SOUTHWICK – South View Estates met with the Board of Water Commissioners during their meeting at the Southwick Town Hall on May 18. The discussion was surrounding an issue with South View’s water bill.
Eric Wilder and Terry Olbrych, who are both on the Board of Directors for South View Estates, represented the condominium complex in Southwick.
In October 2016, South View said that they received a water bill of $16,226 from the Southwick DPW Water Division. The problem for Wilder and Olbyrch, is the fact that they said their water meter was shut off prior to the October water bill.
But, according to Brown, DPW workers went out to Southview Estates in the spring of 2016 to do meter readings, and saw that there was a meter installed in which the DPW said that they never installed.
The Board of Water Commissioners, along with Wilder and Olbrych, agreed that a private contractor may have installed that meter. Since DPW was never notified that a meter was installed in the spring, DPW believed that the meter wasn’t in use.
The water bill for $16,226 was for all of Southview’s water usage for summer irrigation, from 2012 up until the bill they received in October of 2016.
Randy Brown, the DPW Director, said that he had sent several letters to Residential Management, the Property Manager of South View Estates. This includes Brown sending letters around the time the October 2016 water bill was issued and then in January, February, March, April and up until the last water bill South View received in May of this year. Brown also said that he had received very little response from the property manager.
The letters consisted of Brown notifying Southview Estates and the property manager that they had a water bill outstanding of $16,226 due from the summer of 2012 up until October of 2016.
“There have been multiple attempts to reach out,” said Brown. “I got very limited feedback.”
Trying to resolve this situation, Wilder and Olbrych made a request to the Board of Water Commissioners that they should receive a reduction to the $16,226 water bill, since they were not part of the Board nor had any recollection that South View’s water was on during that time they got charged by the town.
Wilder specifically requested that the bill should reduce down to $10,000, but the board declined that request. Instead, the Water Commission decided to give the development’s two representatives a 10% discount off their original water bill resulting in South View having to pay $14,600.
Wilder was happy with the decision that the Commission made at the meeting.
“They were kind enough to drop the bill and we’re appreciative of that,” said Wilder.
As the discussion was nearing the end, Brown and the rest of the board assured that the only people that should be turning off South View’s water, is the town water department.
