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EWEB Advisory Group (EAG) Issue Summary Expansion of City-EWEB Billing Agreement to Include TSMF Issue: The City is formally requesting that the EWEB Board consider an expansion of the current EWEB-City joint billing agreement to allow for billing of a transportation system maintenance fee on the current EWEB billing statement, .which we believe offers the lowest cost and least complicated alternative. City Staff: Becky Carlson, Public Works (Lead), Tish Peterson, Public Works (Implementation Lead) EWEB Staff: Deb Brewer, Government Affairs (Lead); Dick Varner, Finance; Greg Armstead, Information Services Historical Summary: Faced with a growing backlog of street preservation projects and significant pending reductions in our funding for street operations and maintenance activities, the Eugene City Council directed in February that the City Manager return to them with a proposal for reestablishing a Transportation System Maintenance Fee (TSMF) to address these critical transportation funding needs. The Eugene City Council adopted in 2002 and then later repealed a TSMF. As part of the city's implementation efforts for that earlier TSMF ordinance, the EWEB Board considered and rejected the option of adding another city line item to the existing EWEB bill format. As a result of that decision, KamTech Systems, LLC, was hired by the City to prepare an analysis of various remaining billing options available for meeting the billing requirements for a TSMF. One of their primary conclusions was that EWEB's billing system is an asset that cannot be overlooked by the City with respect to options available for billing the TSMF. They further concluded that the more the existing billing system can be utilized in billing for the TSMF, the lower the cost of collection for the City and, ultimately, the community. They also noted in their conclusions that "all separate billing options are considerably more expensive than the current joint billing agreement" between the City and EWEB. There are a number of reasons it continues to make sense for the City and EWEB to consider expansion of the current joint billing agreement to allow for billing of the TSMF on the EWEB bill. The primary one, of course, is reduced joint costs. The costs of monthly billing, software licensing, system operation and maintenance, and certain customer services (e.g., starting and stopping of services) can be shared and divided by the two entities instead of imposed as duplicate service charges on our citizens. In addition, expensive data systems can be shared instead of duplicated, including information on customer, premise and. consumption. Since the City is willing to pay for all initial costs of system modification and implementation for the TSMF, the expansion of this long-standing joint billing agreement offers opportunity for long- term cost savings for EWEB customers, as well, since relatively fixed ongoing operating costs would be allocated across yet .another utility system, resulting in lower ongoing billing costs for all of the systems.