East Williston and Williston Park’s years-long water rate dispute reached the beginning of the end Thursday night with a milestone agreement containing concessions from both villages.
“It’s one of those things that you both walk out content that the deal is going to hopefully happen, not totally satisfied on either side, not totally disappointed,” Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar said.
The two village boards finalized the agreement in a two-and-a-half-hour public negotiation Dec. 17, the first time all 10 trustees held talks in one room.
In it, East Williston committed to buy water from Williston Park for 25 years starting at the current rate of $4.33 per thousand gallons, a figure a state judge upheld after East Williston disputed it in court. The ratio of East Williston’s rate to Williston Park’s must remain the same over that time.
The agreement codifies several pieces of the current joint operation between the two villages, terms that were largely settled before Thursday’s negotiations.
But the boards had to meet in the middle on how long to freeze the $4.33 rate and how much East Williston would pay in penalties and interest, also the subject of litigation.
Williston Park will continue to chlorinate both villages’ water, and East Williston will continue handling meter-reading and billing for its residents. Each village will be responsible for maintaining its own water mains.
East Williston Mayor David Tanner said the board wanted to put these provisions in writing to give the village a sense of stability, which was a major goal for East Williston’s trustees throughout the talks.
“We’re trying to memorialize everything so that we’re the last 10 people that ever have to do this again,” East Williston Trustee Robert Vella said.
In pursuit of stability, East Williston sought a five-year lock on the $4.33-per-thousand-gallons rate, which has been in place for two years.
But Williston Park officials said so little flexibility would put their village in an unstable financial situation.
While Williston Park has refurbished much of its water infrastructure in recent years and has a reserve fund for water capital projects, Mayor Paul Ehrbar said such a long rate freeze would preclude the village from covering sudden increases in expenses, putting its water operation on shakier fiscal ground.
“We’d love to say, ‘We’re not raising anybody’s rates for 10 years, and we’re locking everybody in,’ … we go to bed and sleep well,” Ehrbar said. “But we can’t do that. It’s impossible, and it’s a real problem for us, and it puts us at risk.”
Williston Park wanted East Williston to pay $150,000 over two years in penalties on water bills that went unpaid while the $4.33 rate was being disputed in court, about half the amount sought in a July lawsuit.
East Williston agreed to pay $100,000 over one year into Williston Park’s water fund, about $40,000 above its initial offer, as well as a rate freeze effective Thursday and lasting until June 1, 2018, about two-and-a-half years.
After that date, the two villages will meet as they did Thursday to discuss any proposed rate increase prior to a Williston Park holding a public hearing and voting on it.
“It’s an open discussion of ideas,” Vella said. “And maybe somebody has something to say that will spurn a different idea and maybe solve a problem a different way.”
The villages will also request a stay on the active lawsuit and will eventually close it.
The agreement still has another month before it goes into effect.
Williston Park Village Attorney James Bradley will now draft a formal agreement, on which the Village Board is expected to vote at its Jan. 4 public meeting. It will then go to East Williston’s board for review and an expected Jan. 12 public vote, followed by both villages signing it in early February.
The first codified water agreement between the villages in more than two decades brings an amicable close to a nearly five-year dispute that’s produced three lawsuits and divided two otherwise friendly communities across the railroad tracks from each other.
“We’re talking about 25 years of hopeful harmony based upon this,” Vella said in an interview. “The bottom line is it was a compromise for everybody, and we recognize that.”
It began when Williston Park raised East Williston’s water rate from $2.99 per thousand gallons to $3.88 in 2011, then again to $4.33 in 2012.
East Williston challenged both hikes in court. A judge struck the first as procedurally improper but upheld the second.
The agreement likely eliminates the need for East Williston’s own well near Devlin Park, a $7 million project first proposed in late 2014.
But the idea won’t be officially off the table until the agreement is signed, trustees said.
Some parts of the agreement were included in earlier proposals, but trustees said others may have been difficult to achieve two years ago, when the dispute was at its height.
Chris Guglielmo, a 13-year East Williston resident, said he thinks the sit-down negotiation should have happened then, but he said he’s glad to see it come to a fair resolution.
“From my vantage point, this is a win-win, and I think any time you negotiate something, win-win has to be a mandate,” Guglielmo said.
