E. Lary Grossman: Vote to remove housing authority board member ‘foolish’

Tonight at 7 p.m. at Hatfield Town Hall, the Board of Selectmen will convene a meeting in executive session to remove an elected member of the Hatfield Housing Authority. The member, Christopher Smith, has requested that this meeting be made public and hopefully televised on cable TV.

As an earlier letter writer stated, Chris is a 30-plus year public servant of Hatfield having served on multiple boards. He has always done distinguished work fighting for residents and the underdog. In his current position on the Housing Authority, he has been an relentless advocate for the residents seeking apartments free of sewage backup (dismissed as not a problem by the executive director), providing air conditioning for the first time via heat pumps (a fully funded state grant that the Housing Authority rejected), and countless other items to improve the living conditions in this old facility.

This type of advocacy inevitably ruffles some feathers, but it certainly does not rise to the level of a three-member Board of Selectmen reversing the will of the voters and removing Smith. It should also be noted that Smith’s term is up in May and there is only a single meeting of the Housing Authority remaining in his term. What is the point of this select board action, if not revenge and retribution? Sound familiar? Hopefully, this is not the future of Hatfield!

I ask the selectmen to simply table the agenda item. Don’t make yourselves look any more foolish to the voters and the outside world.

E. Lary Grossman

Hatfield