“Desperately Needed”: BOF Wants Boucher to Hire Town Administrator, Questions Cost of New DPW Hire

The Board of Finance made it overwhelmingly clear that it wants a qualified town administrator back on the job in Wilton and, likewise, does not see a need for a costly new managerial position at the Department of Public Works.

They discussed this during a review of the proposed Board of Selectmen’s budget on Monday, Mar. 23.

Earlier this month the Board of Selectmen, at the urging of First Selectman Toni Boucher, agreed to put $80,000 toward funding a new DPW facilities/capital planning management position, while earmarking just $85,000 to hire a new town administrator in the second half of Fiscal Year 2027.

“Desperately Needed”

“It would be a real mistake not to have that day one,” BOF Chair Tim Birch said Monday, noting there was an immediate need and the person hired could assist the town in many ways.

“I am less sanguine on the DPW hire because I don’t have a sense of new projects that are going to use the DPW time,” he said. “I say that because I’m looking at next year — [in July when FY 2027 begins and the person would start] — and it’s not clear what projects are really going to come online … Until I see more visibility into that issue, I can’t see a hire.”

Other BOF members concurred, including Vice Chair Rudy Escalante.

“A town administrator position is desperately needed … There are clear administrative functions that need to be done that are not being done right now,” he said.

BOF members refrained from directly criticizing Boucher, but under her watch over the past year there have been operational challenges and periods of turbulence — much of which she blamed on her former top two administrators — Dawn Norton, former chief financial officer and former Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker, the first person to hold that job on a three year contract that ended last fall.

As second in command, Knickerbocker was responsible for overseeing Norton, who left her job last summer after it came to light she was holding a permanent full-time position in Wyoming while simultaneously working for Wilton remotely without disclosing it. Knickerbocker has also been held responsible for the ineffective implementation of new financial and administrative software in the Finance Department, which led to significant disruption, reporting errors and ongoing financial inconsistencies, along with several other issues affecting Town Hall operations.

“I just think it’s really, really, really important that we get Town Hall in order,” BOF member Kari Roberts said, noting it was her campaign promise while running last fall.

“For me that means a town administrator is the number-one top priority,” she said. “I think that Toni does a great job. [Second Selectman] Ross [Tartell] has said frequently that we want to get you help.”

“I think the two of you alone, it’s too much … I think you need a chief operating officer,” Roberts said, referencing Boucher and new CFO Dawn Savo.

“Failed Experiment”

Knickerbocker, the former first selectman of Bethel, was hired during former First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice administration to help with the transition of her exit and to give the next first selectperson time to focus on regional matters that affect Wilton.

BOF member Kim Healy, who served on the BOS for four years, called Knickerbocker’s $195,000-a-year tenure a “failed experiment,” citing in part his own acknowledgment — made during discussions about hiring his successor — that he would not meet the revised qualifications for the role as it had evolved over the course of his tenure, particularly as town officials came to view a stronger financial background as essential.

“Our previous town administrator was quite clear when we were voting on his job description that he didn’t even have the skills that would be required of a strong town administrator,” Healy said.

When his three-year contract ended, Healy was initially not in favor of replacing him, but said she now sees it would be in the best interest of the Town to reinstate the role.

“I think it should be hired immediately … There’s a lot to be analyzed and organized and planned, and that could be done by that person,” she said.

DPW Position “Premature”

Healy also offered compelling details regarding her opposition to the DPW position that Boucher has repeatedly pushed for, pointing out that the role duplicates what had been presented as a temporary engineer position already budgeted in the current proposal.

“When you go through the budget book you will see that there are only seven administrative people identified in the DPW report, yet we’re being asked to fund eight,” she said. “I would also back that out and say we’re actually adding two.”

“When we talked about it it was always called temporary, so if it’s no longer going to be called temporary, it should have been identified and supported with some form of data in the budget,” Healy said.

“And this new position was never discussed before,” she said.

Proposed Salaries “Excessive”

Boucher has also advocated for raising DPW Director Frank Smeriglio‘s salary from what he currently makes — $165,000 — to $180,000. Her plan is that the new DPW hire — who according to the job posting will make between $160,000 and $170,000 — will report to Smeriglio.

