Central Square Weighs 40 Year, $1 Lease Handing Village Water Operations to OCWA

Mayor Randy House and the Central Square Village Board took up a draft lease at their July 13 meeting that would hand daily operation of the village drinking water system to the Onondaga County Water Authority for 40 years, for consideration of exactly one dollar to each side. For a village of 1,862 people that currently has no public works superintendent and not one filled seat on its zoning board of appeals, the packet that landed on the table at 3125 East Ave. may be the most consequential document of the year.

The draft agreement, included in full in the board packet posted on the village website, would lease the hydrants, supply mains, distribution mains, valves, meters and appurtenances of the village system to OCWA. The authority would operate, maintain and repair the system at its own cost, sell water directly to village customers, and collect the revenue. Customers would pay OCWA’s rates as set in the authority’s Customer Rules. The pipes themselves would stay village property.

The term runs 40 years from the first day of the month after signing. The copy in the July 13 packet is a working draft, with the word Town struck through and replaced by Village in several clauses and a handwritten review notation on the first page. Village attorney Joe Frateschi, reappointed to that role at the same meeting, has the document under legal review, and the board did not record a signed agreement in the materials posted so far.

OCWA is not a stranger at the tap. The draft states that the parties intend to consolidate and supersede prior agreements regarding the supply of water from the authority to the village system, meaning Central Square already buys OCWA water. What changes under the lease is who runs the system day to day, who fixes it when it breaks, and whose name is on the bill. The authority, headquartered at 200 Northern Concourse in the town of Salina, serves about 350,000 consumers across five counties: Onondaga, Oswego, Madison, Oneida and Cayuga, according to its website. Its executive director is Jeffrey D. Brown, whose name appears in the signature blocks prepared for the agreement, and its board chair is Kenneth C. Gardiner.

The fine print keeps real obligations on the village side of the ledger. Central Square would pay OCWA an annual hydrant maintenance fee. Any water bill still unpaid six months after billing would be added by the village to the property owner’s tax bill. If the village ever extends the system, it does so at its own cost, subject to OCWA plan review. If a government mandate forces repairs or replacement of village owned facilities, the lease says the village shall be responsible for the costs. And if the lease is ever terminated or not renewed, the village must buy back, at fair market value, every improvement OCWA installed at its own expense over the life of the deal. Section 5.4 is blunt in the other direction: the authority makes no guarantee as to the pressure of water in the pipes or as to the supply of water, and shall not be held liable for loss or damage from a deficiency or failure in the supply.

One clause connects the little village system to a national deadline. Section 6.8 commits Central Square to collaborate with OCWA in complying with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule Revisions and Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, including actively assisting the authority in creating its mandated service line inventory. The EPA finalized the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements on October 8, 2024, requiring drinking water systems nationwide to identify and replace lead pipes within 10 years. Small systems with part time staff are exactly the operations that struggle to build those inventories alone.

Under the lease, the village would also become what section 6.4 calls a secondary external customer of the Metropolitan Water Board, the administrative head of the Onondaga County Water District, subject to an annual external customer charge computed through special levies on village property. Any lawsuit over the agreement would be heard in a New York State court sitting in Oswego County.

The operational handoff would be close to total. All new service connections would be made by OCWA under its Customer Rules. The authority would maintain meters on every supply source and every customer connection. Hydrants that OCWA installs at its own expense would remain OCWA property, billed under its rate schedules. Section 8.1 designates the authority as the village’s agent to enter any building where water is used to examine the supply pipes, and section 8.2 hands OCWA the village’s seat at the table on all federal and state regulatory matters, including water quality testing, reporting and certifications. The village could not sell or encumber any part of the system without OCWA’s written consent, and neither side could assign the agreement without the other’s sign off. In exchange, the authority agrees to hold the village harmless from claims arising out of its operation of the system, including reasonable attorney’s fees, except where a judgment traces back to the village’s own negligence.

The context for the deal is a village government running lean everywhere you look. The annual appointment sheet adopted at the July 13 organizational meeting lists the position of DPW superintendent as vacant. All three seats on the zoning board of appeals are listed vacant for the new year, after longtime chairman Andy Smolnik retired this year, a departure Deputy Mayor Millard “Mudd” Murphy marked with thanks at the June 29 meeting. One of the planning board seats is vacant too, because member Robin Hansen moved up to the board of trustees, replacing Ken Sherman, whose last meeting as trustee was June 29. Codes officer Ed Cusato has asked the board to consider combining the planning board and the zoning board of appeals into one body, a proposal Frateschi is reviewing.

