Brooklyn – Council Member Simcha Felder testified in front of the NYC Water Board at a public hearing last week in Brooklyn College voicing strong opposition to the Water Board’s proposal to increase the water rate by 14.5%. In December, the Council agreed to pass legislation allowing the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to issue liens on delinquent properties on the condition that the Water Board would not consider a mid-year rate increase.  Since then, DEP has worked tirelessly in an attempt to settle as many delinquent accounts as possible in anticipation of the first lien sale, to take place May 19, 2008, three days after the Water Board is expected to have already passed the proposed rate increase.

“It shouldn’t take a calculus professor to tell you that the order of operations here just doesn’t make sense.  For years, DEP has argued that it could not collect on delinquent accounts because it didn’t have the tools that it needs, and that these accounts were among the primary causes of massive yearly rate increases by the Water Board,” Felder said. “Now DEP has these tools. To pass a rate increase without having had the opportunity to analyze the results of this first lien sale and without any outside oversight on DEP’s collection performance given its additional collection resources is in many ways to put the carriage before the horse.”