‘Alarming’: Questions Raised Over $50K DPW Expenditure without BOS Approval

‘Alarming’: Questions Raised Over $50K DPW Expenditure without BOS Approval

Wilton’s DPW director acknowledged at Tuesday night’s (Sept. 16) Board of Selectmen meeting that both the first selectman and town administrator were aware that he paid a vendor $50,000 last month without BOS approval, thus defying state statute.

Also, although Department of Public Works Director Frank Smeriglio told the BOS Tuesday night that he only had an hour to approve that expenditure to hire an additional team of workers on the Middlebrook School project on or about Aug. 1, emails GOOD Morning Wilton obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that Smeriglio had informed Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker about the situation one week before.

Board of Selectmen members were not informed until Aug. 19, when they discussed how to fund the expenditure and were asked to retroactively approve it, despite two BOS meetings — on Aug. 4 and a special meeting on Aug. 8 — held after the decision was made.

While it’s unclear when she was first made aware of the situation, First Selectman Toni Boucher defended Smeriglio’s actions Tuesday evening, claiming it was necessary for him to approve the payment himself in order to have Middlebrook open in time for the new school year.

“There’s a reasonable aspect to this,” Boucher said.

Selectwoman Healy: “This is Alarming”

Selectwoman Kim Healy had raised questions about the matter at the Aug. 19 meeting, when Smeriglio first sought retroactive approval from the BOS for $49,906.29 to hire a contractor to install ceiling panels at Middlebrook.

Again last night, as Smeriglio defended his decision to approve the expense on Aug. 1, Healy’s was the sole voice raising questions about the matter, as has been the case in several other problematic financial situations that have arisen under Boucher’s watch.

“I had one hour to make a decision,” Smeriglio said repeatedly. “You have one hour to make this decision,” he said. “That’s it. There is no, ‘Toni, can we expense — you’ve gotta make that decision and it needs to be supported.”

Healy objected.

“I have a few comments and I think you’re not going to want me to say them, but I think the board needs to understand a few things, as well as the public,” she said. “Y’know, Connecticut state statutes don’t allow the town to be encumbered without our approval, so that’s problem number one.”

“We have policies in place,” she continued. “One is that if there is a budgeted expenditure of less than $10,000, the first selectman or the town administrator can approve those. But anything — anything — un-budgeted has to be approved by this board.”

“There can be no exceptions,” Healy said. “I don’t want to be dramatic about it, but this is pretty alarming to me.”

“We understand 100% that this was an urgent, critical obligation, but there was no funding to cover the expense and that’s where the problem arises,” she said.

Board of Finance Chair Matt Raimondi shared similar concerns in a series of emails to Boucher and Knickerbocker beginning on Aug. 20, one day after the BOS retroactively approved Smeriglio’s decision.

“As discussed, Frank acknowledged multiple times that the work was already completed before approval. CGS 7-348/349 is clear that no municipal officer may contract or expend funds in excess of appropriation. This raises a concern about whether the expenditure was correctly authorized,” he wrote, suggesting Boucher reach out to town counsel to reconcile the timing. [Editor’s note: Raimondi also raised questions in his emails about funding sources town officials had considered using, reminding them of regulations over how bonding monies can be used and proper procedures for paying for bonded projects. He reiterated those concerns Tuesday evening in public comment.]

Timeline: Some Confusion in the Details

GOOD Morning Wilton obtained several emails about the issue through a request under the Freedom of Information Act, to trace the events. The following are all the emails provided to GMW that detail actions taken prior to the Aug. 19 BOS approval vote.

• Friday, July 25: Smeriglio sent an email to Knickerbocker and Jeff Pardo stating that he had met with representatives of the Board of Education and determined that additional crew would be needed to help with the ceiling installation at Middlebrook. He said the additional cost would be treated “as a change order to their current contract and increase the Purchase Order,” noting Pardo would “negotiate the scope, price and schedule” with the contractor.

• Sunday, July 27: Knickerbocker responded to Smeriglio and Pardo: “Thanks for the update, Frank.”

• Thursday, July 31: The contractor provided Pardo with a proposal for the additional labor, totaling $49,906.29.

• Friday, Aug. 1, at 12:04 p.m.: Pardo notified his office by email, copying Knickerbocker and Smeriglio, of the $50,000 proposal from the contractor. 

• Two minutes later, Pardo wrote to the contractor with approval to begin work. “Please proceed with the ceiling work. This additional cost will be added to your existing PO.”

• Friday, Aug. 15: In the first email since Aug. 1, Smeriglio sent Knickerbocker the work order and asked for the proposal to be attached on the Aug. 19 meeting [agenda]. Smeriglio explained the urgency in getting the job done quickly and that DPW had approved the change order “due to the tight schedule” and had increased the Purchase Order. He noted that work was “99% complete” and Boucher’s signature was needed for the change order.

