Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Paul Patterson with Glenrock Associates. You may proceed.
Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates
Good morning. Can you hear me?
Peter Darbee
We can.
Kent Harvey
Yes, Paul.
Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates
My interest sort of was peaked by this initiative that you guys are doing. I mean, for years, you have been meeting of these initiatives to take over the muni supplies parts of your system and they always seem to have not worked. Am I worried about that, I mean, has there ever been a successful attempt to take the muni supplies in the last 10 or 15 years?
Peter Darbee
Not in the recent past. We clearly taken a position that we value of our customers very much and we are going to stand up and resist efforts to take over our customers, and those efforts by municipal government.
Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates
Okay. Now, with $0.03 I guess that you were impacted by in 2008, but you are not getting any impact this year, is that correct?
Peter Darbee
Nominal impact this year.
Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates
Okay. And what made you – I don’t remember this kind of a legislative or initiative efforts that you guys are making, what spurred you guys to come up with this, anything in particular or is there anything we should be thinking about?
Peter Darbee
What occurred to us was we were repeatedly faced with this and we were spending significant amount of money year-after-year. And so, we asked ourselves, what would be something that could discourage this over the longer term, and we also asked ourselves if government, you know, wants to raise taxes, it requires a 66 and two-thirds vote, if government were to use taxpayer money to take over private enterprises, we thought that they were on to be the first of voted the people, and secondly, it ought to be a recently high hurdle.
Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates
Okay. That makes a lot of sense. The severance expense, what kind of benefit do you expect to see from some – the severance plan in 2010?
Kent Harvey
Yes, Paul, this is Kent. I will just sort of briefly cover kind of the factors that are affecting us. First of all, the economy has reduced our new business hookups and so, as a result, those parts of our business where we have lower volume than before, so that is a driver. And now, I think as we have talked about for some time, we have been looking at ways to reduce lower priority work and to find efficiencies in our processes, and so, I think this reflects all of those factors really. The reductions we expect will give us efficiencies, say next year, roughly in the $30 million range when you look at the expense component of it.
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