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City Council Water & Sewer Subcommittee January 21, 2003 Page 4 Chairman Plata asked if it is going to be hard to compare personnel as far as the water production rate between cities. For example, if the City of Paris produced 12 million gallons and it takes a certain amount of people for that, and another city produced six million gallons with a certain amount of people, then the ratio should be the same in people. Mr. Campbell said no, there are probably 20 different factors that you would need to compare. He said he could make up a list of the comparisons you would need. Some of those factors were: where is the water coming from; how far is it away; what type pumps they have; how many pipe lines they have out to it; how much drop is there in the lines; what kind of treatment facility they have; the chemicals they use; technology; what is the power cost; and what is the water quality. He said all of these factors would go into the personnel cost. Mr. Campbell told the Committee that when he came to work for the City of Paris it cost $0.25 to produce one thousand gallons of water and today it costs $0.55 to produce a thousand gallons of water. He said that is $0.30 more per one thousand gallons of water. The inflation rate during that time was 47 %, which means the increase in the cost of water over the last 15 years has been a penny [$0.01] per thousand gallons of water. Mr. Campbell said the cost of raising the water rates is not in the production end of it, it is in the debt service and the old system that the city has. City Attorney Schenk explained that it could be that many times in the plans that the point of diminishing and gaining returns where you start making so much more water verses the number of people you have to add to make the water, it can either go up or it can go down per gallon basis and so can the personnel. City Attorney Schenk said it is very difficult to track. It is like when you build a plant, you may need for your anticipated future only a half million gallon plant, but it does not make engineering sense to build a half million gallon expansion. He said you may build a 3 million gallon expansion because that is a more efficient way to do it and then you will have excess capacity. Mr. Anderson said that is similar to what we have been talking about on the EMS when the city added the new crew.