At last night’s BOS meeting, Smeriglio was initially unclear about the dates when he said he sanctioned the purchase, noting at one point he had been working on this on his vacation.

“We had a [BOS] meeting August 4th,” Smeriglio said. “It was that Friday where I had to make a decision whether it was ‘Go’ or ‘No-Go’ …It wasn’t just make a decision and say ‘yes,’ versus coming to the board. It was, if I didn’t make a decision, we were not gonna get that crew.”

Smeriglio said later, however, when referencing the Monday, Aug. 4 date, “I’d just gotten back from vacation the night before.” While he attended the Aug. 4 BOS meeting to present on different projects, he defended his decision not to bring this change order approval to the selectmen. “I did not have an organized summary of the projects… and I did on [Aug.] 19th. I brought it to your attention.”

Aug. 4 was also the night that news broke about former CFO Dawn Norton simultaneously working full time as Town Administrator for a town in Wyoming. Officials had said they learned about Norton’s activities just the night before, on Aug. 3.

No emails provided by Town Hall to GMW include any Finance Department employee as recipients until Aug. 21, when Boucher forwarded emails from BOF Chair Raimondi about his concerns to Controller Tony DeFelice, who had taken over responsibilities after Norton resigned.

Boucher & Smeriglio Cite Emergency Need

Tuesday evening, Smeriglio described to the BOS the urgency to get the work done, with only two weeks before the teachers were due to return to the school building on Aug. 18 — but he said it was nearly impossible to find additional workers to do the work, although they were able to secure them through a vendor already onsite.

“We were able to find a crew that was available,” he said. “But there was no time to come to the Board of Selectmen to get approval, because if I did not get an answer at that moment —”

Boucher interjected, “School would not have started.”

“Well,” Smeriglio continued, “we would not have had the crew.”

Boucher later said, “The bottom line is this — It was a matter of school starting or not, so it was an emergency situation.”

“You were having to bring in the people to do it,” she said. “No purchase order was written. That did not get done until the Board of Selectmen approved it. But the approval process was different this time because it was an emergency situation and we had to make sure that the school started on time.”

While there had initially been some confusion as to where the money was coming from, Boucher said it was going to come from the BOE operating capital account in the BOS’s operating budget.

Smeriglio emphasized how different it was for his department to manage BOE projects, calling them “a completely different animal,” as compared to other projects, noting that work has to move extremely fast, especially during the summer when buildings were empty of students and staff.

“You have nine weeks to do work,” he said, noting that this particular project was “full throttle, 100 miles an hour … Even at that rate, we felt that they weren’t working fast enough … It got to a point where they needed help.”

He noted that the way the project was managed — using Board of Education work crews and having DPW act as general contractor to purchase materials — did save the town significant expenses.

“But there was no time to come to the Board of Selectmen to get approval, because if I did not get an answer at that moment, we would not have had the crews,” Smeriglio said.

“You’ve got to make the tough decisions like this because there is no Plan B,” he said, later telling the selectmen that in the future, there should be more clarification on the process to approve similar expenditures when issues arise on BOE projects and fast decisions need to be made..

“Follow the Rules”

Healy asked Smeriglio directly if he received approval from Boucher and/or Knickerbocker, but he gave an indirect answer.

“Did you get approval or authorization to move forward for this work,” Healy said, specifically referencing Boucher and Knickerbocker. “Did they say it’s okay for you to move forward?”

Smeriglio responded.

“So, we had weekly meetings with the Board of Ed to go over the project and go over where we stood, so, yeah, Toni and Matt were involved, but this was a brewing issue with the Board of Ed carpenters doing the ceiling works,” Smeriglio said.

“They both knew that this was an issue,” Smeriglio continued, returning again to his explanation about only having an hour to make the decision.

Boucher, meanwhile, indirectly reprimanded Healy, making a general statement cautioning board members about criticizing town employees.

“Just as a reminder to everyone,” Boucher said, “if someone has an issue [with] a staff person, please bring it to me. I’d appreciate that. Go through me, instead of this constant, what could be considered, critique of a particular staff person.”

Healy, however, said nothing negative about Smeriglio during the entire discussion, even earlier complimenting him on his past performance as she asked her questions, saying, “You’re always so diligent about getting approvals.”

“I’m not criticizing you or really anyone, but we have to follow the state law,” Healy said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

It was an echo of what she’d said one month prior on Aug. 19 when she had joined other BOS members in retroactively unanimously approving the additional $50,000.

“No one has the authority to approve this kind of dollar amount without coming to us … We really need to follow the rules and we should know what they are,” Healy said at the time.

“We should vote on it because it’s done, but we don’t really have a choice,” she added.