After first convening in early July, Wilton’s Town and School Needs Assessment Priorities Committee (TSNAP) reached a critical milestone yesterday (Wed., Jan. 15) when its members agreed upon on a set of recommendations for the Board of Selectmen (BOS) to consider for FY 2026 capital spending priorities.
The BOS created the advisory committee to help determine where to begin tackling the $213 million worth of building repairs and upgrades needed — many urgently — across Wilton’s schools and municipal buildings.
TSNAP Chair Patti Temple thanked the committee members after the vote, which solidified a prioritized list of projects for FY’26 estimated to cost just under $9 million.
“Thank you, everyone, very much, for all your time and input. You’ve made a difference,” Temple said.
In addition to Temple, the voting members on the committee included:
- Toni Boucher, First Selectman
- Bas Nabulsi, Selectman
- Matt Raimondi, Board of Finance (BOF) chair
- Rudy Escalante, BOF member
- Patrick Pearson, Board of Education (BOE) member
- Dr. Kevin Smith, Superintendent of Wilton Public Schools (and community member)
- Rich Santosky, community member
Raimondi and Nabulsi abstained from the vote, on the basis that their respective boards would be further deliberating on TSNAP’s recommendations before they are ultimately presented to voters as bonding referendums at the Annual Town Meeting in May.
The committee was significantly assisted by several staff employees who served as non-voting members on the committee:
- Matt Knickerbocker, Town Administrator
- Dawn Norton, Chief Financial Officer
- Michael Wrinn, Town Planner
- Frank Smeriglio, DPW Director/Town Engineer
- Jeff Pardo, Assistant DPW Director/Facilities Manager
- Jose Figueroa, Facilities Manager, Wilton Public Schools
Mundane but necessary repairs to roads, roofs, sidewalks, floors, lighting, and other maintenance needs factor prominently among the most critical needs. Costly updates to Town-owned buildings at Ambler Farm and the stadium turf field at Wilton High School were among some of the stickier points of debate throughout TSNAP’s deliberations.
The agreed-upon recommendations, in order of priority, are:
- Road restoration (7 miles): $700,000
- BOE Roof replacements (including WHS library): $2,000,000
- Cider Mill School chilled water replacement, equipment, piping: $1,547,678
- BOE floor tiles, lighting, ceiling tiles replacement: $1,000,000
- BOE drainage, sidewalks and paving (including Cider Mill and other locations): $725,000
- Ambler Farm Raymond‐Ambler House: $1,000,000
- Middlebrook School exhaust fan replacement: $372,782
- Restroom renovations (multiple locations including Merwin Meadows and WHS): $375,000
- Middlebrook gym HVAC: $250,000
- Turf Field replacement (WHS): $1,000,000
- Ambler Farm Yellow House: $1,000,000
The total cost of the “top 10” priorities is $8,970,460. The eleventh item, the Ambler Farm Yellow House, is being positioned as a “next in line” recommendation for the BOS to consider, depending on the selectmen’s priorities and what they determine the Town’s appetite might be for the total spending level.
BOF Chair Raimondi, who as far back at September had urged TSNAP to consider an “affordability framework” in its approach to setting priorities, says he believes that the roughly $9 million TSNAP has prioritized for borrowing for FY’26 would strike a reasonable balance between the building needs of the Town and the burden on Wilton taxpayers.
The committee is also recommending Wilton Fire Department headquarters apparatus room renovations/repairs as a high priority, but the expenditure would be paid from the Town’s operating budget, rather than through bonding.
Additional explanations on the projects can be found in the working document posted with the Jan. 15 meeting agenda on the Town website. (Even more detail can be found in the needs assessment summaries on the TSNAP page of the Town website — along with the hundreds of other building needs that were not prioritized for FY’26.)
Now that TSNAP has determined which of the $213 million in identified needs to recommend tackling first, the committee will now take a hiatus, at least until the BOS’ FY’26 budget outlook becomes clearer. Whether and when the committee will resume its work to guide priorities after FY’26 — which would likely involve deeper discussions about priorities for the Town Hall campus — is still to be determined, along with resolving questions about the committee’s scope and charge that have nagged the committee from its inception.
[Editor’s note: this story was edited to clarify Raimondi’s position on the affordability of TSNAP’s recommendations.]
One only needs to look at the seriousness of 9 of the repairs above to easily come to the conclusion numbers 6 and 11 have zero business being included on the list- what a joke. Let’s see 12-20 and let the tax payers weigh in!
Dan Sullivan