The Blog from City Hall

Yes, it’s that time of year again. It’s pothole season. With the freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw cycle in full gear right now, we will begin to start seeing our old driving nemesis more often - the pothole.

We have a new feature for our residents to assist us this year in fighting potholes. We have installed a new link at the City’s website - www.edenprairie.org - that will allow residents to report potholes directly to our Street Division office. The link will lead you to an e-form. Use the e-form to give us a location description of the pothole. We would also like to know who is reporting the pothole so that we can follow-up with you, if we need to. There is also a link to report potholes on state highways. We don’t fix those potholes, but we will make sure they know about them.

It sounds like we will get a ton of heavy wet snow today, but it will likely be melted by tomorrow. Lots of moisture and temperatures fluctuating between 20 and 40 F are ripe conditions for potholes. We’d appreciate your help in attacking this annual nuisances as they grow.

Home values in Eden Prairie, like most places in the United States, are heading down this year. Values are not collapsing, but they are taking a short run dip. Leah Shaffer did an informative article about local home values in last week’s Eden Prairie News. She did an extensive interview with City Assessor Steve Sinell and then wrote a very readable, understandable article about a complex emotional topic. Here’s the link: http://www.edenprairienews.com/news/city-news/home-values-eden-prairie-decrease-4666

The City Council took a big step last night toward advancing the City’s 20-40-15 initiative by approving a plan prepared by the City’s energy management consultant, McKinstry & Associates, that will increase the energy efficiency of the City’s public buildings.

The plan, which we call Phase 1.1, improvements to the lighting and electrical controls at the City Center, Community Center, Streets & Parks Maintenance Center and three other city buildings. The cost of the projects is estimated to be $860,000. The City will secure the cost of the project through a Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) contract with McKinstry. The blended simple payback period for the projects is 12 years.

One of the more interesting aspects of the plan is how it’s financed. The projects are financed with debt that is repaid by the money saved by the City through lower energy costs attributable to the projects themselves. Our agreement with McKinstry guarantees sufficient energy cost savings to pay the project costs - or they will make up the difference, so they have a stake in making sure that what they recommended will actually work. That seems like a good idea to me.

We call the project Phase 1.1 because there are additional projects for other public buildings under development that we will present to the Council for approval in the near future. We’re also working on a plan to show the Council how the 20-40-15 initiative is playing out in our vehicle fleet as well.

The Phase 1.1 projects approved by the Council last night will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the city government operations of the City of Eden Prairie by 625 metric tons per year. That’s pretty good, but we can do better - and we will.

Are you a wine connoisseur, or would you like to be? If your answer is “yes”, you might enjoy a membership in our new Wine Club. We rolled out the Wine Club at our spring wine tasting event earlier this month. You can buy a Wine Club membership at any of our three municipal liquor stores.

Members of the Wine Club get a 15% discount on all wine purchases from our liquor stores and free admission at our community wine tasting events. Members will also receive invitations to our events and special members-only discount opportunities.

$25.00. That’s it. That’s the price of the Wine Club membership. All of that for $25.00 for the year.

We’re selling a lot of these right now. Please join us.

I composed (with the very able editing of Communication Manager Joyce Lorenz and Public Works Director Gene Dietz) a commentary piece about water production and consumption for Eden Prairie’s two local newspapers last week. It got into the Eden Prairie News last week and will hopefully make the Eden Prairie Sun Current this week. Here’s the courtesy copy for the blog. Enjoy.

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While a public water utility is a complex business operation, the operating concept is not. The city pumps water out of the ground to a central water treatment plant where it is treated with chemicals to soften it and make it safe for human consumption. The treated water is then pumped to a storage tank or water tower where it waits to be distributed via a system of underground pipes.

Our water utility is financed by the customers of our system through user fees. Property taxes do not support our water utility operations. It’s an important distinction from other cities that cross-subsidize their water utility systems with tax dollars. These cities can get into financial trouble when taxpayers figure out they are paying more taxes than necessary in order to subsidize water customers who are paying lower water rates than they ought to, or vice-versa.

