At the Monday, Jun. 15, Board of Selectmen meeting, resident Joshua Kopac raised concerns about the contract with the consultant hired to prepare Wilton’s Fiscal Year 2025 reconciliation for the state’s annual audit, the fees paid to that consultant and the work he performed for the town. Below is a letter he sent to GOOD Morning Wilton with a version of his comments to the selectmen, edited for clarity and brevity.
To the Editor:
What direction are we going in as a town?
That remains unclear to me, particularly given our Finance Department and the news surrounding it over the past year or so. And I think it is more than fair and reasonable to ask out loud.
Let me be clear about my intent. I am not alleging wrongdoing tonight. None. I am trying to understand the direction we are heading, and why we cannot seem to get basic answers to basic questions about our taxpayer funded financial system in town.
I want to read you the town’s own contract [signed with PKF O’Connor Davies in August of last year]. Not my words. The town’s.
[The engagement]… is addressed to the First Selectman. The document reads, “Outsourced Interim CFO Services.” Inside, it names PKF O’Connor Davies accountant Joseph Centofanti as “responsible for the overall engagement.”
Then it sets the scope. I am reading directly. “Interim CFO services: One day per week on site.” “Available for questions, as necessary, via e-mail or phone calls.” And, “Available to attend meetings, as necessary.”
The listed tasks include finance department operation, assistance with audit request and preparation, and assistance with bond issuances — the exact things sitting in front of this town right now.
There is a second document — a rider, signed the same day. It says, “In the event of an inconsistency between a provision of this Rider and the Agreement, the provision in this Rider shall control.” It says the two documents are “the entire agreement.” And it contains this line, word for word:
“Neither the Agreement nor this Rider may be modified or waived in whole or part, except in writing and signed by an officer or duly authorized representative of both the Town and PKFOD.”
In writing. Signed by both sides. That is the town’s own contract, describing the only way this deal is allowed to change.
I filed a request for any such writing. The Town Clerk‘s response, dated May 20, was that no amendments to this engagement could be found on record.
So here is the straight question. We have been told Mr. Centofanti’s role quietly changed. That he became a consultant who is just finishing the audit now, so he no longer needs to appear. But the contract names him responsible for the overall engagement, and available to attend meetings as necessary. And nothing about that arrangement can change without a signed writing that, by the town’s own records, does not exist or hasn’t been produced.
So either the role never changed and he should have been in this room months ago upon demand. Or it changed in a way the contract itself does not permit. I am not telling you which.
And we heard tonight that PKF is meeting with the auditors every week. Good. Then availability is not the problem. [Centofanti] has time for the auditors weekly, but has only appeared once before this board or the Board of Finance, the people who fund him. So which is it — available or not?
I have already put this question to Town Counsel directly, in writing over email, and copied the full Board of Finance and Board of Selectmen. To date, I have not received an official answer from Town Counsel.
So tonight I am asking this board, on the record, to consult with Town Counsel on this matter to understand if we are operating in good faith through our executed contract with PKF.
Now I want to talk about what we heard a couple of meetings ago, because it worried me more than anything else.
Selectman Matt Raimondi asked our CFO Dawn Savo exactly the right question, in plain words: What can we give you to make sure this gets done by June 30.
The answer was that there was nothing the board could provide to speed it up. That our CFO no longer wanted to commit to a completion date, because the work keeps evolving. And then this: she said we were hyper-focused on the deadline, and that the state — and I am quoting — “isn’t going to do anything.”
I want to be fair here. Our CFO walked into a mess she did not create. I respect that. She inherited this.
But leadership is what you do after you inherit a problem.
Telling this board that the deadline is irrelevant, telling us the state will not do anything, that is not a plan. That is lowering the bar to match the miss. You do not fix a blown deadline by deciding the deadline no longer matters. You set a new one and you hit it.
And a timeline already exists on the record. In December, our interim CFO told this town the Munis transition needed another 18 months. So is that still the clock? If it changed, what is the new number? Because the audit cannot close until the system it runs on is finished. Scope that changes is normal. Refusing to name a finish line is not.
And here is the bigger problem: “The state isn’t going to do anything” is not a fact. It is a guess. It is purely speculative. So let me show you what actually happens to Connecticut towns that run late, because the record is public, and it may not be comforting.
The rating agencies often do not wait for the state at all. Other Connecticut municipalities have already seen rating consequences tied to delayed or incomplete financial reporting, including Danbury, Oxford and Hamden, among others.
- Danbury’s rating is still gone. They filed three full years of catch-up audits to climb back, and Moody’s still has not restored it.
- In Hamden, Moody’s withdrew the town’s rating citing insufficient information. That is not a traditional downgrade, but it is still a serious rating action tied to a lack of current financial information.
- Oxford lost theirs, filed the audit, and got it back. So this can be survived. But only by a town that treats the deadline like it means something.
I wish we were told this side of the story, rather than a blanket statement trying to comfort us, and [that officials instead] came up with a hard deadline.
Editor’s note: Moody’s withdrew Hamden’s rating in 2025 and Fitch withdrew Hamden’s ratings in 2026, citing insufficient financial information. Danbury has continued to receive ratings from other agencies for bond issuances, despite Moody’s not restoring its rating.
Here is the part that should stop everyone in this room. Take Oxford. About eight months past its deadline, Moody’s pulled the town’s rating. To my knowledge, we are about five and a half months past ours right now. We are not safe. We are early on the same curve, and the town just ahead of us on it already lost the rating. We lose the ability to bond in two weeks.
Editor’s note: Missing the state’s audit deadline does not automatically prevent a municipality from issuing bonds, though delayed audits can affect credit ratings, borrowing costs and access to the bond market.
And here is what makes Wilton different. Oxford was already several rungs down the ratings ladder when it lost its rating. We are not. Wilton holds Moody’s highest rating there is, reaffirmed just last year. There is nothing above it. So if Moody’s pulls our rating, we are not slipping a notch. We are falling off the top. We have borrowed cheaply for years because we sit up there. That is what is on the table. We have more to lose than the towns that already fell.
If other towns are failing, that does not mean Wilton should. “Other towns missed it too” is not a standard. It is an excuse.
I do not believe we are operating to the best of our ability right now. I am not saying anyone is acting in bad faith. I am saying we can do better, and we should. I’d love to see us all work together as a team.
So let us choose the path of truth and transparency. Let us move into the open on purpose, while it is still our choice to make.
Thank you,
Joshua Kopac
