Key Points
- A $106,000 garage-door request reached the BOF despite an existing budget allocation; officials still need to confirm the money remains available.
- A fuel tank design request exceeded the supporting proposal by more than $40,000, prompting questions about the difference.
- Disagreement over proposed capital spending has the BOF revisiting which projects the CNREF should support.
Why It Matters: The requests raise questions about how Wilton tracks previously approved funding and reviews capital expenses before committing taxpayer money.
Entertaining several funding requests that presented differing concerns — including a $106,000 request from the Board of Selectmen for garage door replacements already included in last year’s budget — the Board of Finance has decided to take a closer look at exactly what projects should qualify for funding support under the Town’s new Capital Non-Recurring Fund (CNREF).
DPW Request for Something Already Budgeted
At the Tuesday, Oct. 13 meeting, BOF member Kim Healy shared the discovery that a funding request from the Department of Public Works for $106,000 to replace nine garage doors at the Highway Department building — approved by the Board of Selectmen on Sept. 11 — had previously been approved and included in the FY2026 operating capital budget.
Whether overlooked or forgotten by officials at Town Hall or on the BOS, the request had advanced through the BOS without the existing allocation being identified. The doors had been included under the broader item “Non-Bondable Town Building Needs Assessment Projects,” which totaled $175,000 for Fiscal Year 2026.
Healy said she found the supporting breakdown while reorganizing her budget binders. However, she cautioned that officials still needed to confirm the money remained available.
“Somebody needs to go back and make sure it’s still there. We don’t have a report,” she said.
Consequently, the BOF did not vote on approving the funding request.
During public comment at the end of the meeting, Second Selectman Ross Tartell returned to the issue, identifying himself as speaking as a member of the BOS. He questioned where the garage-door allocation appeared in the budget documents, saying he had looked at both FY2025 and FY2026 without finding it.
“Either I’m looking in the wrong place or I’m not seeing the other place,” Tartell said.
“Check again. It’s there,” Healy said pointing it out on Tartell’s laptop computer after a confusing few minutes in which he maintained it wasn’t there.
“It’s bundled,” Healy told him as he searched his document. “Remember, we gave them a bundle, so I asked for a breakdown of the bundle.”
Healy directed Tartell to the $175,000 FY2026 operating capital line for non-bondable town building needs assessment projects, explaining that the garage doors were included in the supporting breakdown.
Previous Request Delayed
As GMW previously reported, on Sept. 15 the BOF sent the first funding request for the garage doors back to the BOS because the request form was incomplete and missing information.
At that time, BOF Chair Tim Birch noted that since the BOS did not provide documentation of its approval and omitted information about the CNREF balance on the form, the BOF could not consider approving the request.
“I don’t know how we — or why — we would approve something that’s not completed … My suggestion is that we let the Board of Selectmen know that when it’s fully filled out we’re more than willing to have the conversation around the proposal,” he told his board at the time.
Other BOF members expressed concerns about the request, which came from Interim DPW Director Jeff Pardo, including why the vendor’s quote was almost exactly the same as the estimate in a February 2024 Facility Condition Assessment report. Questions were also raised about whether all nine doors needed to be replaced at once, but Pardo said doing so would save the town money and reduce the risk of failures leaving the building unsecured.
Those concerns about replacing all nine doors resurfaced on Oct. 13. BOF member Kari Roberts questioned proceeding before the town had a broader plan for its facilities, while BOF Vice Chair Rudy Escalante said the earlier discussion had not provided specific figures demonstrating the savings from replacing the doors together.
Another DPW Question
Another DPW request for $178,000 toward fuel tank replacement design work at the Highway Department also raised questions — particularly why $178,000 was being requested when the submitted proposal totaled $137,250.
“Why are we being asked for 178?” Healy asked.
In response, First Selectman Toni Boucher read the BOF a lengthy description from her phone explaining the scope of the project, a replacement deadline and the savings from maintaining the town’s own gasoline supply.
Birch reiterated that the question concerned the difference between the funding request and the proposal.
“But Toni, the question on the fuel tank is that your funding request is for $178,000 but your bid is 137,” Birch explained. “So where’s the other $40,000?”
Boucher responded, “That’s a good question. I’ll have to look into it.”
As the overall replacement project would total an estimated $1.2 million, Roberts questioned whether the town should look more broadly at the future of the Town Hall campus before investing in the project.
Birch said the design work was needed to identify what the replacement would require before the town could bring forward a bonding proposal.
The BOF ultimately approved the lower amount of $137,250 for the design work. Roberts abstained.
What Should the Capital Fund Cover?
The questions extended beyond the two DPW requests to a broader disagreement over what the CNREF should fund.
Separately, the BOF approved $125,118.87 for repairs and renovation work at the school district’s Central Office following excessive water damage, but it chose to use only Charter Reserve funds, rather than splitting the cost between that reserve and the CNREF as the BOS had proposed.
Healy recommended that approach, citing unfinished financial closeouts and uncertainty about available fund balances.
The board also questioned proposed uses of the CNREF in the BOS’s preliminary Fiscal Year 2028 budget projections.
In their presentation to the BOF on those projections, Boucher and Selectman Matt Raimondi suggested, on behalf of the BOS, that just under $1.1 million could be allocated from the CNREF to fund several items in the upcoming budget. These included $80,000 for pond dredging through the DPW; $380,000 for “fiber backbone” IT work at Town Hall; a trench drain at Firehouse Station 2; $234,900 for non-bondable town building needs assessment projects; and $325,000 for Board of Education site work.
Originally planned as the “Infrastructure Fund,” the CNREF was approved by the Annual Town Meeting in May and established as a means of addressing smaller, one-time capital items that the town would rather not have to bond — particularly those related to facility repairs.
“My understanding of this fund was it was not meant to supplement operating capital, right?” Healy said. “It was meant to pay for projects from the needs assessment [report]. So in my opinion, most of these items don’t qualify for usage of this fund.”
“A lot of these are not capitalized or capitalizable,” she said, suggesting that both boards need to discuss what qualifies. “They’re not one-off projects. And a lot of them aren’t even a project,” she said.
Healy said the BOS needs to consider how it would fund the various projects if they’re not paid for through the CNREF.
Raimondi — who previously served as BOF chair and helped create the CNREF — offered a broader interpretation, saying the fund was originally contemplated as a way to use budget savings and revenue surpluses for smaller infrastructure projects below the $250,000 threshold.
He said he believed the proposed uses were permissible under the fund’s language and recommended a joint meeting of the two boards to clarify how they wanted to use it.
BOF member Prasad Iyer was more critical of the fund itself, questioning why the town needed separate funding sources for similar infrastructure work and how efficiently that arrangement helped projects move forward.
“I still struggle with why do we even need CNREF because we’re just putting money here and there,” he said. “Put it in the right pocket, left pocket. We’re going to spend it anyway on something in infrastructure.”
Birch said the BOF would revisit the fund’s founding document at its next meeting to discuss whether the fund remained appropriate and what projects it should support.
