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Ramsey recently considered implementing a franchise fee, however it was voted down by the City <br />Council in August 2019 (Cummiskey, 2019). To further research road funding mechanisms, the <br />City of Ramsey partnered with the Resilient Communities Project at the Humphrey School of <br />Public Affairs to survey road funding mechanisms in cities comparable to Ramsey, focusing on <br />ways cities sustainably fund roads into the future.' <br />STUDY OBJECTIVES <br />While the literature offers a review of the types of funding methods available to cities, further <br />research needs to be done on the mechanisms that are currently being adopted by suburban cities <br />in the seven -county metro of the Twin Cities. Further research also needs to be done to compare <br />the funding mechanisms between suburban cities and identify themes to explain those differences. <br />Our study focuses on two questions: <br />1. How are comparable cities to the City of Ramsey funding its roads? <br />2. What road funding options would make the most sense for the City of Ramsey? <br />Given the urgency and novelty of this research, our report aims to provide the city with examples <br />of how comparable cities fund road maintenance and reconstruction projects as well as provide <br />them recommendations for which funding strategies may be best suited in the context of Ramsey. <br />Objective 1: Survey and interview city managers and engineers to document the range and nature <br />(e.g. franchise fees, property taxes, general revenue, special revenues, rates, political feasibility, <br />and community engagement efforts) of sustainable road funding mechanisms in suburban cities in <br />the Twin -Cities Metro Region. <br />Objective 2: Understand why each city funds the way it does to better assess how various options <br />may fit into the context of Ramsey. <br />METHODOLOGY <br />Data Sources <br />This research comes from a collection of data sources: government memos and reports provided <br />to us by the City of Ramsey detailing their planning efforts in regards to local road maintenance <br />and reconstruction from 2013 and 2019; budget reports obtained from the Minnesota State <br />Auditor's office summarizing city road maintenance and reconstruction budgets; semi -structured <br />informational interviews with experts in local road funding practices in Minnesota from the <br />Humphrey School of Public Affairs and the League of Minnesota Cities; informal interviews and <br />conversations with the City Administrator of the City of Ramsey; and, semi -structured interviews <br />with City Administrators, Managers, or Engineers from eight comparable cities in Minnesota. <br />From the documents, we gained an understanding of the current trends in local road funding. The <br />4 For a funding stream to be sustainable it means that it will responsibly and adequately cover the costs associated <br />with the upcoming years of maintenance and road construction projects (Appendix B). <br />3 <br />