Minutes

New Brighton Economic Development Commission

Regular Meeting - August 8, 1995

7:30 a.m.

New Brighton Family Service Center

Present:	Robert Benke, Jim Beran, George Gregori, Dennis Guldan, Ken Johnson,

Mike Olson, Jay Scott, Jeff Schopf, Roger Williams

Absent:	Neal Linnihan

Also

Present:	Kristin Anderson, Northern States Power

Jeff Conklin, Remmele Engineering

Anita Duckor, Northern States Power

Matthew Fulton, City Manager

Jill Hanson, Economic Development Specialist

Gary Horn, Public Policy Commission

Michael Lamb, Northern States Power

Kevin Locke, Community Development Director

Les Proper, Public Works Director

Jim Strommen, Northern States Power

John Theis, Northern States Power

Norm Wells, Norms Wells Architect

Joe Zaskovsky, Wheelabrator

Approval of Minutes

The Economic Development Commission approved the minutes of July 11, 1995, meeting as written.

Report of Council Action

The Commission decided that, because the electric power discussion may be lengthy, the Council report would be canceled and the marketing for commissions issue was moved to the end of the meeting.

New Brighton Electric Power Service

Michael Lamb from NSP explained the basic service structure in New Brighton. The City is served by eight major feeders. The two feeders that have been experiencing problems are the #61 Apache feeder (six outages) and the #21 Arden Hills feeder (two outages). Lamb averaged the outages at the eight major feeders and found that there were 1.5 outages per year per feeder. Three of the six outages from #61 were human errors. NSP has since addressed the human factor. Lamb said that capacity was not an issue in these instances. Reliability was the issue.

There are two types of outages—direct and indirect. A direct outage is a system component failure in the line of service to the customer. An indirect outage is a system failure that is not in the line of service. Customers were encouraged to keep a log of power failure events to help NSP find the problems.

NSP has taken several steps to insure the problems do not continue:

The insulators have been replaced at #61

Feeder patrols (visual inspections) are being conducted at #61 and #21

An infra-red inspection is being conducted at #61 to look for weak or "hot" spots in the wires

The replacement of obsolete lightning arresters

The cable from #61 will be replaced in early 1996

Although NSP has dealt with several issues, Lamb said there may still be more concerns to address. Switching is still done manually and can take some time. In 10 to 15 years, switching will be done automatically. Currently, to switch when there is a problem, NSP workers are dispatched from Minneapolis, the Rice Street office in St. Paul, or White Bear Lake. Also, another major issue is overhead lines versus underground systems. Overhead wires will last 60 to 70 years. The undergrounding of lines will occur if the customer agrees to pay for it. It is estimated to cost $30/foot to underground and $10/foot to go overhead.

Until now, electricity has been thought of and used like a commodity. NSP is seeing an increased expectation from power companies as more computers are used. It has been discussed that different "grades" of power be made available to customers. One could choose to purchase only the grade of power that one would need. Most users are demanding uninterruptable power at a computer-use grade. With a choice of power grades, costs could be contained for local businesses. Competition within the electric industry will also be increasing, not unlike the cable industry.

To address the problems expressed in the Business Retention and Expansion Survey, NSP will be looking at several possible options:

When there is damage due to "gross negligence" problems with the power service, an insurance claim can be filed and the company assisted financially.

NSP also has a "fee for service" department called UltraPower created eight years ago to help clients with electric power problems that occur on the customer side at the point of entry within their buildings. UltraPower will help with diagnostics and a plan for back up contingency power.

New Brighton can take advantage of a new discount rate on new industrial expansions and redevelopment projects. NSP just received an OK on that program from the Public Utilities Commission. Representatives will meet with City staff to explain the program.

The new two system transmission and distribution systems were explained. If a substation goes down, the other substation will take over automatically.

NSP will look at the feeder system and come back with a plan of action to limit further outages.

Duckor requested time on September's agenda to discuss possible solutions with the EDC. NSP would like to come back and tell us what they found out and discuss what types of solutions are available. Duckor stated that they are committed to listen and work with us.

Marketing for Commissions

Public Policy Commission (PPC) representative, Horn, asked the Economic Development Commission for their thoughts about quality guidelines and diversity considerations for the various municipal advisory commissions outlined in their memo to the EDC. The PPC is developing a proposed marketing plan to recruit new commission members. The EDC agreed with the recommendations overall. There was some discussion concerning the appropriateness of the school district's involvement within this group.

Horn mentioned that one change being considered for recommendation was changing the appointment date from January to September or October. This would eliminate the summer break and loss of continuity and momentum for the new members. The EDC endorsed this idea and stated that they would like to see it included in the recommendations to City Council. Schopf suggested that Council try to meet with the applicants.

New Brighton Project Updates

Post Office officials from St. Paul and New Brighton met with City and Chamber representatives to discuss the concerns expressed by our local businesses about the postal service. They were well aware of those concerns and had conducted a customer satisfaction survey themselves. One concern mentioned was inaccurate and slow delivery. The mail service is becoming more automated and, in turn, requires that mailing labels be more accurate. For instance, Old Highway 8 changes names and the addresses used are not consistent, which confuses the automated sorter and slows delivery. The renaming of Old Highway 8 would help in simplifying the delivery. If the community wanted to work toward changing the name, the Post Office would work with New Brighton.

Other Business

The New Brighton Chamber was invited via Representative Dick Pellow to meet with Governor Carlson's staff to hear a presentation on the anticipated gap between anticipated revenues and expenditures. Beran and Hanson attended from the EDC. The handouts will be copied and shared with Commission members.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 9:20 a.m.