Raising Concerns about Transparency, BOS Members Push Boucher for More Answers & Accountability

The Board of Selectmen (BOS) bid goodbye to two of its veteran members on Tuesday night, Nov. 18.

Yet the departures were overshadowed by a cascade of concerns directed at First Selectman Toni Boucher, as board members again found themselves seeking information and basic answers on contracts, financial oversight, unapproved actions taken, personnel costs, and transparency of procedures that remain unresolved.

Parting Words on Transparency

Concerns about transparency and process framed the final remarks of outgoing Second Selectman Josh Cole.

Cole — who has now stepped down from the BOS after his surprising announcement at the prior meeting on Nov. 3 — made a final plea for following proper process to replace him. Cole encouraged the members staying on to adhere to sound protocol in finding his replacement — something First Selectman Toni Boucher didn’t do when the board had to fill another empty seat earlier this fall.

“The last time there was a vacancy, there was certain pre-screening that was done,” Cole said, referencing private meetings that Boucher held with at least one candidate; after being told by Boucher that they would not be the first choice to be considered, and that she held the deciding vote to fill the seat vacated by Bas Nabulsi, that candidate withdrew their name from consideration.

“I’d like to make sure that anyone who is interested in filling the vacancy gets an opportunity to be interviewed by the entire board,” Cole said, “and that it’s a decision that the entire board should be making throughout the entire process.”

Selectwoman Kim Healy, meanwhile, who will move over to the Board of Finance, attempted to get resolution on several matters relating to accountability and transparency questions, but answers were left incomplete or unfurnished, including the issue of Boucher signing the Guy Whitten Field lights contract without BOS approval, which came to light at the last BOS meeting.

GOOD Morning Wilton Reporter Bumped & Banished

The meeting itself began with an ironic twist on transparency when a GOOD Morning Wilton reporter watching the meeting online was inadvertently kicked off the Zoom call and blocked from reentering.

Despite the Town’s five-year history of holding virtual or hybrid meetings on Zoom, officials were unable to establish a virtual executive session separately from the public Zoom call. Instead, Boucher told members of the public attending via Zoom to get off the call and leave the meeting, and she removed at least one attendee — this GMW reporter — before he was immediately able to do so.

Kicking off an attendee from a Zoom call blocks them from rejoining. When the BOS did emerge from its closed executive session, any member of the public who had been kicked out of the meeting online was then permanently blocked and unable to sign back in.

Holding executive sessions this way — by asking members of the public to leave the call and sign back on — makes it difficult for those same members of the public to know when the open meeting resumes or when to call back in. It’s not the best way to ensure that meetings are open and accessible to members of the public who have a right to attend.

Newest Selectman Pushes for More Accountability

At the start of Tuesday’s meeting, the most-recently appointed (Aug. 4) Selectman Rich McCarty spoke up about the need for more clarity and accountability from the board. McCarty took a moment to criticize the inadequate amount of detail being included in BOS meeting minutes, noting that description about the entire 40-minute board discussion with Interim CFO Joseph Centofanti at the prior meeting was reduced to just two sentences in the minutes.

“The purpose of the meeting minutes is to create the official record of what happened during our meeting as a reference for discussions, decisions and actions,” McCarty said. “They insure accountability, clarity for the reader and those who are not at the meeting, and offer legal protections for everyone who’s there.”

“I think those two sentences for what we discussed with the interim CFO is inadequate,” he said.

McCarty also said documents related to discussions and procedures need to be made more readily available. He noted that sometimes paper documents are handed out during the meetings to BOS members, but that these are not available to the public. He said that, in some cases, documents that are referenced or added later are not included with the official records, and he also noted that sometimes materials are provided without enough time to review prior to a meeting.

“I think we need to do a better job of getting the information to us as a Board of Selectmen, and to the people,” he said.

Boucher, who placed blame on her assistant with regard to the last document that was not posted, said she wholeheartedly agreed with McCarty’s suggestions.

Still No (Interim) CFO & No Personnel Info

BOS members were then met with their own surprise when they learned that — even though an update from Interim Chief Financial Officer Joseph Centofanti was listed as an agenda item and his presence in person had been promised — Centofanti was not on hand to brief the board.

Even Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker was unaware that Centofanti would not be there.

“I tried to call Mr. Centofanti … I have not been able to raise him by phone or by text or by email,” he told the BOS when the agenda item came up.

“He can’t join us,” Boucher declared, explaining that he was a member of a board in his own town and couldn’t attend.

She then provided a very brief report on Centofanti’s work that included much of the same information he shared at the last BOS meeting. Boucher advised BOS members to “listen very carefully” as she read the summary.

“As far as the 2025 close, he is working on June 30, 2025, bank reconciliations,” Boucher said. “He’s recording activities recorded in old software into Munis, which is a big lift since it was not done properly. Recording Munis beginning year balance to prior year audit and reconciling other account balances on the close. That’s in process. He should have some positive news for us in the month of December.”

