For a second straight meeting, Fredonia trustees tabled a resolution to pay $2,698,000 for engineering work on a planned North County Water District linkup.

“I don’t want to approve a proposal until I understand it and have the answers,” said Trustee Leeann Lazarony at Monday’s meeting. Trustee Christine Cruz Keefe motioned to keep the proposal tabled, and the rest of the board attending the meeting agreed. Trustee Jon Espersen was absent.

The engineering would be done by the LaBella firm, which has worked with the village on its numerous water issues for a number of years.

Trustee Paul Wandel offered a suggestion that Lazarony and other village officials welcomed: Hold a workshop where everyone — members of the public included — can ask questions about the village’s water plans.

Lazarony also asked for more time on the engineering resolution at the trustees’ March 3 meeting. At that meeting, she cited concerns about a provision to simply fence off the village treatment plant when Fredonia switches to NCWD water.

A first-term trustee who just took office in January, Lazarony repeatedly voiced concerns Monday that she is not fully up to speed on the village’s long-running, many-layered water saga. Cruz Keefe is also a new trustee. The Board of Trustees voted in September to mothball the village reservoir and treatment plant and acquire NCWD water, before Cruz Keefe and Lazarony were on the board.

One member of the public didn’t want to wait for Wandel’s workshop. Cheryl Bailen, who had a tense exchange with trustees at a recent meeting, returned Monday to question the LaBella resolution.

“Aren’t we getting the cart before the horse? Where’s the transparency to justify this?” she wondered.

Bailen wants the village to retain its independent water production system, and called for a villagewide referendum on the matter.

“We are not stuck, this is not a done deal,” she said.

Mayor Michael Ferguson responded, “The LaBella contract was signed two years ago, fully available to all the public to read and observe. It was part of the project. We cannot simply move forward with any connection to any community … without having studies done. The original study that was done five years ago now, and cost taxpayers $144,000, did not include any discussion of North County Water District.”

Ferguson continued that the village originally planned to link up directly with the city of Dunkirk, the NCWD’s sole water supplier. However, the city’s severe financial problems made that untenable, he said.

The mayor eventually claimed that all discussions with LaBella are “crystal clear.” Speaking on the idea of a referendum, he said an organization tried — but failed — to collect 20% of village registered voters’ petition signatures required for such a vote.

“I think the public has spoken, with all due respect” on the water issue, Ferguson declared. He said a group of “no more than 20” people disgruntled with the village’s NCWD plans, in a community of around 10,000, are speaking out at meetings.

Bailen appeared a little taken aback by Ferguson, and asked for her remaining 30 seconds of speaking time to respond to him.

“I don’t know about anybody else, but I could hardly understand everything you said except for one thing,” she said. That thing was his referendum statement, which she admitted he was correct on,

Nevertheless, she noted, the Board of Trustees can walk back its previous decision.

Bailen closed by pleading with the community to pack the next Board of Trustees meeting and express its displeasure with the village’s move away from full water system independence.

Wandel told her, “It’s been two weeks (since her last meeting appearance) and you had some questions. I never received an email or a phone call from you, asking to meet and have a discussion, which I’ve done with other residents.”

Bailen responded, “I’ve asked publicly these questions for you to respond to tonight, in public … there’s a lot of stuff going on behind closed doors, that’s not transparency.”

“So I invite you to stay for the meeting and listen to my committee report tonight,” Wandel said.