First Selectman Toni Boucher took some heat on Tuesday night, Aug. 19, during public comment at the Board of Selectmen meeting, as did the BOS at large, in the wake of myriad missteps that have occurred over the past year.

Two very active town residents gave voice to expanding concerns about Boucher’s administration, calling on her, the BOS and residents alike to step up and make some changes.

“We’re in a mess and there is no denying it, but there have been many attempts to do so,” began Sara Curtis, a longtime resident who follows many town meetings and often shares comments about specific matters.

“Over many months, we’ve witnessed actions and singular decisions that are willful, not measured, and reflect political calculation versus what I feel should be thoughtful leadership,” Curtis said. “I have 13 pages of incidents over the last 15 months and over 20 debacles that did not need to happen, and I’m still counting.”

“These are increasing not just in frequency but also in severity,” she said.

Wilton Town Hall has witnessed a wide range of problems and situations since the beginning of the year, some of which came to light during budget season and relate to town finances.

Along with larger issues that have included a material weakness found through an independent financial audit, concerns about multiple town building projects, transparency questions, turbulence getting to a lease agreement with Ambler Farm, and distribution of an unauthorized tax credit by certain town employees without BOS approval, there have also been many smaller instances of mismanagement, including incomplete and incorrect budget documents brought before town officials, lack of documentation for review during public meetings, inappropriate requests for contract approvals prior to contracts even being written, and incomplete answers regarding some departmental finance accounts.

“Instead of facing up to what got us here, there has been an unfortunate investment in digging a deeper hole, and primarily from the selectman’s office,” Curtis said.

In response to at least some of these concerns, the Board of Finance initiated a push for an independent review of Town Hall processes this summer, starting with formation of a Process Review Committee to find a qualified auditor and give them their marching orders. And while formation of this committee created its own center of controversy around Boucher and her decisions surrounding its formation, the entire initiative was sidelined this month after it was discovered that Wilton’s Chief Financial Officer Dawn Norton — long viewed by town officials as a harried, overworked employee operating above and beyond her job description to keep the town’s financial picture in focus — had in fact taken a second full-time job working simultaneously as the town administrator-CFO of a Wyoming municipality without reportedly informing Wilton officials.

Having been directly involved in and, to varying degrees, responsible for some of the larger issues relating to Town Hall operations, Wilton’s Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker — the first to take on this new management role when he was hired in September 2022 — announced, just before the revelation about Norton came to light, that he would be leaving Wilton when his three-year contract expires next month.

Resident Barbara Geddes, who often attends public meetings and shares her comments on issues, also shared strong feelings about the current state of affairs on Tuesday, in particular questioning the wisdom and effectiveness of keeping the three roles in place — CFO, town administrator and first selectman — in running Wilton’s town government.

“Apparently our form of government has changed from a collaborative Board of Selectmen-style with a powerful first selectman, to a hybrid form of town manager, town CFO, and a much lesser future role for the first selectman and board,” Geddes said. “I don’t remember any town vote on this. It’s not in our Charter.”

“If the town is really interested in this … I think we should have a Town Meeting,” she said, calling the combination of the three jobs an obvious “redundancy.”

“In my view this has been a failed experiment from any viewpoint,” Geddes said. “It didn’t work as planned.”

Toward that end, Curtis took Boucher to task for comments she made publicly to the Board of Finance last week while trying to defend her part in the Norton debacle, stating she had been told before she ran for election that the role of first selectman was supposed to be “part time.”

“Early this year, the first selectman noted in GOOD Morning Wilton, ‘Currently I have a lot of things on my plate beyond the job of first selectman,'” Curtis quoted, “including writing two books (and) serving on boards at two large institutions.”

“I think this was a worrisome foreboding of what was to come,” Curtis said. “Residents are openly concerned, and more lose confidence each day.”

“I want the best for everyone on this board and for everyone in this town, but these things need to be said and they need to be addressed, and they need to be addressed now,” she said.

Curtis also expressed unhappiness with Boucher’s efforts and choices to put various BOS discussions into executive session, on some of which Boucher received pushback from both her fellow Republicans on the BOS, Selectman Josh Cole and Selectwoman Kim Healy, who have favored a more public vetting of issues, including the Ambler Farm lease.

“When our first selectman first started her office, she was quoted as stating we were lucky to have immense intellectual resources,” Curtis said. “I agree wholeheartedly. But resources are largely wasted. They are ignored, and instead of engagement we have favored isolation (and) lack of transparency. We’ve become secretive.”

“Executive sessions and private meetings are not a path to achieve objectives. It is a way to accomplish agendas,” she said.

Curtis also noted the problems with trying to move too quickly on matters, something that Cole and Healy have also complained about to Boucher.

“It is time to stop and make a long-overdue course correction,” Curtis said. “The solution is not going 90 and now 120 miles an hour in the wrong direction and not repeating the same behaviors and practices that got us here in the first place.”

Ironically, later in the meeting, Department of Public Works Director Frank Smeriglio came before the BOS with a request for them to retroactively approve some additional costs that had arisen on the Middlebrook School project. Healy pointed out that this was not the proper procedure, as the requests should have been brought to them prior to spending.

In his defense, Smeriglio said several times that the project was moving “100 miles an hour” over the summer and there hadn’t been time to seek the required approvals.

While Boucher didn’t directly comment on either Curtis’s or Geddes’s statements, she indirectly defended herself by citing the need to get the CFO position filled as soon as possible. She also indicated at one point that it was Healy, with whom she has butted heads on many occasions during the past eight months, who had told her the first selectman job would be part time because of the town administrator’s help in handling day-to-day operations.

Following the announcement that Knickerbocker would not be returning, the BOS did not publicly discuss the effectiveness of the town administrator role, though Healy pointed out earlier this month that surrounding towns employing both a CFO and town administrator are paying much less in salaries than Wilton is proposing.

At the end of Tuesday night’s meeting, Healy asked the BOS to revisit the topic of whether a town administrator was a necessary role for Wilton.

“I think we as a board should have a conversation at our next meting to talk about what town leadership should look like,” she said, noting that while she thinks she’s in favor of maintaining the town administrator position, the BOS should do its diligence in talking about.

“I think that’s something that we may have missed when we made the assumption that we needed a new town administrator,” Healy said. “I probably would still argue that we do, but I think we owe it to the public because it is a very large expense.”

Geddes also brought up the issue of Norton’s technical dual role as the CFO of both the town and the Wilton Public Schools, which was reported in-depth by GOOD Morning Wilton on Tuesday. Though town officials say it was in discussion for over a year, with Norton’s departure, the BOS decided to once again separate the two CFO roles after eight years.

Following increases in school budgets, the BOF originally encouraged the idea of combining the roles to save money and augment efficiency.

Geddes said the decision to change back came “without any town vote or vetting discussion … Why? I don’t know,” she said, calling the original idea “bold and visionary.”

“Now, out of the blue, that concept is dead,” she said.

“I see our first selectperson, who I personally like very much, operating as a solo leader in a silo on many fronts,” Geddes said. “I look for collaboration with all of you, as well as the Board of Finance and the Board of Education.”

In expressing their frustrations, both Curtis and Geddes also said this was an opportunity to work together.

“This is not the time or place to blame any one person,” Geddes said.

“You must rise above this. You have to look ahead,” she said, encouraging people throughout town to share their opinions on matters and participate.

“Come out of the silence and get involved here,” Geddes said. “We need your help.”