Following Budget Miscalculation, Selectmen Look to Settle on a 4.45% Budget Increase, Passing Buck to BOF

First Selectman Toni Boucher revealed a major $918,879 budget miscalculation on Thursday night, Feb. 27, leading in part to the Board of Selectmen‘s decision to pass the buck to the Board of Finance with regard to an expected 4.45% budget increase proposal.

For the last three weeks the BOS has experienced a confusing and time-consuming budget process earmarked by inaccurate or inconsistent financial figures and ineffectual communication amongst town officials.

At a special meeting Tuesday, Feb. 25 to continue its work on the FY 2026 budget, Boucher said a forthcoming state reimbursement for the Miller-Driscoll School project of several years ago would offset costs for the proposed BOS budget, with the almost $920,000 windfall then expected to reduce the capital operating column in a budget of approximately $37 million.

On Wednesday, however, following a precedent-setting consultation with former First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice, Boucher, Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker and Chief Financial Officer Dawn Norton came to understand that that money was unavailable for allocation to the capital operating budget.

Instead, Vanderslice informed them, by law the reimbursement money, which totals $1,272,763, can only be earmarked for either a reduction in the town’s debt service or put against another previously authorized bond project, such as the work on the new police headquarters.

“They say in life, your life can change in one second, but for us it was in 48 hours,” Boucher told the BOS when it met again on Thursday evening.

Not one BOS member asked any questions or expressed any concern publicly about the revelation.

Boucher said that, although Norton had received the guidance from the bond counsel that the town could use the money for capital operating, “This was something that really concerned Dawn, so she spent the last 48 hours with dogged determination and digging through years of [BOS meeting] minutes all the way back to 2017.”

According to Boucher, Norton somehow discovered that the town had already authorized moving others funds from completed projects into the Miller-Driscoll project, having found reference to the actions in the Jan. 9, 2017, and the Jan. 8, 2018 minutes of BOS meetings.

“It was strongly recommended by Lynne, and I would take her counsel, because I do respect her view on this, that we only use it for the bonded project like the police station and not on debt service,” Boucher said, lauding Vanderslice’s expertise and experience.

While the BOS plans to vote on moving the money over to the police station project at its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, Mar. 3, this still left them with the ongoing issue of how to reduce the proposed budget in order to, ideally, meet the budget guidance of the Board of Finance, which has requested seeing no more than a 3% increase in the BOS’s proposed budget.

More Confusion Ensues

More confusion ensued in Thursday’s meeting, as Knickerbocker then put forward a revised FY ’26 budget proposal that came in at $37,027,751, which he said represented a 3.36% increase over the current $35.8 million budget.

“Given the numbers that we have been projected, it would be less than a 1% increase in the tax rate,” he said, citing a recent Grand List increase that he and Boucher argue will have to be taken into account by the BOF when they look at this budget.

That assumption is not guaranteed, however, as it’s unknown whether the BOF will agree with it and with Boucher and Knickerbocker’s other recommendation to defer borrowing and reduce debt service. Debt service along with setting the mill rate are in the purview of the BOF, which won’t start its own budget discussions until after it receives a BOS-endorsed budget.

UPDATE: Following publication of this article, BOF Chair Matt Raimondi submitted the following comment through GMW’s content section, below: “As Chair of the Board of Finance, I want to clarify that Mr. Knickerbocker’s calculation does not align with the BOF mill rate model. The Board of Finance, which is the sole board responsible for setting the mill rate, will be reviewing the budgets and their mill rate implications at our March 11 meeting.”

Knickerbocker said that his numbers included adding two new firefighters into the budget, with a cost of $216,000, but Selectwoman Kim Healy was adamant that they had not agreed on that.

The BOS had heard from Fire Chief Jim Blanchfield at Tuesday’s meeting, in a presentation that asked for two added personnel. After Healy pushed for more detailed call response data to justify the request, Blanchfield — accompanied by several members of his department — returned Thursday for a second lengthy presentation.

Blanchfield’s appeal not only pushed for additional firefighters in town, he argued that there was actually a need for eight more, not just the two for which he was asking, by adding two more firefighters a year over the next four years. At least one BOS member said this was the first time they were hearing about this extensive need for personnel, something Vanderslice also confirmed to GOOD Morning Wilton after the meeting.

Consequently, despite objections from Healy that more deliberation was needed, the remainder of the board voted to fund the firefighters. Healy stressed that, while she did not want to jeopardize emergency safety, the BOS needed to take more time to deliberate on the matter.

“We didn’t know it was two every year for the next four years. That’s a lot,” she said, stating she felt like she was being bullied and pressured into supporting it.

“I feel like I’m being told I have to do this,” she said.

(In a separate article GOOD Morning Wilton is publishing today, Vanderslice stated that the BOS should also obtain more information before making this decision.)

As the meeting dragged into its third hour, Healy tried to take charge of the budget tally to keep the BOS on task, asking Norton to help keep tabs on the numbers.

“I’m not saying what we should do, I’m just simply trying to reconcile between the differences,” she said.

Town officials continued to struggle over what items were still in the budget and which were already removed, given different iterations of documents and conflicting understandings of decisions made over the past two weeks.

Technical issues with audio, with Norton working virtually, added to the confusion, which was exacerbated when others joined the meeting, including DPW Director Frank Smeriglio.

Members of the public who were watching the meeting through the town’s provided Zoom link experienced periods where entire statements from officials were inaudible, or were subjected to multiple audios echoing while people were speaking.

“What you are watching is a working board, a board that is working very hard on this budget and is actually getting somewhere,” Boucher unexpectedly interjected in the middle of the discussion during the third hour.

Boucher also needed clarification multiple times about which numbers were being referenced by the selectmen. “I don’t think our discussion has anything to do with that line,” Selectman Bas Nabulsi told Boucher in one instance.

“It’s very confusing,” she said.

Well into the fourth hour of the meeting, with frustrations brewing, the other four members of the BOS outvoted Boucher on continuing to fully fund employee pensions for both the police and fire departments at 100 percent.

“We have the adoptive policy to fully fund it,” Selectman Josh Cole said, “I think it sends a bad message if we now change that position.”

Selectman Ross Tartell said he believed that, given the state of affairs, the BOS had a “responsibility” to bring a budget proposal to the BOF that was higher than 3%.

“The issue I have is we are in a budget that is deeply constrained,” he said, noting that the BOS “blew it” in October when, on its behalf, Boucher and Knickerbocker presented a preliminary budget to the BOF that warned of an outside increase of up to 6%, telling them it would likely be much lower.

“We are in a budget crisis even with a Grand List that is up,” Tartell said.

Boucher restated that she has expressed that there have been extraordinary circumstances around this budget, including increases in employee healthcare costs and a shortage of reserves.

“They never asked us our opinion,” Boucher said of the BOF, noting that she and Knickerbocker only learned of the 13% increase to insurance costs a couple of weeks ago.

In the end, the group was able to agree on a budget proposal of approximately $37,417,000, which represents a 4.45% increase, or comes in approximately $1,594,000 above the current year’s budget of $35,822,934.

“I would suggest that we keep the firemen in and bring the Board of Finance the 4.45 [percent] and then they can make a decision,” Boucher said.

The BOS wrapped the meeting without voting on whether to approve the proposed budget, preferring to take a little longer to consider the figures they’d arrived on.

Boucher suggested they meet ahead of their regular meeting on Monday (Mar. 3) in order to iron out details and hold a vote on the proposal, which is scheduled to be presented to the BOF on Wednesday, Mar. 5.