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Date: 7/20/2021
HATFIELD – During the Hatfield Select Board’s July 13 meeting, the board discussed updating the policy for town-owned vehicles that employees take home and received an update on the town’s annual water report.
To start the town-owned vehicle discussion, Town Administrator Marlene Michonski said the town is currently looking at using a commuting rule to issue W-2s to employees that take vehicles home and would require them to track their mileage, which they currently do not do.
“This commuting rule is an alternative to the method the town is currently using for issuing W-2s to employees who use a town vehicle to take home and drive to work. We should be tracking mileage of all town vehicles that are taken back and forth from home and work,” she said.
Select Board Chair Diana Szynal said the town should create a policy about who is using town vehicles and when.
“What I think should come of this is we look at who takes vehicles and why along with the very specific rules that govern how these vehicles are used. That is a policy I think we need to establish very clearly along with how we expect it to be reported,” she said.
Board member Brian Moriarty said the town should use the IRS process, which the town currently does not use.
“The employee should pay some sort of IRS tax or have it included as a fringe benefit. The question that arose was what method to use for accounting that information. The town accountant and auditor both said the IRS process would be an acceptable way to do it, and we are not currently doing it that way,” she said.
During the discussion, town Treasurer Sharon Strzegowski said she has been following past practices for W-2s that were initially established eight years ago.
“This started eight years ago, long before I was in Hatfield. We have followed past practices; in my time being here Justin Cole has assured me I am doing it correctly, Tony Rozelle has told me I am doing it correctly and the town lawyer said I am doing it correctly. There are several options, but I picked the option based on the facts I have,” she said.
After receiving a request to change someone’s W-2, Strzegowksi said she was not willing to do so.
“I have been asked in writing to change someone’s W-2 and I am not comfortable doing that. I do not want a red flag on my career that says I made a change just because someone told me to,” she said.
After tensions escalated during the discussion, Strzegowski left the meeting, and the board tabled the discussion for a future meeting.
After the board received questions about the annual water report’s information about regulated, secondary, and unregulated substances in the town’s water, Water Superintendent Anthony Lastowski said the town is required by the Massachusetts Department of Environment Protection (MassDEP) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to include the highest recorded levels in the report, even if the average detection is much lower.
“The way MassDEP and EPA mandates is that we have to report the highest detection, we cannot average it. The range of detection is sometimes next to nothing or even non-detect up to the highest value we record which we have to report,” he said.
Despite having to report the highest recorded number for each substance, he said there were no violations that would make the water unsafe.
Lastowski added that he and other people that work in water are often confused by the requirement.
“It is unfortunate the way they require us to report the numbers. Even those of us in the water profession look at it, scratch our heads and wonder what is going on,” he said.