As the Board of Selectmen (BOS) continues its lengthy discussions about bonded capital spending for FY 2026, the selectmen remain vexed by Wilton’s Town Hall building needs.
Over the past two years, town officials have documented and often discussed the urgency of numerous costly repairs and upgrades at Town Hall and the adjacent Annex building. First Selectman Toni Boucher has been particularly vocal, publicly advocating for a major overhaul of the facility along with expanded space for Town departments.
The Town and Schools Needs Assessment Priorities Committee (TSNAP) struggled with how to prioritize Town Hall needs given the many other — equally urgent — infrastructure exigencies across nearly all municipal and school facilities.
After delving into complex and often theoretical questions about how to address the issues at Town Hall and be both effective and cost-efficient, the committee — which met from July 2024 to early January 2025 — ultimately set aside the question of Town Hall and instead focus more narrowly on other recommendations for FY’26.
Complicating the questions about how to best proceed is the fact that in 2024, Wilton voters approved bonding $1,585,000 for some Town Hall repairs (including heat, windows and other urgent fixes). Now that the work is ready to go out for bidding, the BOS is at a critical juncture: either make the repairs that voters approved for bonding or begin planning for broader improvements — or some combination of both.
At Tuesday night’s (Apr. 1) special meeting of the BOS, DPW Director Frank Smeriglio pressed the selectmen on the time-sensitive dilemma with its associated costs.
“One of the last things that we discussed at the TSNAP meetings is that we’re going to be at a crossroads really soon… and we just have to talk about this, as to what we want to think about with Town Hall,” Smeriglio said, suggesting that if they were inclined to move forward with planning more comprehensive renovations, they should “hit pause” on the near-term repairs with a $1.6 million price tag.
In that event, the alternative “next step” would be an $800,000 bonding request for schematic work by an architectural firm to explore renovation and expansion concepts for Town Hall.
At last night’s BOS special meeting, that idea was included for the first time on the working list of possible bonding initiatives — much to the surprise of at least some of the selectmen, considering the very late timing on the budget process.
Eric Kaeyer of KG+D Architects gave a lengthy presentation to the BOS — similar to one he gave TSNAP last November — in which he detailed two very preliminary concepts for renovating and expanding Town Hall (roughly estimated to cost $28-33 million). The proposed schematic work would further explore the goals and needs of various scenarios that would feed into a subsequent design development phase. [Editor’s note: Kaeyer’s presentation was not posted with the meeting agenda on the Town website but can be seen in its entirety on the Zoom meeting recording.]
Selectman Bas Nabulsi said he was “incredibly frustrated” at the “11th-hour” idea to scrap the approved repairs and instead invest $800,000 for schematics.
Smeriglio seemed just as frustrated in return, noting he’d wanted to get the topic on the selectmen’s agenda earlier but had been stymied by their focus on budget planning over the last few months.
Selectwoman Kim Healy was in favor of proceeding with the repairs as planned, voicing her strong reservations about the proposed schematics at this point, including questioning whether available space at Comstock Community Center had been explored and how much additional space was truly needed.
Kaeyer noted his directive from Town officials did not include exploring Comstock as an option.
He also echoed Smeriglio’s point that the selectmen face very strategic decisions about Town Hall.
“There’s two aspects… if it’s only supposed to last for another four years, that’s one thing. If it’s supposed to last 40 more years, it’s a totally different thing,” he said.
Kaeyer praised Smeriglio’s effort to force the discussion about the tradeoffs, “to make sure if the Town ultimately wants to do something significant to Town Hall, that they don’t put the investment into this building [for repairs now] and then later find out it was money not well spent.”
“At the same time, you have people in there for the next four years that need to be comfortable, stay dry, health[y] and safe,” Kaeyer added.
Boucher also pointed out it could take several years to plan for any renovations, but said she thought investing in the schematics was important to kickstart the longterm planning as well as for gaining buy-in from residents.
“Things are in bad shape at Town Hall,” she said. “Do [we] want to wait another 10 years? What will conditions be like then? it’s important to create something that will last another 40 years.”The selectmen have scheduled another special meeting for tonight, April 2, to finalize the list of capital spending projects to recommend to voters. GMW also reported today those the board already voted to put forward in a separate story.
Decades ago, Stamford was planning an expensive new municipal building. GTE had just completed a new office building but found they didn’t need it. They sold it to the city for about what it cost them. The city got a brand new building at a good price with no chance of cost overruns. With all the vacant office buildings in Wilton now, why don’t we consider doing the same thing?