After a calamitous Board of Selectmen budget cycle last year that was earmarked by inaccurate and incomplete information presented by Town Hall, as well as at times misleading presentations of financial calculations, First Selectman Toni Boucher appears to be setting the stage for a repeat performance.
Once again, in an apparent effort to obscure a sizable 8.26% increase in the proposed Board of Selectmen operating budget for Fiscal Year 2027 — well beyond the Board of Finance‘s 3.6% guidance — Boucher has deviated from the BOF’s method of calculating the mill rate by combining the BOS operating increase with an unrelated reduction in debt service, producing a figure that understates the actual proposed budget increase.
The tactic almost might have been missed early on. For the Monday evening, Feb. 2 BOS meeting, Boucher provided the selectmen with hard copies of her budget proposal only a few hours before the meeting took place, giving them little time for an initial review. Boucher also failed to make the document available to the public either online or in the meeting room, even though it was the primary focus for almost three hours of discussion and multiple individual department presentations at the meeting.
Asked by at least one member of the BOS why the document had not been made available to the public, Boucher said, “It was being changed as of two o’clock this afternoon.” The meeting began at 6:45 p.m.
Last year, the skewed numbers drew criticism from some town officials and members of the public. Boucher, alongside Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker, initially presented an operating and capital budget for FY 2026 that represented a 10.39% increase over FY 2025 — a rise from $35.8 million to $39.6 million. But in order to make it appear that they were meeting the BOF’s 3% budget guidance, Boucher and Knickerbocker calculated in a $1.4-million reduction in the debt service — something that was never traditionally included in the formula, but when tallied resulted in an overall 2.99% increase.
For this year cycle, with a current-year total operating and capital budget of $37,130,471 in place, Boucher is asking for $40,198,846, or an 8.26% increase of $3,068,375.
However, by again including the debt service figure, which for FY 2027 shows a reduction of $769,093, Boucher’s calculations — this year done with new CFO Dawn Savo — portray a “total operating and debt service” increase of just 2.88%.
Boucher earned more criticism last year for not paring down her budget numbers further before bringing them to the BOS for approval. At that time, she stated that she had done her best and was unable to find additional cuts, putting the burden of responsibility on the BOS, which spent many hours working to reduce the numbers.
Some BOS members had expressed unhappiness, arguing that it was beyond their purview — or full knowledge base — to make all the cuts necessary, as they had not been privy to initial meetings and discussions with department heads.
This past Monday evening, Boucher presented a working document to BOS members on Monday entitled, “First Selectman Proposed Budget,” although she stressed that the numbers were in flux.
“It is a work in progress,” she told the BOS.
Late Night News Raises Transparency and Process Questions
Among the more dramatic changes in the new budget is the omission of a $198,315 salary for the town administrator position. “Position currently removed to reflect reorganization structure,” the budget document states.
After a BOS meeting last month at which Boucher alluded to organizational changes she might be making, GOOD Morning Wilton emailed the first selectman with questions about whether she might be rethinking the town administrator role.
In a Jan. 7 email in response to GMW, Boucher wrote, “I am looking at only a couple of places that are not department head changes to see if we can better align jobs with current needs. No decisions have been made yet. I hope to finalize my thoughts and discuss this internally.”
Knickerbocker has held the newly created position of town administrator for three years, overseeing all department heads, but he declined to put his name in for a contract renewal in the fall of 2025. Consequently, a search committee was formed that was tasked with finding a replacement, but struggled to reach consensus on any one candidate. There has not been a recent update on its progress since a contentious meeting of the BOS in September.
That was until late in Monday’s meeting — at approximately 11:15 p.m. — when Boucher announced what she called a “very important organization and budget priority decision,” saying she had “decided to revive and enhance the position of strategic planning, facilities and real estate management,” a role she described as “a manager-level position under the Department of Public Works.”
Boucher said she was fast-tracking the new position, hoping to fill it in the next two weeks. She also noted that Knickerbocker’s last day would be Friday, Feb. 13, and that the town administrator position was not being eliminated entirely, but rather just not being filled for now.
Boucher said the town administrator search should be paused as a result: “Because this revived position will encompass much of the responsibility that has been contemplated under the proposed town administrator position… a recommendation to the Board of Selectmen is to place the search for town administrator on hold,” she said, adding, “We would essentially disband the search committee.”
“The search team had come to a consensus at the last meeting on the town administrator position to hold off on filling this position,” Boucher said. “There was an urgent need from DPW so we reallocated the resources.”
