Hatfield Select Board OKs Pay Raises, $175,000 Water and Sewer Bailout

HATFIELD — July 13, 2021 — Hatfield Select Board approves $175,000 in water and sewer deficit transfers and a new social media archiving contract. Meeting jointly with the Finance Committee on July 13, the board authorized moving $175,000 from the Finance Reserve to cover operating deficits in the water enterprise fund (roughly $105,000) and sewer enterprise fund (roughly $70,000), with the overage built in to absorb a final round of invoices before the July 15 fiscal year-end deadline. The board also approved a contract with Archive Social at just under $5,000 per year to archive records from 13 town-affiliated social media accounts — including pages for the police, fire, library, schools, and recreation department — after Town Clerk Lydia flagged that none of those accounts were currently backed up and that the town was not in compliance with public records law. A separate vote approved $61,469.91 in year-end departmental transfers drawn entirely from a health insurance surplus. The meeting grew contentious over a dispute between a Select Board member and the town treasurer regarding IRS methods used to report employee vehicle commuting benefits on 2020 W-2s; no formal action was taken, and Chair Luke Longstreeth directed the discussion toward developing a written town vehicle use policy going forward.