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Attachment B <br />Member Cicha wondered about the water use data that was used for this study. He <br />wondered when the data was taken from and has staff seen an increase in residential <br />household water use since COVID started and everyone has been working from home. He <br />wondered if that was taken into account. <br /> <br />Ms. Pietrick indicated Ehlers used actual usage data from June 2020 back twelve months. <br />There is a little bit of COVID impact. There definitely has been an increase in residential <br />use as people work from home. There also has been a reduction in commercial but <br />whenever a rate study is built they have to use actual data and there was no way for staff <br />to project what the COVID impact would look like going forward. One of the things the <br />rate study gives is best practices in the rate setting and staff will also have Ehlers come <br />back and re-evaluate if it is working as anticipated and are any adjustments needed to be <br />made. <br /> <br />Mr. Culver explained another thing to consider is a lot of the analysis the City is using for <br />the typical residential usage is looking at the winter quarter anyways. The majority of the <br />winter quarter was COVID free but still does reflect the typical usage for residential. <br /> <br />Member Cicha indicated he did a little math and looked at his own water bill it appears he <br />will be saving money as a seven thousand to eleven-thousand-gallon user in the low tier. <br />This would be saving his household approximately thirty dollars a quarter and from his <br />calculations it seems like the user would need to be using approximately twenty-three <br />thousand gallons or more for the current rate structure to be better. <br /> <br />Member Spencer asked if staff has ever looked at having St. Paul take over the water <br />infrastructure. <br /> <br />Mr. Culver indicated he has looked back at some information for this question. He noted <br />Roseville currently buys its water from the St. Paul Regional Water Authority and the <br />reason why it is called that is because that authority provides water as the water provider <br />to many other cities besides St. Paul. Maplewood is a good example. He believed ten or <br />so years ago the City of Maplewood sold their water system to the City of St. Paul for $1 <br />and the City of St. Paul took it over and essentially became the water utility for the City of <br />Maplewood. That means the St. Paul Regional Water Authority bills everybody in <br />Maplewood for their water and the meters that are in the residentsÓ homes are owned by <br />the St. Paul Regional Water Authority, not the City of Maplewood. When a watermain <br />break happens in Maplewood, St. Paul Regional Water Authority fixes it. Roseville can <br />do the same thing and have not had any detailed or serious conversations with St. Paul <br />Water in quite sometime about that possibility. <br /> <br />Mr. Culver presented a spreadsheet to show what the residents would pay for given the <br />different scenarios. He noted particularly if under the twenty-thousand-gallon level a <br />resident can save money if St. Paul was providing that service. This does not analyze the <br />apartments or commercial users and staff would have to do a more in-depth analysis to see <br />what the total impact would be to all of the customers. There are two really strong factors <br />outside of cost to the customers that staff needs to consider for the City of Roseville. One <br /> <br />