Agenda - Charter Commission - 08/27/2020

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75%; and commercial/industrial = 100%). The city also accesses MSAS funds amounting to an average of $3.14 million per year. The current funding structure has been in effect for 30 years. Eagan stated that their funding structure exists in its current form because they believe in the importance of maintaining pavement infrastructure. The city's approach is based on the idea that benefiting properties should be assessed construction costs. In other words, residents who receive the benefit pay the cost. The city mentioned that the plan was created while considering its efficiency, adequacy, and feasibility. Stillwater While it varies from year to year, special assessments are the largest portion of Stillwater's road infrastructure projects, attributing for 70%. The remaining funding towards these efforts come in the form of municipal state aid, government bonds, and general taxes. This funding model has existed for 25 years and the approach has met the city's goals of funding these particular needs by offering equity, feasibility, and adequacy. Additionally, over the past 25 years there has been no public engagement in either measuring the popularity of the current road funding model or gaging the public in alternative methods that may provide more efficiency. Stillwater has looked into street improvement districts as an innovative approach to funding road maintenance for their municipality. Stillwater has used special assessments for 25 years for road funding needs, while also tapping into state aid, taxes, and bonds. In addition to the length of time for special assessments, Stillwater has done no public outreach to gage whether they public needs or even wants a new funding mechanism. While it did mention they were keeping an eye on street improvement districts as an innovative approach to road funding, Stillwater shows no sign in changing their funding method as the current model continues to meet their needs. SYNTHESIS OF FUNDING From the interview and survey results of eight cities in the seven -county metro area we were able to present a balanced depiction of how comparable cities to the City of Ramsey are funding their roads (Table 2 and 3). Overall, the cities involved in this study seemed to be satisfied with their current funding structures with a number of the cities having updated their road funding policies in the past decade. Each of the cities used the funding techniques at their disposal in unique ways and summarized in the below tables. While general funds, supported by property tax levies and special assessments, seemed to be the most common funding techniques in our sample, aligning with our background research findings, franchise fees seem to be increasing in importance and popularity as cities search for new ways to raise dedicated road improvement funds. We found that all cities except Coon Rapids and White Bear Lake fund their roads with general fund and property taxes. All cities have used them in the past or currently use special assessments, though Brooklyn Park no longer uses them, Elk River plans to eliminate their use in the future, and New Hope only uses them for tax-exempt properties. Capital bonds were used in five out of the eight cities. Franchise fees, an increasingly popular option, were used in four of the eight cities. Brooklyn Park uses other mechanisms such as national and international grants and Inver Grove 10