Some may wonder about the rationale the city uses to charge its customers for the water they consume. Why does the unit price for water go up as the amount consumed increases? What’s wrong with selling people as much water as they are willing to buy?

Water is unlike other commodities like gasoline, diamonds and wheat that are produced and sold in a private market. For a good to be produced and sold in a private market, consumers must have the option to buy it or not to buy it. Eden Prairie property owners do not have an option to buy our water. For public health reasons, the city mandates that every occupied building must have water. It’s the law.

Because water is a mandatory good, its price cannot be left to the marketplace, which would set prices at the intersection of supply and demand. Water rates are set by our City Council to finance the annual operations and the current/future capital needs of the water utility. There are no profits to be generated. No dividends to be paid.

The city cannot pump, treat and distribute an unlimited amount of water, regardless of customers’ desires. Three key parameters control how much water the city is able to produce and sell: natural, mechanical and regulatory.

The natural parameter is easy to understand. If there isn’t water in our 15 wells, we can’t pump it out of the ground. During the past three summers, we’ve seen well levels drop so much that we will have to reconstruct at least two of them to reach deeper into the ground for water. Minnesota is blessed with good water supplies - relative to other parts of the country - but water is not an unlimited resource.

The mechanical parameter refers to the capacity of our water treatment plant, wells, water towers and piping system. When operating at 100 percent of capacity, it can produce 22,500,000 gallons in a 24-hour period. To reach 100 percent production, we must operate every mechanical function at its full capacity, which stresses our production equipment (and staff) and creates a greater potential for mechanical failures, jeopardizing personal and emergency water use.

The final parameter is regulatory. The city is granted an allocation by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The permit restricts the amount of water we are allowed to “draw” out of the earth on an annual basis. The city’s current permit is 3.45 billion gallons per year. In 2007 we actually pumped 3.56 billion gallons - in violation of our permit. We will continue to seek an addition to our allocation, but we must demonstrate to the DNR that we have a legitimate need to take more water from the reservoir we share with many other metro-area cities.

We know that the winter time average daily water consumption for Eden Prairie is about 6,000,000 gallons. During the growing season the daily consumption regularly rises to the mechanical maximum of 22,500,000 gallons per day - entirely attributable to outdoor watering.

To secure approval from the DNR for new wells cities must demonstrate that they are serious about water conservation. One requirement is to adopt and enforce a water conservation program, which charges user fees that discourage excessive water consumption through a progressive rate structure. We also reduce consumption with an odd/even watering system and a total ban from noon to 5 p.m. daily. House File No. 3238, currently proposed at the Legislature, would mandate that all water suppliers serving more than 1,000 customers have a “conservation rate structure” like ours.

It’s challenging to manage a city service which we know does not meet the desires of many of our customers. But first the city must manage its resources in a manner that is consistent with federal and state law, in the best interest of taxpayers and especially to meet priority needs for our water - household, commercial/industrial and fire protection. We must be good stewards of our natural resources and environment.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Erin go Bragh!

Council Member Brad Aho, Fire Chief George Esbensen and I walked walked and walked the sidewalks around the office buildings surrounding Capitol Hill as we went from legislative office to legislative office to talk about Eden Prairie’s federal legislative agenda. It was a lot of walking. My feet were dead after two days of it. I think I’ll wear a better pair of shoes next year.

We got good responses from the offices we met with. We are concentrating on Representative Kline’s office for assistance with the WAFTA site clean-up. Our tone was a bit stronger on that issue this year compared to previous years. It needed to be. We all know the site is contaminated. That is well documented. It is also well documented that we all know about it and haven’t been all that active in getting it cleaned up. This is the year that we need to make some progress on that issue. WAFTA is in the 2nd Congressional District so it is appropriate for Rep. Kline to take the lead on the issue. But it’s problematic for us to have Rep. Kline take the lead in some respects because he has a personal policy against congressional earmarks, which is what we probably need in this case. Rep. Ramstad said he would try to help us with that.

We had an excellent meeting with Representative Jim Oberstar’s chief of staff Bill Richard. Rep. Oberstar is a powerful congressman when it comes to transportation funding. We made our case to Mr. Richard about the importance of getting additional federal funding for the 169-494 interchange and for future funding for the SWLRT project.

