Byron-Elba water pact to benefit 13 property owners
The Byron Town Board today unanimously approved an intermunicipal agreement with the Town of Elba to provide water from the Elba Water District to 12 properties on the east side of Transit Road and another on Bank Street Road in the Town of Byron.
The meeting took place via Zoom videoconferencing and lasted about 25 minutes.
A bit of confusion arose midway through over the number of residents actually affected by the agreement, with Byron Town Supervisor Peter Yasses initially thinking there were only three at end of the road.
Apparently, according to Yasses, more homes were added after his previous discussion with Elba Town Supervisor Donna Hynes, and he was not informed of the additions.
Town Attorney Paul Boylan said several revisions to the contract have been made “and all of them were agreeable to all of the parties.”
“The agreement as we have it now is acceptable to me. I think it accomplishes everything we want to do for those people on Transit Road,” he said.
Responding to a question from Councilman Eric Zuber, Boylan said the unit charge to the residents covered under this new pact has to be the same as what is charged to others in the Elba Water District, adding that he didn’t think that has been determined yet.
Boylan said the Transit Road residents, along with the Byron and Elba supervisors, must sign the user agreement.
“It has to be both Elba and Byron that need to act on every one of the user agreements. That’s because Byron has to agree with Elba to levy the user fee on the property – not the water use but the debt service,” he said.
“Byron has to agree that in the event that the user does not pay, they (Town of Byron) will pay Elba and then put the money that the user would have had to pay on the user’s tax bill the following January.”
