The Village of Williston Park authorized its village attorney to file suit in Nassau County Supreme Court against the Village of East Williston over unpaid penalties as part of an ongoing dispute over water purchasing contracts between the two villages.
In an column published in this week’s Williston Times, Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar said negotiations between the villages “appear to have come to a standstill as East Williston has failed to respond to correspondence sent to them more than a month ago.”
Ehrbar wrote that the village filed the suit to meet legal deadlines for seeking payments through the court system.
Williston Park has sought nearly $300,000 in penalty payments and penalties, though both sides in recent months have expressed a willingness to compromise on the figures in recent months.
“It is Williston Park’s fiduciary responsibility, to its residents, to ensure that the legal ability to collect any fines would not be lost due to a missed filing date,” he wrote.
East Williston Deputy Mayor Bonnie Parente confirmed the village had received correspondence regarding the lawsuit but said that “in my opinion, we are still open to negotiate” with Williston Park.
“It’s unfortunate that Mayor Ehrbar thinks we’re at a standstill,” she said. “There’s no reason the two parties should think they cannot come to an agreement.”
Williston Park is seeking a $4.33 per thousand gallons rate, maintaining the current rate upheld by an appellate court, as well as the $300,000 in interest and penalties for payments not made by East Williston when they were appealing the rates in court.
East Williston in early April issued a letter to Williston Park proposing a rate of $3.70 per thousand gallons, a figure calculated as a compromise based on a $3.52 rate from its consultant and a $3.87 figure proposed by a Williston Park consultant, but Ehrbar at the time said he was “disappointed with some aspects of the proposal.”
The East Williston letter also proposed paying $48,019 in penalty payments, significantly lower than the nearly $300,000 Williston Park had tallied.
In East Williston’s calculations, Williston Park would receive penalties for unpaid rates prior to the appellate court’s ruling, coming to just over $63,500. Meanwhile, Williston Park would pay equal penalties on a $62,000-plus balance it did not refund East Williston following the court’s dismissal of the first rate increase. The difference comes to $48,019.
Once the court ruled in our favor we sent them a bill that went unpaid,” East Williston Mayor David Tanner said at the time. “They have claims that they have unpaid bills. We have claims we have unpaid bills.”
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 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.
Earlier this year, East Williston explored building an independent well at an estimated cost of $7 million as a plan B, reinvigorating talks between villages.
The villages have held three rounds of closed-door negotiations, both villages have thus far been unable to come to terms.
Parente said East Williston would be “continuing to reach out in hopes of moving [negotiations] along.”
“On our end, communications have not stopped,” she said.