The money tells the same story. A July 13 transfer moved $26,362.16 out of the sewer fund’s DPW personnel line and into wastewater treatment plant maintenance, to cover overspent accounts due to unanticipated expenses, in the clerk’s words. The July voucher abstract totaled $47,322.04, split between $33,533.76 in the general fund and $13,788.28 in the sewer fund. A single National Grid bill for gas and electric at the wastewater plant came to $4,822.05 for the July cycle, and six separate sludge hauling payments to Oswego County Solid Waste added roughly $3,083 more.

Policing runs just as thin. Chief Kevin Birardi told the board on June 29 that he is the only full time member of the department at this point. The board voted 5 to 0 that night to pursue a federal COPS Hiring Grant that would cover 75 percent of a new officer’s wages for three years. The minutes record Birardi’s argument plainly: Micron is coming, the growth in the region is coming, and it is easier to grow with it than to play catch up. His July 13 report counted 61 calls for service, 19 traffic tickets and 4 misdemeanor arrests over the prior two weeks, and noted a meeting with State Senator Chris Ryan about grant funding. Birardi has also submitted a LETECH grant application seeking radios, body worn cameras, computer infrastructure upgrades and automatic external defibrillators for patrol cars and the station.

The board’s summer has been shadowed by a death on its main east west road. On June 27 at about 6:45 p.m., an enclosed trailer detached from an eastbound 2016 Ram 2500 pickup on East Avenue, which is State Route 49, and struck Alice Visneau, 62, of Central Square, as she crossed at Gertrude Drive on a motorized mobility scooter. She died at Upstate University Hospital. The Oswego County Sheriff’s Office identified the driver as Xavier Izyk, 21, of Fulton, operating the truck for Big Kahuna Rentals Inc. State Police, the Central Square Fire Department, the Brewerton Volunteer Fire Department and Menter Ambulance all responded.

Two nights later, trustees moved on several street safety fronts at once. House said he wants another letter sent to CSX urging the railroad to fix the Route 49 crossing, where the minutes describe a bump on the eastbound side that drivers swerve toward the center line to avoid, a complaint the village says CSX has previously ignored. The board directed Frateschi to draft a resolution declaring Hillcrest Drive and Tucker Avenue school zone streets. And after Murphy reported fresh vandalism and vehicles cutting through Hillside Cemetery at high speed, the board voted 5 to 0 to buy four sets of speed bumps and warning signs at about $130 per set from JC Smith.

There is construction money moving as well. On June 29 the board accepted three municipal building bid contracts, one general, one electrical, one plumbing, and shifted $100,000 from the Reserve for Parks Improvement to the building expense line in a unanimous vote. The July abstract shows PLS Engineering was paid $5,940 for plans and specifications for village hall repairs. House told trustees the current building’s roof needs replacement and floated a future use for the structure as a larger police station or a satellite station for other patrol agencies. Smaller notes from the packet round out the summer: food trucks in Goettel and Crossroads parks now need an operating permit and a codes inspection, summer recreation was canceled on July 16 because of air quality, and the village designated the Post Standard as its official newspaper for the new year.

The rest of the summer docket shows a small department trying to stay visible. Birardi told trustees on June 29 that Officer Malone is now a certified car seat technician and had already run a safety day at the Central Square Walmart, and the chief said he hopes to hold another coffee with residents at the Dunkin’ inside that store. Birardi is also drafting an update to Local Law 170, the village noise ordinance, for the board’s review. Trustee Matthew Stevens, meanwhile, has been investigating live streaming board meetings on YouTube, which he concluded would work with microphones and a tablet, and he wants a voting information page added to the village site. Residents may get a better window either way: Murphy told the June 29 audience the village is having a new website built so office staff can post updates directly instead of routing them through an offsite contractor, an answer to resident Cathy Smolnik’s complaint that meeting minutes were not being posted.

The water lease is the piece with the longest tail. A village that signs it in 2026 would be bound until the 2060s, and a village that ever wants out would owe fair market value for four decades of someone else’s pipe work. The place to watch the decision unfold is the next regular session: the Board of Trustees meets Monday, August 10 at 7 p.m. at 3125 East Ave., the second Monday slot it reaffirmed on July 13.