While the fate of the proposed Lamson Road Water District is still up in the air, residents will be responsible for an additional $26,000 not included in the Map, Plan and Report if the district is created.
Town attorney Tony Rivizzigno said town comptroller David Rahrle recently discovered about $23,000 in engineering fees from Barton and LoGuidice dating back to the firm’s 2008 Map, Plan and Report for a proposed water district in the Lamson Road area. Town officials said the remainder of the fees include postage costs and other expenditures.
“The town has paid those [fees], but legitimately they should be on the district,” Rivizzigno said after the Aug. 10 Lysander Town Board meeting.
Rivizzigno said since the town was not aware of the charges until recently and the costs were incurred before the current attempt to create a water district around Lamson Road, the $26,000 was not included in the 2015 Map, Plan and Report (MPR), nor was it included in the cost outline on the petition passed to residents this summer.
Councilor Andy Reeves brought up the $26,000 charge during both the Aug. 10 work session and the regular meeting.
“When and if any water district is formed, that $26,000 charge will, one, be used in the calculation of the cost, and two, will go against whatever water district is formed, should there be one formed down the road,” Reeves said.
“It should have been on there … whether it’s a new cost or not,” Councilor Bob Geraci said. “It’s causing me to have some consternation about the validity of the actual petition.”
Supervisor John Salisbury said the issue could be a “moot point” if the parcels on the petition do not amount to more than 50 percent of the proposed district’s total assessed value.
“If we do not have 50 or more percent of the assessed value, the matter is dead,” Salisbury said.
Rivizzigno said the petition, which is still being verified by assessor Theresa Golden, is still legally valid.
At the work session, Golden reported that the petition had 136 signatures. Six signatures have been deemed invalid: three of the signatories are not property owners, and three signatories live outside the proposed water district. The 2015 MPR lists 369 parcels, mostly residential, in the proposed district.
Golden said she will have calculated the remaining 130 signatories’ assessed value by the end of the week. In order for the town board to consider a resolution to create the water district, the assessed value of the property of those who sign the petition must be greater than 50 percent of the proposed district’s total assessed value.
While he said he and the other board members have not seen the petition, Reeves told the Messenger he doesn’t think the properties on the petition will reach that value: “They don’t have the assets,” he said.
However, the dream of a water district may not be totally off the table: even if this petition doesn’t pass muster, the town board could still consider a resolution to create a water district under Article 12-A of town law. Rivizzigno said the town could use the 2015 petition as a general guideline to create a new, smaller potential district and a new MPR.
In that case, the town board’s approval of the creation of the water district would be subject to permissive referendum. This means that any resident who is opposed to the resolution may start a petition within 30 days of the vote. If more than 10 percent of the town’s residents sign the petition, the town must allow a vote on the creation of the district.
While board members acknowledged that a smaller water district could be examined further down the line, they did not indicate that they would take any such action if the current petition fell through.
The Messenger will update this story once Golden has compiled the relevant assessment data.
