Politicians Want Water Board Answers On Outrageous “Availability Fee” Here

by Mike Hudson

Businessman Dave Bieksza, who owns a commercial property at 259 24th Street, has been battling the Niagara Falls Water Board for five years over what the board refers to as an “availability fee,” $20 a month charged to property owners in the city who have no water service.

Bieksza’s property on 24th St. has no running water and no water pipes to his property to even carry him water if he wanted it. 

Yet the Water Board charges him $20 per month because his property has the potential of receiving water service [if he put in water lines and connected them to the street] but does not.

He is not alone. Many shell out $240 a year even if not one drop of water runs through water lines to their property.

The Water Board budgets $150,000 in annual revenue from this fee, which means about 625 properties account for the funding.

No such fee was charged before 2002 when the Niagara Falls Water Board was created following appeals to Albany by then city councilman Paul Dyster and former mayor Irene Elia.

Together, Elia and Dyster – who is now serving his third term as mayor of Niagara Falls — handed control of the city’s water sup-ply over to the state.

The Niagara Falls Water Board – with its five-member board of directors which control it – consists of one member each picked by the governor, the state Senate and the State Assembly, and one member each picked by the mayor and the city Council.

That gives Albany politicians control with three votes on the water board to only two votes for the entire council and the mayor of the city which represent the people who use and pay for the water.

Only in Niagara Falls.

So why would anyone in their right minds do such a thing? Be-cause Mayor Elia was so fond of raising taxes that water rate increases, then controlled by City Hall, increasingly became a political liability for her and an ambitious young city Council member, Paul Dyster, who already had his sights set on the mayor’s office.

Bieksza said he was listening to U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins on Tom Darro’s WJJL radio show and decided to call in. When told of the “availability fee,” Higgins said, “No wonder no one wants to do business in Niagara Falls,” and Higgins asked Bieksza to call his office after the show and he’d see what he could do.”

Other public officials have questioned the fee in the past.

Niagara County Legislator Dennis Virtuoso described the fee as “like another tax,” and noted that other utilities, like cable, phone or gas companies, don’t charge such a fee.

Charging for doing nothing seems egregious in light of an audit of the board by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli that showed the Water Board in possession of a $6.3 million budget surplus, in a city that operates at a $7 deficit every year.

But that’s what you get when you turn control of your assets to Albany – high rates, poor service and no accountability.

Niagara Falls Councilman Kenny Tompkins called for the dissolution of the Water Board.

“The $6 million surplus could have been used to reduce rates for the people,” said Thompkins. “To think that our residents on 72nd Street went without water for two winters and were forced to pay exorbitant amounts of money to repair their homes’ connections to the water main, when the money for infrastructure repairs could have been available, is inexcusable.””

Council Chairman Andrew Touma concurred.

“We had been looking for [the Water Board] to help the city with half of the $1 million needed to fix the pipes on 72nd Street and they said they didn’t have the money.”

But despite the cries to dissolve the water board by city council members, they have no control.

The water in Niagara Falls is under Albany’s control.

Back in 2002, Dyster led the charge to hand the city’s water sup-ply over to the state. Today, the Water Board has become a Frankenstein’s monster, turning on its’ creator.

And the short term gain he and Elia gained by not having to say they raised water rates in an election year has long been offset by the continuous raising of rates by the Water Authority.

Despite having one of the largest and nearby fresh water supplies in the world, Niagara Falls residents pay among the highest water rates anywhere – and without the direct control of their water either. 

Turning the control of the city’s water over to Albany politicians was the first of Dyster’s initiatives to cost taxpayers in Niagara Falls millions of dollars, but far from the last.