The goal for this meeting, um, I'm going to give kind of a quick presentation. Uh, hopefully quick. I'll try to keep it as quick as I can. Uh, there'll be time, especially with the amount of people we have here to answer any questions you have.

So we have about 70 miles of local roadways. Uh, we have another 17.5 miles of, uh, municipal state aid, which is essentially local roadways, except with a little bit higher volume that we collect some state funds for.

Um, as many people may know, uh, all 70 miles of local roads were reconstructed between 1996 and 2007. Uh, the roads were mainly funded utilizing special assessments, uh, to the uh, benefiting properties.

So while the 70 plus miles of local roads were done, uh, the 80 some miles of sanitary sewer and water main were not. And so, um, one thing to keep in mind is life expectancy.

We want to come up with a program. Uh, to, to start replacing a lot of our water main. Uh, we're doing some, but we want to kind of start expanding that so we can, um, kind of avoid while we're not at a crisis right now.

So our staff recommendation, uh, moving forward, uh, when we come back to the council and have discussions, we'll be, uh, we feel franchise fees are the best route moving forward.

If we if it's $8 per month, eight on your gas, eight on your electric, a total of $16 total a month. That would generate the $2 million or pretty close, um, that we think is needed now to get us on that 70 year replacements schedule.

With the franchise fees. Is that going to be guaranteed towards infrastructure and road? No matter what city council will be in?

It would require the city council still can redirect those funds, but it's a little bit more difficult. They would have to change the, uh, the ordinance and go through the process of changing the ordinance to. Because when we write the ordinance, it will be dedicated towards transportation type projects.

So I guess the question on the bonding kind of right before that, it almost looked like we'd be paying like 25% in fees and and interest and all that. Is that right? Or.

Yeah. Well, I was just saying it's a lot of it varies on the interest rates. Okay. And what the fees are at the time. Uh, just as an example, when we, the city did, they issued about uh, $50 million in bonds over the last, you know, the ones that were still we have a couple more years of still paying off the previous ones, um, for these when we had the assessments. Um, but only 40 million of that was the actual bond. There's about 10 million in interest over the you know, it's about a 25 year between all of them.

Second question, um, we're new to the area. Are there do we still have lead pipes?

Yeah, we do not. So not, uh, we are not aware of any lead pipes. I mean, there may be some internally in people's houses, uh, that were. But we are not aware of any houses with lead pipes in the city of Crystal. We don't have any lead services. Okay. Uh, none of our mains have led. Um, we're not again. We've done testing. And when we replace water meters, we check. Uh, we don't have any inventory of lead pipes in the city of Crystal.

Of those 70 miles of utilities, some of that's been replaced. There's been a lot of utility work in several areas. Is that so? We've done I would say we've we've done over the last five years.

We've done some reconstructions down in this area I think. Can you see my mouse. Yeah. And kind of the southern parts that south of Valley Park. Um, it probably, I don't know exactly offhand, but it's probably in that 2 to 3 mile range is what we've done.

So you estimate um budgeting um 8 to $16 for gas and electric. That could change depending on costs as well. Correct.

Correct. So we uh I mean, if you had what my recommendation is today, obviously I'm going to be advocating for the $8 on each one. So 16 total. Uh, but I also know the realities of what that means. I mean, there's, um, over 200 communities in Minnesota that do franchise fees of various amounts. Uh, if we did get up to that 16, we would be one of the, if not the highest in the state of Minnesota. So but at the same point, I mean, I have to advocate what, um, uh, what I'm seeing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what the council is going to decide. It likely will be lower than that as well.

My question is, have has the council considered that, um, would that jeopardize the funding source if, like a certain