Winfield offers compromise in water dispute

Winfield officials say they’ll offer a compromise to resolve a dispute over water connection fees with Wheaton Christian Grammar School that arose more than a year after the school opened.

But school leaders say they won’t comment on the proposal until they officially receive it from the village.

The dispute revolves around how much the school owes the village for connecting to Winfield’s water system when the facility opened in August 2009.

The village originally set that number at $102,600, but school officials balked and said it was excessive.

A new recommendation from the village board’s finance committee would cut the fee by roughly 57 percent to $43,740.

Wheaton Christian’s Business and Development Director, Bob Broman, has asked the village waive the entire fee, according to finance committee meeting minutes.

On Thursday, Broman said the original bill came out of nowhere.

“We were notified last August or September that we had not paid our water connection fee,” he said. “The simple reason for that is we were never given a bill for the water connection fee.”

But Village Manager Curt Barrett said that’s because the school asked the village to “expedite the permitting process” in order to meet a deadline that would allow the school to open on time in 2009. Barrett said the village did so but also told school officials that a connection fee would be forthcoming.

It took about a year to come to the final figure, which was determined by multiplying the village’s “population equivalent” rate and the expected number of students at the school. The village’s engineering firm then did an analysis of the figures before the village sent the notice to the school, Barrett said.

“The community development coordinator wanted to be very sure that he was correctly calculating this,” he said. “We have not had a lot of schools come through and we wanted to get some assistance, which the village’s engineering firm provided.”

Barrett said the proposed compromise reflects the village’s “population equivalent” rate when the school first chose its site in 2003. The Winfield “population equivalent” rates, based upon several factors, including the school’s size and infrastructure features, has risen from $324 in 2003 to $760 in 2011, with the most recent increase coming in 2006.

Broman said he spoke to the finance committee twice and met separately with Barrett and village President Deb Birutis.

“There is a spirit there to try to find a number that is agreeable,” he said. “We are not there yet. I think there is an interest from both parties to get this resolved. We’d like to resolve it and move on.”

Despite the disagreement, both sides say they maintain a good relationship.

Barrett said officials expect the school to pay into the village’s infrastructure system.

“The issue of it not being a legitimate cost because it was not ready at the time of permit, we don’t agree with that,” Barrett said. “But we certainly recognize the plum of having a fine school like that in our community.”