CC_Minutes_2010_0111 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

Regular City Council Meeting Monday, January 11, 2010 Page 20 Councilmember Roe opined that if Xcel felt it was beneficial to them, under- grounding would be their standard design. Councilmember Johnson opined that, if the duration time for blackouts was longer based on the difficulty of finding problem areas, residents would be impacted for a longer period, and advised that he would have to take that into consideration for his constituents. Mayor Klausing opined that the difference in frequency or reduced outages needed to be balanced with aesthetics in the community, as well as residents being able to do plantings under overhead lines. Further discussion included benefit considerations worked in to the regulatory formula for financing; designs and reliability of undergrounding in this area with some redundancy built in not existing today that would minimize future down- time, including burying the line on Western Avenue and some looping on the Lit- tle Canada side; and undergrounding by the City of Little Canada when Little Canada Road was reconstructed; and interest rates just under 1 % equal to the rate of return over a 3-year period included in the recovery amount. Ms. Urich advised that the $1 million per mile was a generic estimate, and if the City expressed additional interest, Xcel would provide a more specific scoping es- timate for the Cities of Little Canada and Roseville. Councilmembers Johnson and Roe, and Mayor Klausing expressed interest in pursuing this option. Councilmember Pust requested more information Ms. Urich advised that she could start the process, and at any time before final ac- ceptance of the CRFS process and sign-off by the City to proceed, the process could be ended at the discretion of the City; with no costs incurred at this point. Klausing moved, Johnson seconded, authorizing staff to work with Xcel Energy and the City of Little Canada on developing a detailed engineering estimate of the undergrounding of the overheard electric lines along Rice Street from County Road B to County Road B-2 utilizing the Community Requested Facility Sur- charge (CBEs) option. Mr. Schwartz clarified that this proposed action to move forward was taken, whether or not the City of Little Canada agreed to cost-share 50% of the projected costs. Mayor Klausing recognized that the estimated costs of $574,000 as indicated on the chart used in tonight's presentation was for only City of Roseville participa-