While it still appears to have strong ambitions toward guiding the town’s capital projects, the Wilton Capital Planning Committee (WCPC) is, at least in part, partially hobbled as another inadvertent victim of the town’s floundering Finance Department.
No one on the WCPC, nor apparently in Town Hall, actually has a complete picture of Wilton’s capital spending — in particular the amount of money that’s been borrowed and/or spent with regard to projects that were approved but not completed. The last person to claim that knowledge was former Chief Financial Officer Dawn Norton, but even her last presentation on the matter to the Board of Finance in the spring of 2025 included unanswered questions that she was supposed to investigate further and return with answers.
By that time, however, Norton was already holding down a separate full-time job in Wyoming, unbeknownst to First Selectman Toni Boucher, and operating in the capacity of Wilton’s CFO at long-distance.
Now, as it looks ahead toward making recommendations for new capital investments in the Town’s facilities — in a year where accurate information in relation to the next Board of Selectmen budget is also problematic and steeped in unknowns — the WCPC needs to find some answers.
The conundrum became evident at the WCPC’s meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 12.
“You’ve got to pick up the conversation of what was discussed from the Department of Finance to the Board of Finance in that June meeting,” Department of Public Works Director Frank Smeriglio pointed out. “There’s a list of projects with older bonds and you’ve got to go through the exercise of, Which ones still have money? Which projects are completely done?”
“You’re gonna see that there’s projects with some funds in there that the work is done and that exercise has to happen,” he said.
“And who does that exercise?” BOF and WCPC member Rudy Escalante asked.
“The CFO,” said Selectwoman Kim Healy, who was just elected to the BOF.
On June 10, Norton told the BOF that there was $4.2 million in unspent bond money for road improvements alone already sitting in wait, even though just one month earlier the Annual Town Meeting voted to approve bonding $700,000 more for road restoration and paving, supposedly for use in Fiscal 2026.
It was Escalante who inquired at that meeting, “So, we have $4 million sitting in the bank somewhere … So why are we bonding again if we have so many years of backlog? … Why are we asking for more?”
Norton was unable to provide an answer, but put the onus on Smeriglio and how he managed the paving program, which she said would use about $1 million through 2025.
“We typically go to the market every year and grow this pot of money so that he has it,” Norton said. “It’s not just roads, but all of his other paving projects that he has, should it be a parking lot or curbs, and I don’t want to speak for Frank, but it’s his whole road program.”
Smeriglio, meanwhile, during a presentation made to the BOS two months earlier, April 1, 2025, presented his understanding that there was only $1,950,000 in the road restoration account prior to his request for an additional $700,000.
Overall, Norton said, there was almost $18 million in unspent bonds, including about $2.5 million earmarked for fire equipment, over $8 million earmarked for the police headquarters, and over $500,000 for different roofing projects, all totaling $17,992,391.59.
“I think that discussion has to continue,” Smeriglio told the WCPC on Wednesday.
Outgoing BOF Chair Matt Raimondi was scheduled to present what data he had on the bonding situation to the WCPC, according to its Chair Jeff Rutishauser, but he was delayed and did not come to the meeting.
Catch-22 and Staff Stretched Thin
As he has expressed several times in the past, Smeriglio also tried to explain the challenges he and his department face in trying to get projects into the pipeline, ultimately noting that movement on any project rests with Boucher and Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker.
He indicated a sort of Catch-22 situation, where in order to even have a discussion about possible projects, there was design planning that needed to be completed, which was time consuming and impacted a staff that was already stretched thin, but didn’t necessarily lead to a project that was going to be followed through on.
“The immediate impact to us right now is the planning part of the projects that we’re thinking of doing,” Smeriglio said. “This meeting is very difficult for us because there’s a lot of planning that we’re doing on projects that may not even exist. That’s what’s hard for us, very hard for us.”
“There’s a lot of things in play,” he said, citing bridges, roads and more, as well as school projects and consideration being given to work at Town Hall. He said, however, that managing three projects that are moving forward is not as hard as planning for 30 projects that are merely under consideration.
Escalante said he had “all the confidence in the world” that the Board of Education was moving forward smoothly with its projects, including Middlebrook School, but said he was not as confident in progress on the town-side projects, including work at Town Hall.
Smeriglio noted that his department was wearing two hats, attending to both BOE and BOS work.
Healy pointed out that no one had really had any discussion on renovating the Town Hall Annex, which several town officials have identified as being in serious need of work.
Again, Smeriglio tried to explain that even the original needs-assessment documents created when a consultant reviewed town and school facilities two years ago, only provided about 30% of the planning and design work that needs to be done before they can start to move forward on items.
“The planning part of that whole exercise is tough on us right now,” he said, because of limited resources.
“Unless it’s a real project, it’s probably not gonna happen,” he said, noting that the issue of finding funding was “part two” of getting these things done.
Asked directly what was needed to make this all happen, Smeriglio said, “It’s the facilities planning part. I know I’m not answering, because the discussion really has to go through Toni and Matt.”
Rutishauser interjected, “It’s been raised as an issue. The people issue is a big issue to solve,” he said.
Escalante asked, “Are you waiting for decisions from the Board of Selectmen?”
Smeriglio said, “No. First there’s the planning part of that item, that really has to go through Toni and Matt. I really can’t get into that here at this level — just the staff part of the planning of facilities. It’s really my discussion with Toni and Matt first, before I can answer that here.”
Reviewing the WCPC’s Charge
Meanwhile, concerns were also expressed about whether the WCPC was straying too far from its charge of plotting and recommending capital projects to the BOS, with one member questioning extensive discussions and time spent on the committee contemplating the sale of town properties.
WCPC member Rich Santosky said, “Looking at our mission … I’m just wondering how this falls under our guidance as a formed committee to discuss capital needs … We seem to be spending a lot of time discussing whether we should own properties or not that we own.”
Much of the WCPC’s deliberations over the past few months have focused on examinations of several town-owned properties, including single-family houses in Georgetown that have been rented out, and historic buildings including the former Gilbert & Bennett School.
“The charge was at two levels,” Rutishauser said, noting that along with capital planning, they were also now supposed to look at the town’s building inventory.
“That’s not on the town website,” Santosky said. “I’m just looking at what the charge is on the town website.”
Rutishauser said it came about as the result of discussions in their second meeting.
“If it’s not explicit, we can make it explicit,” he said, “but it was done as a parallel effort … We’ve owned these orphans for years and haven’t done anything with them … It’s not to displace what we’re doing, it was additive to what we’re going to do.”