A Township is on edge as the Mayor Continues Her Shell Games
We'll be doing an in-depth write up of the September 16th, 2026 Township Committee meeting. But that is for another day, and this isn't that.
Right now, consider this an editorial on the current disastrous state of our Township government, and the role Mayor Deal has played in it - with this week's Township Committee meeting as the backdrop of a larger pattern.
The picture headlining this article is a cartoon depiction of Mayor Deal playing the short--con called the shell game, where innocent bystanders think they have a chance to win some cash by following the ball and seeing where it is hidden. It's a form of short-con, because the scam artist behind it uses sleight of hand to trick the audience, and the ball is never where you think it is. It's a con because if you play the game, you're not going to win
And yes, I said scam artist.
All of the shuffling you see is theater and distraction to keep your eye away from where the ball really is.
What an apt metaphor!
"Hey, look at that shiny thing over there!"
The 9/16 meeting opened with deception. The Mayor rambled on at length about a FIRE WATCH at all township buildings, and predicted more or less than fires could be breaking out at any moment all around us in the municipal building. She tried to inject a sense of urgency and paranoia into the meeting environment, which failed miserably, but she clearly tried this to setup the next part of the her con.
During the subsequent agenda review, Committeeman Hoyer interjected asking why the meeting agenda format had been changed. Specifically, the two Open to Public comment periods had been truncated to just 1, and the comment time themselves were cut from 5 minutes to 3.
Mayor Deal, looking a bit wan, lamely indicated that, given the brevity of the agenda, and perhaps with a nod to the urgent FIRE WATCH, she was trying to streamline the meeting with just the one open to public section. When it was pointed out she legally could not unilaterally change the meeting format without a formal vote by the entire committee, she deflated visibly and more or less indicated that, if we really, really wanted, we could go ahead with full public comments anyway.
Spoiler alert - thank God, we did. In fact, we ended up three public comment periods, the meeting went on for over three hours, and we never heard about the FIRE WATCH again.
The shell game was afoot, but the operator was not up to the challenge. Despite her efforts, pretty much everyone in the audience and the entire Township Committee spotted where the ball really was, and Mayor Deal ended up looking incredibly foolish and incompetent .
Sometimes, what's not there is more important than what is
As with other recent Township meetings, this one was notable again as much for what was missing as what was there.
The entire CFO-scandal? Not on the agenda, and never mentioned by the Committee. Public commentors were left asking "WTF happened?". No idea if the CFO is still employed, where he was, if an audit was happening, or even if we still had any money in the bank? Who knows? It seemed even the CFO was ghosting some Committee people.
Also absent was any mention of the DPW controversy. Public commenters mentioned the article here highlighting the years of serious issues with our DPW head Charles "Brandon" Metz has been involved in at other townships, including serious allegations of animal abuse, neptotism, double-dipping, and civil rights violations, let alone what was happening with Tommy.
Also absent from the agenda was a discussion of the shared construction service agreement with East Amwell. But - as it turned out, Mayor Deal had an ace up her sleeve on that, and pulled a fast one on the Committee and the audience.
Near the end of the long and drawn out meeting, out of the blue Mayor Deal mentioned the East Amwell shared construction services agreement! Despite not being on the agenda, Mrs. Deal wanted to press forward with a formal vote on notifying East Amwell that our intentions were still under debate, and we were formally considering withdrawing from the agreement ahead of an October 1st, 2026 deadline.
With a strong assist from Township Attorney Perez, Mayor Deal blindsided the Committee and forced a vote. Commiteemen Balaam and Hoyer assented along with the Democratic majority, but both voiced displeasure at how this was being handled.
The reason Mayor Deal cited for doing this was that the materials she was presenting "were still not ready". If you recall, at the Sept 2nd meeting, there was an agenda item to discuss the shared East Amwell Services construction agreement, and Mayor Deal pushed it saying she wasn't ready.
The end result? When Mayor Deal told the public they were discussing East Amwell shared services, she chickened out and pushed it to the next meeting. At the next meeting, she pulled it from the agenda, and then she snuck it back in with no notice.
A classic shell game indeed.