Escalante, who described the new hire as “premature,” noted how current salaries compare in adjacent municipalities.

“When I look at the towns that are contiguous to Wilton, and what they pay their DPW head, Redding pays $136,000, Weston pays $149,000, Ridgefield pays $135,000, New Canaan pays $163,000, Westport pays $160,000, Norwalk pays $159,000. All of them are less than what we currently pay Frank,” he said.

While he praised Smeriglio’s work, Escalante said, “There would need to be some significant justification to take him to $180,000 … I think that is excessive.”

Escalante said he also thought it was unusual for Boucher to have posted the DPW managerial job before it had been approved in the budget, and asked what the proper procedure is for advertising a position that has not yet been funded. He also raised concerns about the role’s proposed salary range.

“I don’t see the justification for someone who has five years of project management experience — I hire people with five years of project management experience and typically they were making about half that, so before I would consider this … I would like to see something in writing that says we’ve studied the market,” he said.

He added that the hire should be deferred pending further study and written justification outlining the role, responsibilities, and market data supporting the proposed salary for the new hire and the increase for Smeriglio — both in excess of what surrounding communities would pay.

Roberts also pointed out that, despite claims of an overextended, overworked department, it was unclear exactly what new projects were expected to come online, or whether activity at DPW might slow down considerably at this point.

“Let DPW spend a year regrouping … catching up on stuff that kind of went on the back burner,” she said, especially now that the new police headquarters has been completed.

Roberts said that what was needed was a clear report on person-hour needs and clarifying details on upcoming projects. She added that a new town administrator would be the ideal person to create just such a report for the town.

Boucher Defends

Boucher defended the need for the new DPW position, pointing particularly to the unanimous BOS decision to include half-year funding for both a town administrator and the new DPW role in its proposed FY 2027 budget.

She reiterated a point she has made previously — that when she ran unopposed for first selectman, she had been told that the position had been restructured as more of a part-time role, given Wilton now had a town administrator “After assuming the job, I could see that it had gotten more complex.”

While she said that shift underscored the need for a town administrator, she still prioritized creating the new DPW position, even after Knickerbocker’s departure and officials’ failure to promptly find a viable replacement for him.

She said that Smeriglio had requested additional support last June to help manage an increasing number of capital and infrastructure projects, allowing him to focus more on civil engineering projects including bridges, roads and sewers. She further pointed to growing demand from the Board of Education to accelerate school-related capital projects, noting that many upcoming projects are tied to school facilities and require additional oversight.

Boucher said that the town previously had a person in this DPW managerial role and said it was not a new position she was seeking but a ‘revival’ of one that had existed before.

Healy, however, disagreed, noting first that Jeff Pardo, assistant director of DPW, was hired to oversee capital projects, which most recently included construction of the new police headquarters. Healy said that the former person who held that role — Chris Burney, whom Boucher and Knickerbocker dismissed with no clear explanation after she entered office — was working in a part-time capacity tasked only with managing the police headquarters project.

In response to Escalante’s comments about comparable salaries, Boucher said that the Human Resources Department was engaging in a study of area salaries in order to get an accurate picture of exactly what those DPW salaries should be, implying that they weren’t set in stone.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said the Board of Finance will be meeting before next week’s public hearing on the Selectmen’s budget (Monday, Mar. 30). However they will not meet until Tuesday, Mar. 31, after the public weighs in. “Unfortunately the BOS budget will not be final for the public hearings but what will be presented is the current proposed budget as well as some other aspects of the overall budget that [the] BOF has agreed upon (debt service and realization rate for grand list) to provide citizens with an overview that may be changed as we will work through the BOS operating expenses,” BOF Chair Tim Birch told GMW. The BOF will begin those final deliberations on Mar. 31.

Editor’s note: The story has also been updated to reflect that Matt Knickerbocker was not hired as the town administrator by former First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice alone. “Even if I wanted to do so by myself, which I didn’t want to do, I did not have the authority to do so as the position was a department head, and under the Town’s Charter department heads are hired, compensated and terminated by the Board of Selectman. The former Town Administrator was hired by a vote of the selectmen following a search for which the five members of the board served as the personnel committee. Through me, we received advice from a Town Administer with another municipality,” Vanderslice said.