Key Points:
- Wilton selectmen received preliminary financial figures during their meeting, despite repeated requests for reports in advance.
- The complete budget-to-actual report was delayed while the Finance Department focused on the overdue FY2025 audit.
- Selectmen questioned why requested materials continue to arrive late and remain unavailable to the public.
Why It Matters: Timely, complete financial reports allow selectmen and residents to identify budget problems early and hold Town Hall accountable for public spending.
Members of Wilton’s Board of Selectmen expressed renewed frustration Tuesday, Sept. 8, after receiving financial information during their meeting rather than in advance and learning that a complete budget-to-actual report would not be presented that evening.
Selectmen had requested a financial update for the meeting, but it was left off the posted agenda. After noticing the omission as the meeting began, they asked First Selectman Toni Boucher to add the update to the agenda and voted unanimously to do so.
Toward the meeting’s end, Boucher distributed paper copies of preliminary figures, despite members’ repeated requests over the past several months that supporting materials be provided no later than the Friday before regular meetings to allow adequate time for review.
“Was this produced before the meeting?” Selectman David Tatkow asked.
Boucher confirmed that it had been produced that afternoon.
Boucher reviewed FY26 year-end figures and presented a preliminary FY27 snapshot covering July and August. She told the BOS it would not be getting a more complete picture of the current budget-to-actual spending that evening, however, and said Chief Financial Officer Dawn Savo had not had time to prepare a more detailed report while working to meet deadlines related to the Town’s overdue FY2025 audit.
Tatkow pointed out that the new financial snapshot was not available on the town website. The document given to the selectmen was not made available to the public or the media. Members of the public and selectmen have raised similar concerns about meeting materials repeatedly being distributed at meetings without being posted in advance.
After the meeting, GOOD Morning Wilton requested that Town Hall officials provide the financial review document, but did not get a response from Boucher, Savo or any of the selectmen. As of Friday, Sept. 11, the document Boucher presented still had not been posted on the town website.
GOOD Morning Wilton has documented other occasions when materials distributed to public officials during meetings were not made available to the public or posted with the meeting materials.
“The Standard”
Selectman Matt Raimondi was especially frustrated. He and other board members had stressed to Savo at the Aug. 17 BOS meeting the importance of receiving detailed monthly reports on current spending. At that time Savo gave the board an abbreviated verbal picture of the current operating budget and promised a more detailed analysis would be forthcoming.
“It would be helpful to be able to see this — I think I said this last time again — before we walk in the meeting,” Raimondi said of the document. “Having to look at a thousand numbers on a page in real time is difficult.”
Raimondi connected the need for timely reports to the FY2025 overages the board learned about after the fiscal year had ended.
“We just came from a very real experience where we were penalized for not doing that in the past,” he said.
“We need to be able to do that and it’s really hard to do that when you’re looking at things in real time,” Raimondi added. He said he had numerous questions about overages in different department areas reflected in the preliminary budget-to-actual numbers he had seen, as well as additional questions about Fiscal Year 2026.
“The point of it is to make sure this board fully understands what is going on,” Raimondi said.
Second Selectman Ross Tartell defended the situation.
“I just want to step in because we did get a good update in August,” Tartell said.
Tatkow interjected, “We didn’t …” at the same time that Raimondi also disagreed.
“We didn’t get it in August. We got a verbal update in August,” he said, adding, “We need to see holistic monthly updates.”
“Seeing it as we are walking in at the beginning, that is not the standard that we have set for ourselves,” he said. “And the point I’m making is that we should just uphold that standard.”
Boucher said he was making “an excellent point,” but said Savo had been unable to attend because of a family matter. She also said Savo had spent a substantial amount of time meeting deadlines related to the town’s long-delayed Fiscal Year 2025 audit.
“Be Patient”
“Sometimes circumstances come up … You need to be patient so that we can get through this,” Boucher said.
She said that Savo and the Finance Department have had to meet “important deadlines” related to the audit, noting that this particular day had consisted of “all day talking back and forth with auditors to try to rectify some questions that they had.”
“To do the kind of report that you have would have taken so much time away from [Savo], and it was not possible this go-around … There were a lot of substantial questions asked that she had to do a lot of research with staff, taking a great deal of time,” Boucher said. “But to do this kind of in-depth report would have taken her away from the critical questions that she needed to research for the auditors. So if you could just be patient for a couple weeks, we’d really appreciate it.”
Selectman Rich McCarty echoed some of Raimondi’s concerns, noting that the deliverables for their meetings should be in the first selectman’s office by 3 p.m. on Fridays so they can be posted with the agenda by the end of the day in time for the next Monday’s regular meetings.
“I think the process going forward is that should be the exception,” he said of materials being delivered late, “whereas it’s beginning to feel like a rule.”
Boucher told McCarty that the goal was to have materials prepared in a timely way, but again cited the challenges Savo was facing with the audit.
Boucher said she and Tartell had previously agreed to schedule the more in-depth financial presentation for Sept. 21. She said that was why it had not been placed on the Sept. 8 agenda, despite other selectmen having requested it.
“You Keep Saying That”
Boucher continued to ask for the BOS’s patience and understanding.
“We’re living in different times at the moment, and hopefully we will get to some semblance of normalcy as time goes on,” she said.
Raimondi, however, pushed harder.
“You keep saying that,” he told Boucher. “What makes this different times? This is financial management.”
“People can multitask, right? You can do an audit and also produce your monthly financials to download on a dashboard,” Raimondi said.
The board’s demand for monthly updates followed the disclosure of FY2025 budget overages, the long-delayed audit and repeated instances in which requested financial information was not provided to the BOS or Board of Finance. Raimondi said the BOS had made a commitment in July to require monthly written updates on current spending and receive them in advance.
“I really am not trying to be difficult here [but] we need the monthly updates … It needs to be sent to us in advance … I just don’t understand,” he said.
“We are very reasonable,” he said. “So things happen. We’re listening. But the rule has not been followed at all up to this point.”
