A second meeting between the Williston Park and East Williston boards of trustees failed to yield an agreement between the two villages in their ongoing dispute over water rates.
Following four hours of closed-door negotiations Thursday, the East Williston board concluded the night slightly after 11 p.m. with a brief public meeting to announce the two sides were unable to come to terms. A third meeting is tentatively set for February.
“There was no action taken,” East Williston Mayor David Tanner said. “We’re making progress…We’re still optimistic.”
Added Village of East Williston Trustee Robert Vella, Jr., “We’re all hopeful an agreement can be reached.”
Without going into detail, Williston Park Mayor Ehrbar said the boards still fail to see eye-to-eye on multiple fronts.
“We’ve offered some services to try to get the issue resolved,” Ehrbar said at the village’s Board of Trustees meeting Monday. “We’re hopeful we can get the issue resolved. However, there’s a number of issues that still need to get resolved.”
The meeting of village officials is the latest chapter in an ongoing dispute between the two sides over two increases in the rate Williston Park charged East Williston for water in the past three years.
In 2011, the Village of Williston Park board raised the price of water to East Williston from $2.99 per thousand gallons to $3.83 per thousand gallons in 2011. Williston Park followed with an increase from $3.83 per thousand gallons to $4.33 per thousand gallons in 2012.
The Village of East Williston trustees filed lawsuits against Williston Park following each rate increases following a break down in negotiations between the two sides in which both sides blamed the other.
In early July, a state Appellate Court found in favor of East Williston in the first lawsuit, stating that Williston Park should have held a public hearing prior to imposing the first rate increase in 2011.
But the court found in favor of Williston Park in the second lawsuit, stating that Williston Park was within its right to raise the water rates in 2012 to $4.33 per thousand gallons.
The Village of Williston Park then sent East Williston a bill for $600,000 – $300,000 for withheld rate increase money and $300,000 for interest and penalties – following the court decision.
The Village of East Williston made a payment of $239,000 to Williston Park to cover the cost of the rate increase, minus $61,000 accrued under the price hike that the court ruled to be improper. East Williston officials also announced that Williston Park was not entitled to penalties and interest and they would fight any effort to collect them.
Settling the dispute over the penalties remains central to the talks, board members said.
Following the suit, East Williston revisited the logistics of building its own well, at an estimated cost of $7 million dollars – equal to about a decade’s worth of water at the current price set by Williston Park.
Bonnie Parente, East Williston’s deputy mayor, said she feels the initial opposition to an independent well has subsided significantly as negotiations drag on.
“That said, we as a board still want to do what’s best, so we as a board would like to move forward with an amicable agreement with Williston Park,” she said.
Tanner has previously said that if East Williston were to move forward with the well, Williston Park residents would also see a jump in water prices.
The meetings have themselves have been unorthodox.
To avoid violating the 1977 Open Meetings Law, which prevents a quorum of the board from meeting in private to conduct public business, the trustees from each village must wait in separate conference rooms while lawyers and delegates meet privately before reporting back to their respective groups.
