With its fourth meeting now under its belt, Wilton’s Town and School Needs Assessment Priorities (TSNAP) Committee is gaining clarity and inching its way toward its goal of helping the Board of Selectmen prioritize the multitude of municipal and school building needs that have been identified.
Clarifying Objectives — Short or Long-Term? What Direction?
From the outset, TSNAP committee members have had questions about their mission and the scope of their work. First Selectman Toni Boucher initially framed their purpose as “short term,” eliciting surprise and skepticism from several committee members, including Selectman Bas Nabulsi, who urged the Board of Selectmen to revisit its expectations for the committee.
At TSNAP’s third (July 31) meeting, Chair Patti Temple acknowledged the committee’s unsteady start.
“We’re starting to get the lay of the land,” Temple said. “I know we’ve been wobbling from the get-go, and it hasn’t felt completely good to me, but I feel like we’re starting to get to a firmer place.”
Boucher alluded to the question of the committee’s scope and the challenges it faces in her Aug. 2 update to residents.
“Questions around what the future will look like in Wilton have become a sticking point,” she wrote. “The committee is in the unenviable position of having to address the urgent needs of today while guessing at the needs of tomorrow. It would be unwise to build or renovate a facility that in a few years’ time becomes inadequate. On the other hand, wasting taxpayer dollars by overdeveloping is another kind of mistake that everyone wants to avoid.”
The selectmen took up the question of the committee’s charge at their Aug. 5 meeting. Temple attended the meeting and relayed the fundamental uncertainty about how the committee should direct its efforts.
“We would like more direction,” she told the selectmen.
After discussing how narrowly or broadly the TSNAP committee should view its task, the BOS members reached a consensus on their expectations for the committee’s work. Nabulsi outlined the agreed-upon guidance to the committee on Aug. 7.
“First of all, the committee is not time-limited,” Nabulsi told the members, adding that the group could be active as long as necessary to meet their objectives, which he said were three-fold:
- Recommendations to the Board of Selectmen for the FY 2026 capital budget
- Input to the BOS for prioritizing the identified building and space needs over the next 2-5 years
- Feedback on the 15-year capital plan — at a total cost projected at $216 million — that has been drafted by Wilton DPW based on known information to date
Those objectives seemed to reassure the committee members that they would be able to take the “holistic view” that would be critical for going beyond short-term fixes and meeting longer-term needs as cost-effectively as possible.
Touring Facilities
To inform their upcoming work, committee members began touring facilities in person. Last Friday (Aug. 2), the committee toured Town Hall and the Town Hall Annex.
Temple noted a sobering fact about the Annex.
“It is not common knowledge, [but] the committee now knows the Annex was originally the DPW garage, built in 1930,” she said. “It served as a garage for more than 50 years, and then it was converted into offices.”
The committee is expected to schedule similar tours of Wilton’s school buildings as well as the Wilton Fire Department and the Department of Public Works‘ (DPW) current facilities on the Town Hall campus.
The reason behind the site visits is not for the committee members to assess the facilities or recommendations made by the architectural/engineering consultants, but for the members to see first-hand what has been identified for repair or upgrades in the assessment reports, and where space challenges exist in municipal facilities.
Gathering Information
The committee isn’t relying solely on the consultants’ reports for fact-finding. They’re also proactively collecting info in the following ways:
- Discussions with Town department heads
The committee plans to meet with individual department heads for additional insights into their respective building needs.
Wilton Fire Department Chief Jim Blanchfield attended TSNAP’s Aug. 7 meeting. He highlighted deficiencies beyond those outlined in the assessment report that he felt also needed to be addressed, including proper storage of gear, facilities for a workforce that now includes women, adequate training space, ADA compliance, and many other issues.
“We’re doing the best we can right now,” he said, describing sleeping quarters as “a Murphy bed in the day room” among other examples of substandard conditions. “Not ideal, not best practices… We make do, and we’ve always done that.”
Boucher also talked about the notion of Town employees “making do” in her Aug. 2 update — specifically that employees have been “making do with temporary solutions that have now become untenable.”
“The point of this committee is to talk about these things, so I’m hoping [Fire Department needs] gets discussed and how to do better,” Blanchfield said.
- Due diligence on Town Hall renovations
Assistant Director of Public Works/Facilities Manager Jeff Pardo shared with the committee two proposals the Town has received in response to a Request For Proposal (RFP) seeking an architectural/engineering consultant to help the committee understand possible alternatives for addressing Town Hall needs.
Both proposals outline multiple scenarios that would be explored for renovating or expanding Town Hall, though they differ somewhat in their approach. (The two documents are posted on the Town website along with the Aug. 7 meeting agenda.)
The committee agreed to invite both parties to appear at the its next meeting (Aug. 14), to provide a brief overview of their proposals and answer any questions.
DPW staff will ultimately recommend one proposal to the Board of Selectmen for approval. That could be as soon as the Aug. 20 BOS meeting.
- Headcount data
When the TSNAP committee first began digesting the Town Hall space needs analysis, some members immediately noticed the lack of employee headcount data in the reports.
On Wednesday, Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker provided the headcounts for FY’24 and projections for FY’25. However, the information fell short of the committee’s desire to use projections of future headcounts in considering the merits of a potential Town Hall expansion.
Boucher warned the committee that forecasting headcounts too far into the future is “unrealistic.”
“The work environment can change, and the space needs could change,” she said, such as with technological advances or other developments that are unknown today.
“Right now, we have to do the best that we can with what we see in front of us at the moment,” she advised the committee.
Next Steps
The TSNAP committee will meet again on Aug. 14. The meeting is open to the public. Meeting details will be posted on the Town website.
Facility tours, when scheduled, will also be noticed on the Town website and are open to the public as well.