Winsted Board of Selectmen: School Funding, Dog Abuse Case Suspicions
8/18/2025
Present: Mayor Todd Arcelaschi, Town Manager Paul Harrington, Troy Lamere, Paul Marino, Williams Hester, William Pozzo, Linda Groppo, and Candy Perez.
The pending Board of Education agreement with The Gilbert School was the subject of debate. The agreement was set to be discussed a day later in a special BOE meeting.
Perez expressed concern that the arrangement could put taxpayers in a bind because of the open-ended nature of the agreement. Her concern included what looked to be the absence of language about how much capital can be spent in one year.
The pending agreement utilizes a 10-year model that comes with an estimated taxpayer burden of $90-100 million across the 10 years.
“I always worry about the budget, and now we have an open-ended kind of arrangement,” Perez said. “Maybe people are doing the right things now, but what if that’s not true in the future? What if it’s like $5 million, what if it's $6 million? I mean, we’re not even able to manage our own school system’s ability to fix the roof.”
There have been transparency concerns throughout the process, as much of the discussion has been done during closed-door executive sessions. In the meeting it came out that neither Harrington, nor Director of Finance Ann Marie Rheault, had been involved in the discussion process.
“We have not been brought in on any types of those conversations, no” Harrington said, which Rheault confirmed.
“My question would be: how much can the Board of Ed commit the town to fund capital expenditures for a private school?” Rheault then asked. “Does the Board of Education have the ability to commit the town to an agreement to cover capital expenditures that are going to be on the town side of the budget?”
Harrington said he did not know, but noted Gilbert is treated as a vendor of the BOE. “It’s a tuition, so they’re a line item in the budget.”
The Sarah Smolak dog case was brought up by Jaye Markwell amid rumors that the four dogs are rumored to be fostered with somebody connected to Smolak.
“Our town attorney, along with our detective, along with the state's attorney, is looking into the matter,” Harrington said. “… The Simon Foundation originally signed off on those four particular dogs going to those four particular fosters. Now, you know, in the 4th quarter of this, it's appearing that there's new evidence that is coming out that potentially these four fosters do have some connection to Ms. Smolak. So we are looking into that.”
