For the first time in several months, Williston Park and East Williston officials will meet in person next week to continue negotiations in the years-long water dispute between the two villages.
Both village boards hope to emerge from the public meeting in East Williston next Thursday with concrete steps toward a long-term agreement on the water services Williston Park provides East Williston, the villages’ mayors said this week. Neither would say what the specifics of that agreement might be.
“There’s some ideas on the table, we’ve had some correspondence back and forth and I’m hopeful that we have a basis for an agreement,” Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar said.
No new agreement has been drafted, the mayors said, but the village boards hope to settle on terms for the rate East Williston pays Williston Park for water, what services Williston Park will and won’t provide and East Williston’s payment of penalties and interest.
The villages have not met in person since March, but have had a “healthy back-and-forth” in letters in the past several months,” Tanner said.
While East Williston officials hope to “have something concrete that our residents can look at and consider” after the meeting, Tanner said the option of the village building its own well near Devlin Park is still on the table.
The East Williston board plans to update residents on the proposed $7 million well in an upcoming village-wide email.
“We’re talking about a very long-term agreement with Williston Park, versus building our own well, which is its own historical precedent,” Tanner said. “It’s not the type of decision that comes around every year or two.”
The years-long water dispute has caused three lawsuits and heated exchanges between the two villages in recent years.
It began in 2011, when Williston Park hiked East Williston’s water rate the first time, leading East Williston to sue. A second increase following a Williston Park-commissioned rate study in 2012 led to another lawsuit.
A state appellate court sided with East Williston in the first case, ruling Williston Park should have held a public hearing before instituting the hike. But it said the second increase was justified and upheld the higher rate of $4.33 per thousand gallons.
Williston Park filed its own lawsuit in July to collect from East Williston nearly $300,000 in penalties for unpaid water bills. Penalties continue to be part of the negotiations, the mayors said.
The villages have not met in person since three rounds of closed-door negotiations in January, February and March failed to yield an agreement. They have negotiated primarily through letters in recent months, sometimes in the pages of Williston Times.
Both villages have made written proposals to settle the dispute.
Following the in-person negotiations, Ehrbar and Williston Park’s Village Board sent a letter to the Williston Times — not directly to East Williston’s trustees — in March with a 12-point deal that included maintaining the $4.33-per-thousand-gallons rate.
East Williston’s board responded in early April, proposing a rate of $3.70 that would be frozen for two years. Tanner also said in August that he would put forth another offer.
Neither Tanner nor Ehrbar would say specifically whether any part of the previous offers was still on the table. But Ehrbar said he is “optimistic” the upcoming meeting will lead to an agreement.
“Neither side is looking to continue dragging this out and continue going back and forth another six months or a year,” he said.