The bulk of the meeting was devoted to 25 Hewitt Road. As it turns out, Mayor Deal and Attorney Perez rolled out the red carpet for 25 Hewitt Road owner Al Pangia, and his hired stooges, engineer Erik Rupnarian and attorney Don Scholl. Rupnariana and Scholl were given carte blanche by the Mayor, setting up their computers and an A/V presentation even before the Pledge of Allegiance was spoken.
The bulk of the 25 Hewitt presentation will be covered in another article, but I will summarize it to say that the Attorney Scholl kept getting confused whether this was a formal hearing or in formal presentation, couldn't decide if there was evidence or not, and coached the Engineer as if he was speaking to a judge or magistrate.
The engineer, for his part, seemed confused by his own maps and presentation, literally could not tell north from south or east or west, and misdirected and lied about factual matters to the public.
Attorney Scholl lead the engineer on questioning about the state of the silt fences and the drainage ditches, and when it was pointed out that the information presented was misleading and in some cases factually incorrect, the pair had no answers.
When asked if formal public notice of this meeting had been given to impacted landowners, the attorney hemmed and hawed, then changed tactics and implied the public was lucky we were getting any information at all.
As we mentioned, a lot was said and is the topic of another post, but it's worth pointting out how this all ended. As Al's hired guns were about to face formal questions from the audience, Mayor Deal cut the entire presentation short and had them ushered into a literal back room for more questioning. In private, away from the livestream.
When all was said and done, a lot of open questions remained on the floor about the project and how to proceed.
At this point, Attorney Perez immediately pressed the Township Committee for approval of the plans as presented. When the Committee folks indicated they were in no rush or under any obligation to do so, Perez double and tripled down, insisting that a decision had to be made - apparently so that she could tell her dear friend Don Scholl that she had fixed it all for them.
Fortunately for us, the Township Committee did not cave under Perez's inappropriate and totally out of context pressure. Committeeman Hoyer repeatedly noted that the plans involved were not based on site surveys, but out of date lidar data. Commiteeman Balaam repeatedly asked why were suddenly short circuiting due process and rushing to a decision. Nearly everyone on the room commented on the patent unfairness of no notice being given to impacted land owners, and that the Township's own engineer was not present to speak to the project. Toward the end it was noted that the plans presented did not even address stormwater concerns, but instead only dealt with erosion and soil issues.
Thank God once again Mayor Deal and Attorney Perez were completely inadept at their attempted deception, and some Township Commitee folk spotted the ball anyway.
And Thank God also that the public comment periods were not truncated! Because the public gave Mayor Deal an earful.
The Mayor was blasted for hiding the CFO issues, the DPW issues, the attempts at misleading the public on the East Amwell shared services. Exactly no one was in favor of reducing public comment periods. People started noting our entire government seemed to be distintegrating before our eyes, and that the Mayor and her majority seemed to assume we were all idiots and could be this easily deceived.
One thing has become crystal clear out of all this - transparency and sunshine laws really are important, and sunshine IS the best disinfectant of them all. Our best defense against Mayor Deal's excesses are the volunteer live streaming audio + video of all Township meetings. Without the volunteer livestream, Mayor Deal could have snuck many of these entirely under almost everyone's radar, and most residents would be none the wiser.
The fact that volunteers have had to do this on their own underscores the point. Every month we have updates on the Township-sponsored "official" livestream inching closer, and every month I have to laugh as that set of comments goes out on our volunteer livestream that cost under $1,000 in total to buy, and was put together in about a week. Even before the current volunteer live stream was in effect, previous volunteers had a huge impact streaming the meeting just using their iPhones.
At this point I think it is clear that the Township doesn't have an official livestream because the having one would shine a bright light on everything the Committee does.
And that is the last thing Mayor Deal wants.
The last part to mention on this topic is on the Open Public Meetings Act. Myself and others have warned the Mayor since April of 2026 that she was violating the spirit and letter of the OPMA, over and over and over again, and now she continues to do so. Mayor Deal is now brazen in trying to take over the Township Committee entirely, and thumbs her nose at any and all procedures that are inconvenient to her.
One day the Township is going to find itself sued for countless and repeated OPMA violations, and for good reason. And you can all point to Mayor Deal and her actions as the reason.
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