First Selectman Toni Boucher recently revealed that after years of delay, the Town has just completed the paperwork needed for the state to reimburse a substantial portion of the more than $40 million Wilton taxpayers spent to renovate the Miller-Driscoll School — a project that was essentially completed in 2017.
At Tuesday’s (Nov. 19) Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting, one of the agenda items was the reappointment of a former Town attorney, Ken Bernhard, “for the sole and limited purpose of signing the Town’s application for state reimbursement funding” pertaining to the Miller-Driscoll project.
During the meeting, Boucher said that “the person responsible for submitting the paperwork to the state to get the reimbursement… did not fulfill this obligation” and as a result, there has “unfortunately and unnecessarily” been “a cost to the Town.”
The cryptic explanation given at the meeting raised numerous questions to which GOOD Morning Wilton sought answers, including how much money was at stake, and why has it taken years to submit the paperwork to the state?
While the issue is only now coming to the public’s attention, it has been known to multiple Town officials since the project was completed. According to multiple officials GMW spoke with, a confluence of events compounded by a lack of continuity in the personnel involved in the project has resulted in the years-long delay in recouping the costs.
Boucher Explains
GMW spoke with Boucher the next day (Nov. 20) to learn more about what had transpired.
Boucher indicated she learned about the outstanding reimbursement in the early days of her tenure, and progress has been made in the effort to resolve it over the past year.
Boucher reported that significant reimbursement was secured while the project was in progress, but the outstanding amount — which could be as high as $700,00-$800,000 — represents “the final tranche” to be submitted. Although confident that some reimbursement will ultimately be obtained, Boucher anticipates the amount Wilton seeks could be reduced after the state conducts its audit of the submitted expenses.
“I can assure you, yes, indeed, we are absolutely confident that this will come through. The only thing is, I can’t say how much… some things will qualify for reimbursement, and others won’t,” she said.
Boucher explained that three Wilton officials are required to sign off on the paperwork: the superintendent, the CFO and the Town’s attorney, who verifies the work was completed and the Town acted in legal compliance on various aspects of the project (such as construction bidding). At Tuesday’s BOS meeting, Boucher sought to reinstate Ken Bernhard, who was an attorney for the Town at the time the work was done, rather than have current counsel review the matter.
Boucher considers the Miller-Driscoll project manager to be “the lead” responsible for marshalling the signatures needed, and thus believes the failure to secure the reimbursement in a more timely way rests primarily with that individual. Though she did not identify the individual by name during the BOS meeting, the project manager was Chris Burney, the former DPW director and facilities manager, who no longer works for the Town.
At the same time, she emphasized that a number of other factors — including COVID interruptions and multiple personnel changes at Turner Construction and within Wilton’s staff — contributed to the delay. She also put the matter in the context of other significant matters with which she has been dealing since assuming office, such as the Town and schools building needs assessment and the property revaluation process.
GMW also reached out to CFO Dawn Norton and Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker to request a rough estimate of the debt service cost for carrying the debt without reimbursement since 2018. Knickerbocker responded, but declined to quantify the cost, saying it was “a difficult number to isolate, or even to guess” in part due to the bundling of project costs for bonding, and the fact that the final amount of the latest reimbursement has not been determined yet.
The Hand-Off from Vanderslice
GMW asked former First Selectman Lynne Vanderslice, who was in office at the time the Miller-Driscoll project was completed, why the paperwork for the reimbursement was not filed before she left office.
Vanderslice responded with the written statement below, and specifically requested it to be published in its entirety — a request GMW does not always consider but a courtesy GMW extended in this case. In it, she took responsibility for not ensuring the matter was resolved in a more timely way. However, her attention to the matter was evident at the time leading up to her departure. In a memo discussed with the Board of Selectmen at a meeting on Sept. 19, 2023, Vanderslice cited the reimbursement among other unfinished projects and tasks that would carry over to the board after Boucher assumed leadership.
Moreover, notwithstanding her buck-stops-here stance, her statement reveals that “multiple town employees” — not just the selectmen, Chris Burney or Turner employees — had knowledge of the outstanding reimbursement. Presumably they include Norton and Knickerbocker, whose position was created in 2022 with the objective of ensuring continuity during transitions of leadership as well as oversight of Wilton’s finance and public works departments. (In fact, Chris Burney’s changing role at the time was cited among the factors in the rationale for creating the new town administrator position.)
“The town received two prior reimbursement grants from the state totaling approximately $6.8 million. [Editor’s note: GMW asked Norton and Knickerbocker to verify that figure, but they were unable to do so before this story was published.] Turner, as the construction manager, compiled the documents for those applications. The project was completed in the first half of 2018 and shortly thereafter the [Turner employee] responsible for the project and who compiled the documents for the prior reimbursements ended their employment with Turner. That individual’s departure resulted in the initial delay. Town employees attempted to compile the information themselves, but they did not have the detailed knowledge to successfully do so. That, plus staff turnover, illness and COVID furthered the delay.
The need to resolve this remained on my radar and that of multiple town employees. Our five-year bonding forecast included the assumption of receipt of the final reimbursement. I had prioritized filing before I left office. I did not want to pass along the burden to a new first selectman who wasn’t familiar with the project. (Note, the state grant is a reimbursement grant meaning the town must expend the funds before filing. As allowed by the Charter and by tradition, any final reimbursement grant received will be used to fund an approved bonded expense for which there has not yet been bonding.)
Shortly before the end of my term, we were able to engage Turner. But by September, I recognized that it would not be complete and included it among the items to be resolved by the next board of selectmen. Those items were included in [the memo] discussed at the September 19, 2023 BOS meeting.
With all that said, it was ultimately my responsibility that the request be filed on a timely manner. I take responsibility for the fact that it wasn’t.”
Vanderslice also said she is “pleased to read the town is now ready to file,” and offered her assistance to the Town, if needed, with the state’s audit.
Boucher hopes persistence will yield a positive outcome.
“Sometimes [when you have] problems, you can find a solution. Sometimes it takes a little longer to get solution. You just have to be persistent,” she said. “And that’s what we did this year. We were persistent.”