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119 Member Spencer asked if staff has ever looked at having St. Paul take over the <br />120 water infrastructure. <br />121 <br />122 Mr. Culver indicated he has looked back at some information for this question. He <br />123 noted Roseville currently buys its water from the St. Paul Regional Water Authority <br />124 and the reason why it is called that is because that authority provides water as the <br />125 water provider to many other cities besides St. Paul. Maplewood is a good example. <br />126 He believed ten or so years ago the City of Maplewood sold their water system to <br />127 the City of St. Paul for $1 and the City of St. Paul took it over and essentially <br />128 became the water utility for the City of Maplewood. That means the St. Paul <br />129 Regional Water Authority bills everybody in Maplewood for their water and the <br />130 meters that are in the residents' homes are owned by the St. Paul Regional Water <br />131 Authority, not the City of Maplewood. When a watermain break happens in <br />132 Maplewood, St. Paul Regional Water Authority fixes it. Roseville can do the same <br />133 thing and have not had any detailed or serious conversations with St. Paul Water in <br />134 quite sometime about that possibility. <br />135 <br />136 Mr. Culver presented a spreadsheet to show what the residents would pay for given <br />137 the different scenarios. He noted particularly if under the twenty -thousand -gallon <br />138 level a resident can save money if St. Paul was providing that service. This does <br />139 not analyze the apartments or commercial users and staff would have to do a more <br />140 in-depth analysis to see what the total impact would be to all of the customers. <br />141 There are two really strong factors outside of cost to the customers that staff needs <br />142 to consider for the City of Roseville. One is coordination of what streets will be <br />143 worked on in any given year along with the infrastructure of utilities under those <br />144 streets. Staff has the flexibility to program its own watermain and everything else <br />145 because the City operates that utility. If St. Paul Water operates the City utility then <br />146 the City loses some of that flexibility. <br />147 <br />148 The other factor is personnel for winter maintenance. Currently, the majority of the <br />149 utility staff is used for plowing streets during a snow event. If we lost half or more <br />150 of the staff in that division we would have to find other personnel to backfill the <br />151 plow routes. <br />152 <br />153 Member Joyce asked when Ehlers was doing the analysis, were the fund balances <br />154 for this bond multiple years. <br />155 <br />156 Mr. Culver indicated the bond repayment would be over ten years. <br />157 <br />158 Vice Chair Huiett thought in regard to the two Ehlers options, both options do <br />159 represent a more fair and equitable distribution of costs and consumption passing <br />160 along to the users. She felt that both options represent strong consideration for <br />161 making the behavior changes that the City and residents really want. She sensed <br />162 that option two might do that a little differently as far as cost because some of the <br />163 fixed costs and the base rate are built in differently. It does provide that greater <br />Page 4 of 7 <br />