Pinpointing a couple dozen smaller reductions, Wilton’s Chief Financial Officer Dawn Savo and First Selectman Toni Boucher were able to present $400,000 in reductions to the Fiscal Year 2027 budget Boucher has proposed. They brought their findings to the Board of Selectmen as the group continued to workshop the budget at a Special Meeting on Monday, Feb. 23.
While the changes would reduce the proposed increase for the FY 2027 budget from an 8.14% increase to 5.37%, Selectman Matt Raimondi, former chair of the Board of Finance, suggested a handful of further possible reductions that could amount to additional savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Regardless of where money might be saved, the other three BOS members expressed support for increasing the proposed budget to fund two new firefighters and a new administrator-level position at the Department of Public Works, among other potential additions.
These same three BOS members — Rich McCarty, Ross Tartell and David Tatkow — recently objected to what they said is a constrictive process with regard to the Board of Finance giving them recommended guidance of a 3.6% year-over-year budget increase — a practice aimed at ultimately limiting tax increases for residents.
With Republican Boucher siding with those three Democratic selectmen, Raimondi, also a Republican, has been the sole voice urging the BOS to try to meet the guidance.
Going through the budget numbers, Raimondi — who was the favored bipartisan appointment to fill the BOS seat vacated by Josh Cole based in large part on his finance acumen — was the only member to raise questions about the different accounts and increases outlined by Savo.
When other members finally weighed in during the two-hour meeting, it was primarily to express their respective wishes of funding additional items, including more firefighters.
“Sometimes, how many numbers do you need to justify the firefighters,” said McCarty, who previously served on the Fire Commission. “Firefighters don’t get the choice of saying, ‘No.’ They don’t get to opt out of providing coverage. They respond no matter what, even when their budgets are getting cut, or hiring is frozen or deferred.”
Likewise, Boucher cited the additional firefighters as the first item she would add to the budget proposal if additional funding was approved, along with a new managerial DPW position aimed at overseeing bonding projects. Boucher is hoping to bring someone on in that role before the end of this fiscal year, at a $160,000-$175,000 annual salary.
Tartell spoke in favor of both getting additional administrative help at the DPW in order to lessen the workload for DPW Director Frank Smeriglio, as well as considering Smeriglio’s long-standing request for two additional staff maintenance positions.
Tartell went one step further, arguing that Boucher needs additional administrative help running her office.
“Toni, you have one admin supporting you,” he said. “[Your administrative assistant] Jackie’s gonna go on vacation for two weeks. Who is your chief of staff? Who’s gonna answer the phone? Who’s gonna post all the stuff. When [Former First Selectwoman] Lynne [Vanderslice] was there she had two admins and she reduced one …
“You have no additional administrative support and you don’t have a town administrator as a chief of staff, so that leaves this town vulnerable,” Tartell said. “There are things that fly around, emails that come in, and you can’t catch them all.”
He also put in a plug for both a separate tax assessor and tax collector, roles that had been combined previously into a position now held by one employee.
“[Former Selectwoman] Kim Healy suggested that we have both a tax assessor and a tax collector,” Tartell said. “Dawn and I have had a conversation about this.”
He also said the town has a need for public pickleball courts.
“We’re the only town in our region that doesn’t have outdoor pickleball courts,” he said. [Editor’s note: The Middlebrook School tennis courts do have pickleball courts outside, but the Parks and Recreation Commission has said there is a public demand for additional courts dedicated only to pickleball.]
Raimondi pointed out the possibility of finding cost savings in several areas, including what he said could be overstated amounts in several areas, including the Town Properties Fund.
He also noted a big discrepancy in the Workers Compensation category, with only $97,000 used to date out of the $400,000 that was budgeted for the current fiscal year. Raimondi also found $48,000 of potential savings in IT Group Insurance.
“That was a great catch, thank you,” Savo said, promising to look into other items that Raimondi had flagged.
“That’s what we’re here for,” Raimondi told her.
Boucher said that she and Savo would go back and take a closer look at Raimondi’s suggestions, which she said might hopefully result in at least some additional savings.
Other Areas: Georgetown Fire Department Spending, Replacing Trucks
Discussion moved to the Town’s arrangement with the Georgetown Fire Department, over which Boucher expressed some frustration.
“We did get a surprise $88,000 increase, more than we anticipated, last budget, and we had to go to the Charter Authority for that,” Boucher said. “We’re in a very strange arrangement there.”
The tri-town arrangement with Redding and Weston, she said, was orchestrated by the state legislature, and resulted in Wilton residents “paying twice” for fire services. “Over time the arrangement has not been as equitable as we would like, and additionally the towns do not have a seat at the table of any of their meetings, so they cannot influence, really, what they just send us [as] a bill.”
“We’re increasingly asking them for justification of that, so there has been some attempt to have meetings with them to discuss this,” Boucher said, noting that the group had not reacted favorably to requests for Wilton to put a representative on its board.
Tartell and Raimondi appeared to see eye to eye on attempting to keep the cost of replacing vehicles and trucks as budgetary operating expenses, rather than bonding them, as was done last year.
“I don’t think this board would give you any argument about bonding a vehicle or not bonding a vehicle we think belongs in operating capital,” Tartell said, “but when you’re at push-comes-to-shove, how do you make the guidance?”
“You want to make sure you have the flexibility to make those decisions,” he said, “even though you may not believe that they are the best decisions to make.”
Raimondi expressed understanding but replied that there might still be other options to find the money.
“Maybe there are other adjustments to make,” he said. “Who knows?”
The BOS is scheduled to meet again on Thursday, Feb. 26, to continue discussions on the budget.
