On Monday night (Feb. 10), First Selectman Toni Boucher presented a 2025-26 operating budget with a 10.39% increase over the current year. With her initial budget proposal on the table, she’s now looking to the other members of the Board of Selectmen to wrestle with making additional cuts if they have any hope of meeting the FY-2026 budget guidance from the Board of Finance.
This budget season, the BOF asked Boucher and the BOS to keep its budget increase under 3%. Last month Wilton Public Schools’ Superintendent Kevin Smith presented the Board of Education with a budget that kept the school budget increase at 4% — meeting its BOF guidance on the nose.
Not “Apples to Apples”
On Friday, in advance of Monday night’s special meeting, Boucher sent BOS members a total operating and capital budget of $39,545,575, which represents a 10.39% increase over the current year’s budget of $35,822,934.
However, by including debt service — which is being reduced by $1,427,214, or 14.31% down from its current $8.6 million — Boucher presented the final number in her budget document as representing just a 2.99% increase, with a total of $45,888,300, versus the current year’s $44,554,323 if debt service is included.
BOS member Kim Healy was quick to point out the discrepancy.
“Just so that we’re clear, this might look like a 3% (increase) but that’s not how we’ve calculated our increase in the past … If we do apples to apples, we’re starting at 10.39%,” Healy said.
In her short presentation, Boucher indicated this was, for all intents and purposes, a flat budget.
“Except where obligated by contract, or prior history indicates expenses cannot be reduced, such as certain insurance and legal claims, most lines are flat-funded versus the prior year’s budget,” she said.
Town administrator Matt Knickerbocker, who prepared the budget with Boucher, acknowledged that all department heads had been told about the 3% guidance from the BOF before presenting their budgets to the first selectman.
When Healy asked how much the department heads had reduced from their earliest starting points, Knickerbocker did not have a complete answer.
“They’ve been reduced already,” he told Healy. “We did it in three rounds. The last round I can tell you was about $170,000, but there were two rounds before that.”
Healy said contrary to what Boucher described she “[didn’t] see a lot of flat.”
“Everything looks like it’s gone up tremendously.”
“Many things were flat-funded,” Knickerbocker acknowledged. “Others were not.”
Healy said it was more than likely that the BOF would reduce this budget increase considerably, should it go before them as is.
Passing the Responsibility
“Assuming the Board of Finance cuts us to three or somewhere around three [percent], is it the expectation of you guys [Boucher and Knickerbocker] for us to now come up with the reductions to get this down to 3%?” Healy asked.
While Boucher did not directly respond, Healy took it to be in the affirmative that the responsibility was being passed to the BOS as a whole.
“I kind of feel like it should be understood that we didn’t get to sit with all of the departments,” Healy said, adding that the first time she even saw this budget was on Friday (Feb. 7).
“There’s a lot and we’re not privy to all the information that you guys are, so we’re at a huge disadvantage to be asked to reduce this so significantly,” she said. “And I guess I would just urge the different departments to understand that we may not have a choice.”
Boucher responded that the department heads would be making their presentations to the BOS, as was customary, implying that that information should help the selectmen see where and if cuts should be made.
“At the end of the day,” Healy said, “we may be reduced, I believe we absolutely will be reduced, by the town — rightfully so — and we’re gonna have to come up with some tough choices or the departments are going to have to ultimately make those choices.”
Later, she also expressed concern about the town delaying some debt repayment to FY 2027.
“We are pushing debt service bonding to the next fiscal year,” she said. “We have never done that before. … It seems like we’re doing something that the state always does … They say they kick the can down the road,” she said. “We are kicking our bonding and debt service out a year, which just prolongs the debt.”
Not the First Heads-Up Signaling Increases
On Oct. 23, 2024, Boucher and Knickerbocker alerted the BOF that they were potentially looking at what they said at the time was a large budget increase of up to 6%, sharing a preliminary budget of $37,884,065 — $1.7 million less than the current proposal.
At that time Knickerbocker told the BOF that they were “budgeting relatively liberally” because of negotiations underway with four separate bargaining units. Given the unknowns of negotiations, he said in October that a 7% wage increase had been baked into that estimate, along with increases in benefits.
This past Monday evening, Police Chief Tom Conlan explained that negotiations were still underway for a police union contract that expired in June 2024.
He defended his department’s budget, which includes a 2.78% increase in the police expense budget, bringing it to $8.6 million, along with a Central Dispatch budget of $500,000 that’s increasing by 39%, and an Animal Control Budget of $130,000 that’s increasing by 2.7%.
He pointed out that while Wilton may not have necessarily grown as a town by population — something Boucher stated in her presentation — he said police service calls increased by 6.7% from 2023 to 2024, and growth in surrounding municipalities is part of the reason along with increased travel through Wilton by motorists.
During the rest of the meeting that ran for a total of three-and-a-half hours, the BOS heard some details from other department heads on their budgets, including Parks and Recreation, Social Services, and the Registrars of Voters, all of whom explained the needs behind their budgets.
The only public comment came from Penny Maxwell, treasurer of Wilton Library‘s Board of Trustees, who said that holding the library staff’s salaries flat created an inequity within the town.
“Without supporting the 3% increase for the library, we will have to reduce operating hours, which impacts all of our residents,” she said.
While the other BOS members asked the occasional question of department heads and shared some general thoughts on town services and plans, they refrained from echoing Healy in commenting on the budget itself or the methods Boucher and Knickerbocker used in presenting the numbers.
Knickerbocker said that the staff was taking the financial concerns of the town seriously.
“We have done everything we can to get this down to the guidance,” he said, calling it “a year of catchup demand.”
The BOS budget process will continue tomorrow evening, Wednesday, Feb. 12, with a special meeting at 7 p.m. The meeting agenda, which will include a Zoom link, can be found on the Town website once it is posted by town officials. Public comment may be made at designated times during the meeting.