After Town Hall officials released a budget document containing inaccurate financial figures — and did so too late to meet the statutory deadline for public meeting notice — the Board of Finance convened a special meeting Sunday, Mar. 15, to correct the numbers, clarify what the town’s proposed budgets actually show, and redo the public notice document.

At the center of the confusion was the reported size of the proposed Board of Selectmen budget increase for FY 2027. As presented by First Selectman Toni Boucher and Chief Financial Officer Dawn Savo, the document showed a 3.6% increase over the current year. BOF members said they had not yet approved the adjustments used to arrive at that figure and therefore considered the actual increase to be 4.6%.

The instability surrounding the town’s financial records had additional consequences. Because of ongoing uncertainty about figures for Fiscal Years 2024 and 2025, the BOF also broke from past practice by removing some historical data from the hearing notice. Because Town Hall officials missed the statutory filing deadline required for public notice, the BOF was also forced to reschedule its upcoming budget hearings.

BOF Disputes BOS 3.6% Budget Increase Math

The discrepancy stemmed from a Mar. 9 request by the Board of Selectmen to modify the current year’s (FY 2026) budget by moving $330,000 from the Charter Reserve Fund to cover the cost of a dump truck and related equipment that had previously been approved to be bonded.

If the BOF approves the request, the current budget would increase by $330,000, bringing the proposed FY 2027 budget increase to 3.6%, matching the guidance the BOF had asked for.

Without BOF approval, however, the FY 2026 budget remains $37,130,471, meaning the proposed $38,821,769 FY 2027 request represents a 4.6% increase.

With deadlines looming to legally notify the public of upcoming budget hearings, BOF members spent Sunday afternoon reviewing the figures provided by the Finance Department and deciding how much information could responsibly be included in the hearing notice.

Ultimately, the board opted to remove some of the financial data Town Hall had included in the document and attach a disclaimer clarifying that the numbers had been provided by the Finance Department and had not yet been verified by the BOF.

“Preliminary estimates set forth below were provided to the Board of Finance by the Finance Department of the town,” the disclaimer states. “These may be subject to change based on Board of Finance review.”

BOF members suggested that the figures Savo provided on behalf of the Town were likely “typos,” but for whatever reason they didn’t add up, and still needed to be reviewed and reconciled.

In the case of the request to move $330,000 to cover the dump truck and equipment costs, the BOF did not immediately approve the request, as had been expected, citing missing information and questions. Among those questions was confirmation that the truck had already been purchased and exactly where that funding had come from if the town had not yet taken out the bond for the truck.

Consequently, documents brought forward from Town Hall had prematurely incorporated the change.

As of Monday, Mar. 16, the BOF published a revised public notice document on the Town website reflecting numbers as the board currently sees them:

  • The Town’s current FY ’26 budget remains $37,130,471, without the additional $330,000, making the Board of Selectman’s FY ’27 budget request of $38,821,769, a 4.6% increase.
  • The Board of Education’s FY ’27 budget request is $100,459,485, a 3.6% increase over the current FY ’26 budget of $96,968,334, exactly matching BOF budget guidance.

Missed Deadline and Unreliable Figures

The town — and the BOF — remain in a state of financial limbo as Finance Department staff continue to review and reconcile Wilton’s finances, which have been unsettled for at least the past year. It remains unclear exactly what went wrong or when, but issues involving process, staffing and complications in migrating financial software have continued to build during Boucher’s tenure.

The BOF had originally hoped to hold a public hearing on the Board of Education budget on Mar. 18, and a public hearing on the Board of Selectmen budget on Mar. 25. But Town Hall officials did not submit an approved public notice document in time to meet the filing deadline requiring 10 days of advance notice.

On Mar. 13, Birch told GOOD Morning Wilton, “After consultation with town counsel, we could not send the notice earlier than Monday,” he said. “So the meeting dates will be changed to the 26th (BOE) and the 30th (BOS) to avoid a Friday or weekend meeting.”

In an effort to streamline the revised document — which serves as notice for the public hearings now scheduled on Mar. 26 and Mar. 30 — the board omitted details for Fiscal Years 2024 and 2025, confirming the Town Charter did not require those figures to be included in the notification.

“It’s just a means by which we can distance ourselves from some of the numbers we don’t agree with until we can allow ourselves to recast,” BOF Chair Tim Birch said.

He was adamant that, given the lateness of the hour on Sunday, the BOF didn’t have time to thoroughly review all of the numbers Savo had provided and still meet the new deadline to publish the meeting notice announcement the next day, Monday, Mar. 16.

BOF member Kim Healy was the lone member who sought to include all the numbers that had been provided, but wanted them updated for accuracy. She presented some of the corrections and suggested they post those revised figures.

“I am definitely of the mind that you provide more, but you provide accurate numbers … I just think we need to clean this up a little bit,” Healy said.

“Fiscal ’24 are the only numbers I feel comfortable relying on since we have no comfort in ’25 or ’26 numbers,” she said.

The hearings will be held at 7 p.m. on each night at the Middlebrook School auditorium.

The Board of Selectmen is scheduled to meet tonight, Monday, Mar. 16, at 7 p.m. in person at Comstock Community Center and via Zoom. There is no scheduled budget discussion on the board’s published agenda.