Boucher said the revived facilities position would report to DPW Director Frank Smeriglio rather than to her: “It would be a manager level… so he would report… to Frank, not to the town administrator or to the first selectman,” she said, and added that Smeriglio would also do the hiring.
But she also noted that, without a town administrator, other departments, including finance, land use and DPW, “would then undoubtedly report to the first elected,” adding, “Now, this will give me a whole lot more to do. But I’m willing… definitely willing to do this.”
Boucher portrayed the move not as an added cost but as a net savings, telling the board that “our intent is for this change to be budget neutral — and, in fact, modestly positive,” because the town could fund it by keeping the town administrator position vacant, and “devot[ing] all of the funding for that position into this position.”
The new role factors in to the proposed FY 2027 DPW budget as part of a $347,739 increase in the DPW full-time salary budget, adding to a close-to-50% increase in that department’s overall budget.
The town also has a current facilities manager in Jeff Pardo, whose official title is Assistant Director of Public Works/Facilities Manager, Jeff Pardo; he would now report to this new hire on building facility matters.
Surprisingly, the announcement drew limited discussion or inquiry from selectmen. Boucher positioned the move as a decision she had made, and although she phrased the topic of suspending the town administrator search as a “recommendation” to the BOS, she did not ask for feedback from the four other members or suggest a discussion. She thanked them for their hard work on the town administrator search, but left it at that.
It was a curious omission, given that the town administrator position had been created and approved under the authority of the BOS. According to the Wilton Town Charter, the board as a whole is the appointing authority over department heads, so while the first selectman has day-to-day supervisory authority of such employees, only the BOS has the authority to hire, set compensation and terminate employment for department heads. The BOS serves as the personnel search committee so any decision to suspend the search should have been determined by a vote of the appointing authority — the Board of Selectmen.
Selectman Matt Raimondi raised a question, after he characterized the move as “an operational decision to shift resources from the prime administrative position into this [new] position,” although he did question the need to hire someone in two weeks. Selectman Rich McCarty asked Smeriglio to describe the new role and its responsibilities, and later said he thought the role could be “valuable” when it came time to analyze proposed capital projects.
During public comment, GOOD Morning Wilton Editor Heather Borden Herve asked whether the new facilities position would be publicly advertised on the town website. “Is there going to be any kind of job description posted, or job posting… for this position?” she asked.
Boucher responded: “Not in this situation, Heather, this is a position that is a lower-level position. It’s not a department head or assistant department head, so it’s going to be a decision made by the department head Frank Smeriglio.”
However, town policy has been to post all job openings. In fact, the Town website on Monday evening did list job descriptions and openings for several positions, including DPW mechanic, DPW seasonal snow plow driver, manager of financial systems and payroll, police officer and part-time building monitor.
The Public Raises Questions
GOOD Morning Wilton emailed Boucher several questions following the meeting, including why the Town would deviate from practice and policy in this case, and whether the posted jobs were considered higher-level because they were posted.
Boucher responded to say the job actually would be posted, writing: “We will be posting the revived facilities job [Tuesday] and it will remain open until filled. Frank will be doing the interviewing.” The job description and opening now is live on the site, and includes a salary range of starting salary range of $160,000-$175,000 with full benefits.
She also defended the decision to create the new role. “Anyone following our meetings can readily see the need,” Boucher said. “Wilton has lost good staff in the past by giving them more tasks than can be handled.”
Boucher and the other selectmen did receive sharp criticism from resident Sarah Curtis during public comment, when she blasted both the timing and the lack of visible board scrutiny surrounding the changes, calling it “shameful” and “embarrassing” that officials were “… at 11:18 at night… flipping around to see if we can cram a meeting on something that is so important.”
She called the late-night handling of such consequential decisions “a direct insult… to the residents of this town,” and urged the selectmen to “muster some courage to not just go with the flow.”
Curtis also pointed directly to what she saw as a contradiction in how Boucher described the new role. “Rarely have I heard ‘lower-level position’ and ‘strategic’ used to describe the same person,” adding that the move to suspend the town administrator role “represents a significant change” in how the town would be run. Addressing the selectmen, she said that at “11 o’clock at night… last item on the agenda… it looked like none of you knew that this was coming,” and called their silence “disgraceful.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misidentified Matt Knickerbocker as the person First Selectman Toni Boucher has been working with on the FY 2027 budget proposal. Boucher is putting this year’s budget proposal together with new CFO Dawn Savo. This story has been updated to reflect that change.