The Finance Department at Town Hall appears to be inching closer to resolving the messy matters that have plagued the department for the last year, but there is still lot that will be expected of Dawn Savo, the new chief financial officer, particularly as the budget season unfolds.
“I think you were dealt a really hard hand stepping into this job a couple of months ago,” Selectman Matt Raimondi told her at the Monday, Feb. 16 Board of Selectmen meeting, “and a lot of the questions that you’re getting — from me and a lot of other people — are reflective of events that led to that hard end.”
Last week, Savo presented a department budget that will increase by 41% to $828,787, up from $589,308. This request includes a 14% increase in full-time salaries — from $662,518 to $756,227, less $100,000 that will not be coming from the Board of Education this year for the previously shared salary cost for the CFO position.
The budget also includes $50,000 in miscellaneous contractual services that Savo said will primarily go toward IT support in getting the software changed over — something that has been a major bane of the department’s operations this year.
“It’s a real heavy lift to do everything manually,” Savo said, describing some of the outmoded practices taking place with hard-copy payroll accounting. “Right now the way the system is set up I can’t really have the departments do any of that data entry themselves, so it needs to move to Munis.”
First Selectman Toni Boucher expressed her happiness that this work was moving forward, as she said it was discussed previously but never implemented.
She also cautioned town officials about asking too many questions of Savo and the Finance Department, noting it could hamstring a department in need of time to rebuild.
“It can overwhelm a department that’s in the process of fixing a lot,” she said.
Toward that end, Savo sought to discourage the idea of implementing a long-talked-about process review of operation in Town Hall, starting with the Finance Department but potentially looking deeper into other areas.
“Give me some time with the staff to go through what we’re going through (rather than) having somebody from the outisde come in and then start telling us what we need to do,” Savo said, noting it would become time-consuming having to enlighten another outside person as to what is happening.
“It would be better to be built from the inside,” she said, asking they be given some time to figure out what’s working and what’s not.
Asked by Selectman Rich McCarty how long she expected they might need, Savo said, “I think at least through the end of the fiscal year.”
“Right now we’re also working with Board of Ed to get things done in their processes … so there’s a lot of fixing going on and there’s not a lot of smooth operations happening because of the jams,” she said.
Savo reported that, after a lull in his ability to devote more time to the town during the past month, Joseph Centofanti, the interim CFO who has continued to stay on since Savo’s arrival on Dec. 8, 2025, will be adding more hours, along with other people from his agency PKF O’Connor Davies.
Elected officials have raised questions about Centofanti’s hours and billing rates, as well as expressing concerns about the open-ended nature of his work with Wilton. Savo has previously explained that, while she was focusing her attention on the new budget for Fiscal Year 2027, as well as getting the numbers for Fiscal Year 2026 in order, Centofanti has been tasked with completed a review and cleanup of the Fiscal Year 2025 numbers in preparation for the annual audit of Town finances.
Today, GOOD Morning Wilton reports on a meeting of the Board of Finance on Monday, Feb. 23, during which the BOF members expressed significant frustration about the lack of answers and information they’ve received from Boucher and the Board of Selectmen to questions about town finances and the work Centofanti in particular has been doing.
“We have confirmation that the work on 2025 will be done by March 31,” Boucher said.
“As you saw, they ramped up in cost, then they’ve gone down in cost, and now they’re gonna ramp back up because they’re going to put all of their resources into doing this, so we don’t have to go out and find more resources for them,” she said.
“I sent you some reports on some of things that have been done, but there’s going to be a lot more to ramp it up and get it done,” Boucher said. “I’m hopeful. I was thinking April, but March 31st is going to be fine, as long as we get it done right.”