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.