Following some tense and emotional back and forth between Board of Selectmen members on Tuesday night, July 22, the BOS members decided to postpone choosing a candidate to fill a vacant seat on the board after serious concerns were raised about the process.

Selectman Josh Cole led opposition to how First Selectman Toni Boucher handled the search for a replacement for former Selectman Bas Nabulsi, who moved out of state and resigned with five months remaining on end of the his term.

Cole and Selectwoman Kim Healy maintain that Boucher omitted BOS members from the process and, instead, met on her own with other candidates and potentially dissuaded some from being considered prior to meeting with the BOS.

The BOS is looking to fill the seat with a Democrat or unaffiliated voter, but both Cole and Healy are extremely concerned that Boucher may have clouded the process by not giving board members complete information and possibly unfairly discouraged other candidates from being considered. [Editor’s note: although the selectmen did not include this in their language, the candidate could also be a member of a third party. Due to minority representation rules, the only party membership that can’t be considered is Republican.]

Originally on the BOS agenda for Tuesday’s meeting was an interview with — and possible appointment of — just one individual: Rich McCarty, an unaffiliated voter who was recommended by the Democratic Town Committee to fill the spot. McCarty is also endorsed by the DTC to run for the BOS in this fall’s municipal election.

According to Boucher, however, there had been three other candidates, two of who were unknown to the other BOS members prior to the meeting, and none of whom were vetted by anyone other than Boucher.

Boucher said that all withdrew their names before the meeting and she maintained there was no reason for the BOS to interview them.

“I feel like our board has been circumvented in this process,” Cole said.

“It appears to me that the list has been whittled down before it even got to us,” he said. “I think we should have heard from everyone that put an application in and we should have had an opportunity to interview them, and we never had the ability to do that.”

“I just feel like we’re being rushed into a decision, much like with [the] Ambler Farm [lease], where the horse is out of the barn already and we’re kind of left not being able to participate in the process,” Cole said.

Selectman Ross Tartell, the only remaining Democrat on the BOS, stood by Boucher in wanting to embrace the sole DTC nominee. Growing frustrated with both Cole and Healy’s concerns, Tartell vehemently echoed Boucher’s statements that the other candidates had chosen to remove themselves from the process and said there was no other choice but McCarty.

“You are assuming that they, after doing their research, would still be interested in being on the Board of Selectmen,” Tartell told Cole. “They self-selected out, so there was no reason for us to interview them. It would have been a waste of their time and our time.”

Cole disagreed.

“I don’t know if that’s the case,” Cole said. “We were never given an opportunity to interview them and hear what their interest was.”

One of the other three candidates who submitted his name was Jay Rooney, whom Boucher said decided he wasn’t qualified to serve and, instead, was interviewed in executive session earlier in the meeting for a position on the Inland Wetlands Commission.

“We listened to Jay tonight,” Tartell said.

“But it sounds to me like he was talked out of it,” Cole said, “because he was not deemed to have enough experience.”

Disputing that, Tartell said instead it may be that he learned something about what being on the BOS entailed through discussions with Boucher and decided on his own that he wasn’t qualified.

“He self-selected out,” Tartell said.

Mark Shaner, an unaffiliated voter, was said to withdraw his name because he is being endorsed by the Republic Town Committee to run for the Board of Education. John “Jack” Suchy, a Democrat, told GMW he also submitted his name and was interviewed independently by Boucher on July 5.

Originally, Suchy reached out directly to all five BOS members for consideration. According to Boucher he declined to be interviewed at Tuesday’s meeting and withdrew his name from consideration sometime before the full BOS met.

GOOD Morning Wilton reached out to Suchy for comment Tuesday night, but he did not respond.

Healy said that, not only did the BOS not properly discuss or plan how it wanted to conduct the appointment process, it was done without adequate public notice and far too rapidly. She said that the BOS had several opportunities to discuss the process publicly over the course of multiple meetings since Nabulsi informed them of his decision to resign, and that they should have given more public notice about the vacancy, including deadlines for submissions, and also notified the public about who was interested.

“We’ve never given anybody a deadline … We could have been out trying to solicit candidates if we knew there was only one,” Healy said. “I don’t think that’s democratic at all. There should be a selection. If we only got one, why would we not see about others.”

Boucher rebutted that there were four candidates that she had had contact with, and that three had withdrawn themselves from the selection process.

“You didn’t tell us about them,” Healy said. “You didn’t tell the public about them.”

“All of these conversations should have been brought to the Board of Selectmen when the process started,” Healy said. “As these people came forward, we should have been notified.”

Both Healy and Cole also noted that, with elections happening in November, it sent the wrong message to put one of the two candidates that the DTC has endorsed for the November ballot into an appointed seat.

“I’m a little concerned from a policy perspective about putting endorsed candidates on a board when there are other candidates running for the position,” Cole said, “because to me it gives the perception that the Board of Selectmen endorses or approves this person because we’re putting them on now.”

Tartell pointed out that Cole had originally been appointed to his seat in 2018 when a vacancy occurred, but Cole said that that was 18 months prior to the election.

Cole said he would like to see people who have already served on the BOS in the past asked to step in and cover the interim opening without intending to run for office, as has been done on the Board of Education.

With Tartell pointing out the limited number of people that would be in that pool of candidates to begin with, Boucher said she would rather see someone appointed who would then stay on the board.

Cole also said he wanted to specifically hear from the people who had put their names in for consideration that they were no longer interested in being considered.

In the end, the BOS decided to leave the request for candidates open for another week, hoping more people can be made aware of the opening. All applications that are received from any Democrat or unaffiliated voters by 5 p.m. on July 31 will be brought to the BOS members and they will, potentially, conduct interviews with all of them for the open seat.

With a four-person BOS, however, Boucher pointed out several times that she would be breaking any ties through her power at first selectman.

“We’ll see if the outcome changes,” Boucher said.

Residents who are interested in being considered for the open BOS seat can contact the Board of Selectmen via email.