Senator Coleman hosted an open house event on Tuesday so that he could meet with all the Minnesota city officials in DC for the National League of Cities conference. About a 12-15 showed up. Those who missed it, missed a good opportunity. He gave us a lot of his time and attention. We also met with his staff on Monday, so we had a pretty good opportunity to make our points on individual Eden Prairie issues too, such as the Southwest LRT project and the 169-494 intersection project.

We had two meetings with Senator Klobuchar’s staff. We concentrated on an ongoing issue we have with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service concerning public access to the Minnesota River Valley at one and one transportation and homeland security at the other. We also threw in the WAFTA issue at both meetings, just for good measure.

I bumped into Representative Keith Ellison at a legislative reception sponsored by the City of Minneapolis. I talked to him about the fact that the proposed light rail line from Minneapolis to Eden Prairie is equally important for both cities. He agreed and told me that he’d do everything he could to support the project when it came time to provide it federal funds.

Our final meeting of the week was our final meeting with Representative Ramstad. He will be retiring from Congress this year. I am going to miss him. He is a good legislator, and an even better guy. He is honest and frank about issues. He tells you when he can help and tells you when he can’t. He has been an effective representative for Hennepin County in Congress. He will be missed.

We’re back home now and busy getting follow-up communications sent back to remind the people we met with what they said they would do for us. It’s also a good way to remind ourselves what we said we’d do for them.

Good trip, but it’s good to be back to work in Eden Prairie.

Computer problems on the road are frustrating for anyone. For me they are frustrating as car problems on the road. Unfortunately for me, I can’t fix either one of them. I had intended to give a daily update about our National League of Cities trip to Washington DC this week. But alas, not cooperation from the laptop meant no report. I’ll catch up on the report and a couple of photos tomorrow.

City Council Member Brad Aho, Fire Chief George Esbensen and I are heading off to Washington DC this weekend for the 2008 National League of Cities Congressional Cities Conference. The conference is important, but we have also scheduled meetings with a number of Minnesota’s federal elected officials to discuss policy issues that are of particular importance to Eden Prairie. On Monday and Tuesday we will be meeting with representatives from the following offices: Senator Klobuchar, Senator Coleman, Representative Oberstar, Representative Kline, Representative Ellison and Representative Ramstad to discuss the following issues:

1. Clean up of the environment contamination at the WAFTA site.

2. Gaining better access to the Minnesota River Valley from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

3. Full funding of the Community Development Block Grant program.

4. Increased transportation funding for roads and LRT.

5. Cooperation and financial support of our local homeland security efforts.

I’m bringing my computer and camera along, so I’ll update my blog from there are share our progress from day to day.

At our March 4 City Council meeting this week, the City Council granted the final approvals for the proposed Presbyterian Homes project. The project will replace the Castle Ridge/Broadmoor development. It will consist of over 700 units of housing, 70,000 square feet of retail space and a stand alone CVS pharmacy. The estimated value of the project is over $200,000,000.

The Presbyterian Homes project is one of the key redevelopment projects in our Town Center area that we believe will be a real catalyst for other redevelopment projects in the area. The final approval of the City Council was the last approval needed by the project to proceed. The first thing you will see as a result of the Council’s approval will be the construction of the new CVS pharmacy at the corner of Columbine Road and Prairie Center Drive. Look for that project to start yet this summer.

The second phase of the new Eden Prairie Community Center opened on Saturday, March 1. The major component to open on Saturday was the new front door. The new front door opened at 5:30 am, and shortly after that the building was full for most of the day with residents, visitors and youth hockey players and their families & fans. I don’t really want to call it a “grand opening” because we have picked out a beautiful Saturday in May for the Grand Opening, but it was an important milestone. We will be able to provide much better service to our residents and customers through our front door, and much better parking options as well.

I have added a number of photographs that I took on Monday when I took my first walk through the front door. I want to encourage everyone in Eden Prairie to come see the Community Center. It’s fantastic now, and it will get better between now and May. Come see it, soon.