Passions Erupt at West Amwell Township Committee Meeting
Updated: Sep 8
By Mike Spille
The 9/2/2026 meeting of the West Amwell Township Township Committee was one for the record books. A capacity crowd, multiple contentious topics, and even a bombshell thrown in for good measure in the third hour.
The full archive of the livestream is available on Youtube at the link below:
An AI-generated transcript with timestamps and speaker attribution is also availble below. Apologies, there are still some garbled bits and spelling mistakes and mis-attributions in some cases.
Pulled Agenda Items
The meeting was marked as much by what was not there as what was discussed.
The potential severing of the shared construction services agreement with East Amwell was tabled until mid-September.
The same with the proposed ordinance on OPRA changes that could restrict what information residents can request from the Township.
The 31N Urban Renewal item was also pushed to September 16th.
This has been a troubling pattern of the new Administration in 2026. Time and time again the Mayor has thrown the agenda in the dust bin and either made up additions on the spot, or tabled items at the last minute. If nothing else, this constant agenda churn decimates the spirit of the Open Public Meetings Act, which relies on governments giving reasonable notice of what will discussed at a meeting. By constantly calling audibles on the agenda, the Mayor is pulling the rug out from under local residents who attend meetings for specific topics.
The disappointment in the room that the East Amwell Shared Services status update was tabled was palpable.
The Mayor had better be careful before someone sues the township for OPMA violations.
The Case for Tommy
By far the biggest focus of the meeting was making the case for Tommy Caron to return to work at the DPW. This infograpic captures the mood of the room.
25 Hewitt Road: 18 Months of Non-Compliance
The township attorney attempted to take credit for "organizing the agencies" involved in trying to get the owner of 25 Hewitt Road to start actually complying the myriad of orders and violations against him. While residents were told at the last meeting that litigation was going to be explored with extensive potential punitive damages and "residents to be made whole", the attorney actually did none of that.
Her sole actions, according to her, was to make a number of phone calls, and to give a very glowing review of the property owner's lawyer.
After shouting, cursing, and what we shall call lively debate, a number of residents and Township Committee people agreed that relying on the 25 Hewitt Road owner to voluntarily fix anything was a fool's errand. The Township will be pursuing options to persuade either Hunterdon County Soil Conservation District or its parent agency, the NJ Dept of Agriculture, to start levying $3,000 a day fines.
Shared Services with Lambertville - Proposals and Pushback
A discussion was started to explore a shared services agreement between Lambertville and West Amwell for DPW services. The motivation for this was claims of issues with the current West Amwell DPW buildings, and the potential savings of engaging with Lambertville.
Many residents and some of the Township Committee members railed against what we here at West Amwell Times are calling the "Lambertville East" phenomena. Increasingly, the new Township Committee structure has been leaning towards integrations with Lambertville, despite the fact that historically West Amwell has been effectively used and abused by Lambertville in those agreement, and we usually come up with the short end of the stick.
One resident commented that the $14,000 required to fix the DPW building was magically offset by the rejection of a bill for $14,000 for a new mower.
One commentator noted that one of the biggest endeavors we have undertaken to share things nicely with Lambertville was the School District regionalization, where West Amwell was effectively screwed at every turn and Lambertville now is in charge of everything, and not only were no cost savings found, but we are paying far more for the "regional" district then the sum of the individual parts ever were.
The CFO Bombshell
Just before the Hewitt Road yelling match ensued, Committeeman Balaam dropped an explosive item in the packed meeting room.
At the prior meeting, it was mentioned that our newly minted CFO had requested help from a buddy of his with some accounting setup. This "buddy" has since been indicted for massive fraud against NJ municipalities, and which also involved the new bank we are using, Unity Bank.
What came in this meeting was that, not only was this person unauthorized to do any of this, but he was also handed fully endorsed paper checks from the CFO to the tune of over a million dollars, and the CFO's "buddy" delivered the checks to Unity Bank himself.
Again - this person was not an employee, not a contractor, not affiliated with the Township at all. Our CFO just gave this stranger millions of our tax dollars.
The visibly shaken and alarmed Mayor commented that we should perform an immediate spot audit of our finances in wake of this news.
Committeeman Balaam called for the immediate dismissal of the CFO.
One good news coming out of this meeting was that there was more unity in the audience members then we have seen before. General consensus was built around several topics, including the Tommy situation, 25 Hewitt, and the CFO gaffes.
At the same time, there is growing unease at the direction this administration is going this year. There is a constant underlying theme of agenda churn, employees being attacked, dismissed, or leaving, major issues being swept under the rug, several different potential ethics violations by committee members, and general chaos and lack of stability in our local government.
Not only the CFO should be dismissed. The entire Committee should receive a no confidence vote from West Amwell citizens.