As the legal battle between the Villages of Williston Park and East Williston over water rates Williston Park charges its neighbor enters a third year, no resolution in sight.
Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar said last week he had a letter hand-delivered to East Williston Village Hall six weeks ago seeking a meeting with officials to discuss a settlement of two lawsuits East Williston trustees have filed against their Williston Park counterparts contesting water rate increases in 2011 and 2012.
“They haven’t responded,” Ehrbar said.
Ehrbar said East Williston Mayor David Tanner recently told him East Williston Trustee Robert Vella Jr. would meet with Williston Park Deputy Mayor Kevin Rynne to discuss a possible settlement, but the meeting has yet to take place.
“I was supposed to meet with Bob Vella over the past couple of weeks. I tried to reach out to him and haven’t heard back from him,” Rynne said late last week.
Attempts to reach Vella for comment were unavailing.
The East Williston village board first filed suit against Williston Park in July 2011 after the Williston Park announced a water rate increase from $2.99 per thousand gallons to $3.83 per thousand gallons.
The rise in rates was imposed by Williston Park after officials from the two villages failed to reach a compromise on the increase.
During a budget hearing last Monday night, Ehrbar said East Williston owes Williston Park $400,000 as a result of the unpaid rate increases.
Village of Williston Park Trustee William Carr said the village is also seeking another $300,000 in penalties from East Williston.
Ehrbar said East Williston’s refusal to pay the increased water rates has put its water system in the red.
“We have gone into our general fund to cover expenses,” he said.
Tanner declined to comment on the letter Ehrbar sent to the East Williston board and said he didn’t know anything about a meeting between Vella and Rynne.
But, he said, informal have taken place in recent months.
“Just because we haven’t met in a while, that’s not to say we haven’t been talking mayor to mayor or trustee to trustee,” Tanner said.
Tanner said that while East Williston maintains an escrow account for water fees withheld from Williston Park, he doesn’t know how much East Williston has withheld.
The Williston Park village board voted in August 2012 to raise East Williston’s water rates a second time, imposing a 13 percent increase from $3.83 per 1,000 gallons of water to $4.33 per 1,000 gallons of water. That rate increase prompted the East Williston board to file a second lawsuit in December 2012.
The August 2012 rate increase came on the heels of a ruling by Judge R. Bruce Cozzens in Nassau County Supreme Court invalidating the first rate increase on procedural grounds. Cozzens ruled that the Williston Park board should have held a public hearing before raising East Williston’s rate to $3.83 per 1,000 gallons in April 2011. The Williston Park board filed an appeal of the decision.
The two lawsuits are now in New York State Appellate Court, but no hearing has yet been set, according to lawyers representing both sides.
James Bradley, village attorney for Williston Park, said there is a serious backlog of cases in the court, which is apparently not giving preference to hearing cases involving commercial disputes.
Ehrbar said last summer he and Rynne had discussed proposals with Tanner and Vella at a meeting in May 2013 to attempt to settle the water rates dispute.
The last meeting between the two sides before that May meeting held in 2012 just prior to the second water rate increase.
Vella, who is a lawyer, made an 11th hour plea to the Williston Park board to reconsider the second water rate increase before it was approved.
Rynne said he wants to end the dispute because of the mounting costs to Williston Park’s water system – and the undisclosed costs both villages are incurring in legal fees.
“We would like to see it settled. Do I want it in the courts for the next three or four years? No,” Rynne said. “We’re $400,000 in the hole now. How much longer can we cover expenses?”
