar to those steps <br /> being undertaken by the City of Roseville and other older communities in the <br /> metropolitan area. Mr. Freihammer referenced at least three of those recent <br /> improvements within the Roseville portion of their system as throughout the entire <br /> system. Mr. Freihammer noted just one of those projects had amounted to over$30 <br /> million. Mr. Freihammer noted upcoming Metropolitan Council projects affecting <br /> Roseville included Villa Park at Dale Street and County Road B; Southwest border <br /> Page 5 of 20 <br />