She said Centofanti was involved in correcting other Munis conversion items and “CFO-related” items that include setting up a new general ledger account, correcting general ledger interface postings, open-gov accounting mapping, the preparation of information and resolutions for the meeting of the BOS, preparation of tax-exemption forms and audit preparation, and adjusting certain department procedures to best practices.

Boucher said Centofanti would provide extensive details in-person at the next meeting in December. “I cannot answer any more detail answers on that front,” she said.

Healy reminded Boucher that Centofanti had been asked to provide the BOS with a list of any additional personnel from his firm that have been brought in help with his work — information that has been an ongoing request since Centofanti started. Also still unclear are exact hourly rates for Centofanti and any additional personnel that have been used.

Centofanti, an employee of PKF O’Connor Davies, has been working for the town since the end of August on an hourly basis at an unknown rate between $325 and $375. The company apparently billed $17,000 for the month of September, but it still isn’t clear whether that included other personnel, what personnel have been brought in by Centofanti, and what their rates and roles were.

BOS members have asked multiple times for these details, but Boucher continues to put off providing them.

In response to Healy’s direct question about additional personnel, Boucher gave an answer that was somewhat hard to follow:

“That’s in flux because I also… he had said, can I, I want a quick and we all want this information sooner than later, so he has some additional people and he wanted to make sure that I was okay with, because they’re much less expensive. In other words, his firm is very expensive. He’s got some people that he’s bringing on, and so he’ll be able to give a very more detailed staffing issues when he comes here in person to be able to address it.”

Boucher then quickly moved on to the next agenda item.

Unapproved Contract & Inaccurate Timeline

Healy also wanted to hear some answers on why Boucher signed a contract and authorized payments to a vendor on the Guy Whitten Field lighting project without proper BOS approval.

The matter came to light at the Nov. 3 BOS meeting, when Parks and Recreation Department Director Steve Pierce provided an update on the project. Healy, who had in fact submitted questions to Boucher and the BOS prior to the meeting, asked how a May 23, 2024 contract with Waterfield Design Group, Inc., could have been signed by Boucher without BOS approval.

Pierce had no explanation, but acknowledged that $43,318 had also been paid to them for project work. 

At that same meeting, Boucher said she didn’t have time to research an answer for Healy. Asked by GOOD Morning Wilton to provide an explanation, Boucher shared unrelated details on the approval of ARPA funds for that project, which occurred over a year later.

At the Nov. 18 meeting, Healy asked that the matter be addressed while the current BOS still sat, and she requested that it be added as an agenda item for public discussion that evening. “I’m not sure where that stands,” she said, noting that there might also be a need for the BOS to retroactively give approval, as it has done on other matters this year where procedures were not properly followed by Boucher’s administration.

Boucher, however, suggested discussing it at the next meeting, though both Healy and Cole will no longer be on the BOS.

Boucher’s Conflicting Dates Don’t Add Up

Boucher also cited an email she sent to the BOS members less than three hours before the meeting in which she gave what she described as “the rationale of how that [contract signing] happened.”

“I think it would be appropriate, though, for us to have the individual responsible for that to be at our meeting, so I would suggest we put that on our agenda for the December 1st meeting,” Boucher said, not naming but effectively blaming Pierce.

“This was not intentional,” she said of the contract signing. “It was because the person that we’re talking about, who should be here to discuss it, this department head, was under the impression that it was approved, and so that was the glitch. It wasn’t that there wasn’t a process.”

GOOD Morning Wilton requested a copy of the email Boucher sent to the BOS. In that email, however, Boucher’s explanation of what happened doesn’t add up.

Boucher’s email referenced a four-point timeline prepared by Knickerbocker noting that Pierce “mistakenly believed” a June 3, 2025, BOS approval for ARPA funds was also an approval of the contract by the BOS.

“Due to the approval of reallocation of ARPA funds, the fact that the contract had been cleared by counsel a year earlier, Steve apparently mistakenly believed that both projects had been approved by the Board of Selectmen at the same time,” Boucher wrote. “He then sent the final contract to the First Selectman’s office for signature.”

What Boucher fails to acknowledge, however, is that she signed and dated that very contract on May 23, 2024, one year prior to any ARPA approval, which put the work in motion more than a year before the reallocation of ARPA funds was even brought before the BOS.

A Claim That Process Is Now In Place

Boucher said that, as a result of this situation, she is now requiring department heads that come to her with a contract to sign, to attach physical minutes of the BOS meeting in which that contract was approved.

“That has been put in place now that any time this comes up, it will be followed an attached to minutes, which we just did, that will have minutes that will back up the fact that it was approved, and that was established because of the situation,” Boucher told the BOS.

While Healy’s request for a discussion on events surrounding the contract did not occur for her last meeting, McCarty did make a motion that the Waterfield contract still be discussed further at the Dec. 1 meeting as an agenda item. The motion was approved.