The Williston Park Village Board agreed last week to reopen a public hearing on proposed increases in vilalge water rates on Aug. 6 following the board’s review of an engineering report commissioned by the Village of East Williston critical of how Williston Park developed the proposed increase.
Williston Park Trustee Teresa Thomann said the engineering report of Guastella Associates commissioned by the Village of East Williston was one of many factors in Wiliston Park’s decision to reopen the public hearing process.
“It’s a sensitive relationship between the two villages and we want to dot the I’s and cross the T’s. We want to go above and beyond to make sure that we’re protecting our water rates for our own customers in Williston Park and for East Williston,” Thomann said.
While Thomann said the board was reopening the hearing for the benefit of residents of both villages, she said the Williston Park Village Board was concerned about avoiding further legal entanglements with the Village of East Williston.
“We’re in a legal situation and we want to get it right and make sure we don’t have continuing legal challenges,” Thomann said, adding, “We wanted to consider everything [East Williston] had to say.”
Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar declined to comment on the reasons the Williston Park Village Board decided to reopen the water rates hearing next month.
Based on an analysis of the Dvirka & Bartolucci engineering firm, Williston Park has proposed a schedule of rate increases that would push the wholesale rate Williston Park is now charging its neighboring village up 15 percent to $4.41 per 1,000 gallons of water from the current $3.83 per 1,000 gallons of water. Imposition of the $3.83 rate last April – from the $2.99 per 1,000 gallons rate that preceded it – precipitated a lawsuit in which East Williston contends the rate increase was “arbitrary or capricious.”
An analysis of the Dvirka & Bartolucci report from John Guasatella, president of Guastella Associates, states that the wholesale rate Williston Park should charge East Williston is $3.52 per 1,000 gallons.
The Williston board decided not to vote on increasing water rates in Williston Park and East Williston at its July 16 meeting. The board had received a report from Guastella Associates a week earlier that criticized the water rates evaluation of Dvirka & Bartolucci used by Williston Park. It was the second time in a month that the Williston board withheld action on the rates.
The Dvirka & Bartolucci report stated that $546,525.43 in water charges to East Williston would represent 33 percent of the village’s total cost for water service compared to $1,107,985.24 to cover 67 percent of the costs for Williston Park itself. The report also proposed a 12.2 percent increase for residential and commercial users in Williston Park. For usage over 10,000 gallons, that would mean a residential rate increase to $3.89 per 1,000 gallons from the current $3.47, $4.06 over 50,000 gallons and a commercial rate increase to $4.30 per 1,000 gallons from $3.83.
Guastella called the rates recommended by Dvirka & Bartoclucci “unreasonable” and “not supported with a proper study or analysis.”
Guastella Associates was jointly commissioned by both villages to produce a report on water rates in 2006.
Guastella said the Dvirka & Bartolucci evaluation doesn’t provide current costs to support its conclusion and also said some expenditures shown as annual reporting expenses are actually capital items that should be identified as utility plant costs.
Guastella said the Dvirka & Bartolucci analysis incorrectly allocated the cost of water mains in the Williston Park water system as transmission and distribution plant costs. His report said they are for distribution only, and those costs should not be included in calculating a wholesale rate. His report also said the Dvirka & Bartolucci report used the wrong percentage to determine general plant costs.
Guastella incorporated a 5 percent contingency fund of $58,518 and a capital reserve fund of $50,000 in his analysis, based on the Dvirka & Bartolucci recommendations. But he excluded a 12 percent surcharge included in Dvirka & Bartolucci’s calculations as an “arbitrary and excessive shift of costs to East Williston.”
Annualized projected revenue in the Guastella report for Williston Park water rates is $1,051,612, $45,000 higher than the $1,006,000 estimated by Dvirka & Bartolucci. The Guastella report estimates revenue from East Williston at $487,602 per year, $123,198 less than the $611,000 calculated by Dvirka & Bartolucci.
Guastella accounts for those differences as “cost allocation discrepancies between the two reports.
The Williston board had closed the public hearing it held on the water rate increases on June 18 and chose to not vote on the rates that night after a member of the East Williston Village Board asked them to permit time for his village’s board to review the report and provide comment. East Williston Trustee Robert Vella, Jr. also asked for time so that the two sides might revive talks to settle the ongoing water dispute between them .
“Our hope is that the board will hold this decision in abeyance until we can discuss the rates. My hope is that we can find some middle ground,” East Williston Trustee Robert Vella Jr. told the Williston Park board members at that hearing.
The Williston Park board agreed to hold the hearing open through July 9 to permit further comment on the proposed rate increase.
Ehrbar and Williston Park Deputy Mayor Kevin Rynne met with East Williston Mayor David Tanner and Deputy Mayor Bonnie Parente on June 20 in what Ehrbar described as a “cordial” meeting.
Vella, who had said he found the non-vote on the water rates at the July 16 encouraging because it would give both sides “a chance to continue talking,” declined to comment on Williston Park reopening the water rates hearing.
Tanner and Parente could not be reached for comment on the situation.
It is not known whether representatives from the two sides plan to meet again prior to the Aug. 9 hearing.
Reach reporter Richard Tedesco by e-mail at rtedesco@theislandnow.com or by phone at 516.307.1045 x204
