There are Lies, Damn Lies, and Mayor Deal's Shared Construction Presentation
The 10/7/2026 West Amwell Township Committee Meeting started up with Mayor Deal reordering the agenda. Again. This time, she was presenting the data she claims she has been compiling for months about the financial situation with the shared service construction office we host, that services both West Amwell and East Amwell.
Mark Twain once said "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics", a diatribe meant to show how statistics could be used to twist and manipulate information anyway the author saw fit.
Mr. Twain would have recongized Mayor Deal's presentation for what it was immediately.
The public was not given copies of the slides before hand, we had to suffer through a hard to read low-resolution projector screen which neither the West Amwell Times nor the Official Township livestream could resolve. We were promised the presentation today, and that hasn't happened, but luckily we took pictures of the slides to capture them for posterity. Apologies the pictures are low res, blurry, and crooked. Perhaps this is a metaphor for the Deal Administration.
For now we are not going to do a detailed analysis but only post the slides with brief commentary on each so the public has a chance to digest them.
The data is purportedly pulled from raw UCC reports from the DCA (DCA = NJ Department of Community Affairs). The DCA administers all construction data in the State under the Universal Construction Code. We are skipping the nonsense intro slide, the only relevant information there is that our contract with East Amwell is up for renewal Dec 31, 2026.
Slide 1 - A plethora of volumes
Slide 1 shows the volume of "permits / certification fees / violations" for the two Townships.
This is intended to show some sort of skew towards East Amwell, but is flawed because permits, certifications, and violations are all different. Some have fees attached, some do not, and the fees are all different.
Lumping them together is like lumping coleslaw, a bass line, and nucelar physics into one category and counting them together. The only logical response can be "what?".
The slide does not note that construction is not a uniform growht activity, and completely forgets to correct for covid19 or increased interest rates and construction costs in subsequent years.
Slide 2 - Revenue per random non uniform unit
Slide 2 builds onthe flaws of slide 1, attempting to divide revenue by "Units" to achieve a "revenue for Unit" number. Because permits, certifications, fees and violations are all different and have different costs (include $0 in some cases) associated with them, this is a completely meaningless statistic.
They do note that 2023 peaked due to "Green Medicine and Dollar General", but again did not control for covid 19 or increased interest rates and construction costs.
Slide 3 - The "Gotcha!" slide showing surplus/deficit
Slide 3 is Mayor Deal's "Gotcha" slide. Its purpose is to scare you by seeing that we "lost" $91,515 on the construction office in West Amwell, and tax payers paid for that.
There are a few problems with this slide:
It does not show 2026 actuals for the first 3 quarters of the year. According to all accounts 2026 made more money already than all of 2025
Fees went up in 2026, but are not shown here
Surpluses from prior years are not counted in an aggregate. Only the fear-monger $91K number is shown.
The slide does not account for the fact that some of these salaires are actually split over other expense categories, as are other fixed expenses that we will incur no matter what as a Township
What this slide actually shows is that the construction office has made us money and is in the green for the time periods shown in total.
Slide 4 - Projected doomsday
Slide 4 is Mayor Deals' projection of Doom to everyone. According to her numbers, our tiny construction office of two part time people is going to cost over a million dollars 10 years now, and our revenue will be almost entirely flat.
If this were to occur it would be doomsday - not for the construction department, but for us and every municipality in NJ. If Costs are going to double in 10 years West Amwell will be bankrupt, and so will every other Township.
Of course, the reality is whon in the fine print. The fine print assumes 3.5 revenue growth per year and a staggering 10.7% compound cost increases, forever.
The slides also forget that construction activity ebbs and flows. As we mentioned, there is no control for covid, and on controls for inflation and higher construction costs. A smooth set of models are shown that do not account for the lumpy nature of the construction business. One large development project would completely unend this projection's apple cart.
And of course, the 2026 revenue numbers shown are fake "projections". The 2026 actuals already show those numbers are outright lies.
The slides then go on to talk about our options. Keep going as we are, negotiate a new contract with East Amwell, or abandon everything and go to the DCA.
The only option presented in detail is "Go to the DCA".
Slide 5 - All the towns that love DCA!
Slide 5 purports to show all the towns "just like ours" that use and love the Asbury, NJ DCA office. In another slide, the mayor gushes that she ran a formal survey of all the towns, and 98% of them simply adore the DCA.
We are not shown the actual polls or responses. We just take Mayor Deal's word for it.
As for the towns above? You may notice all those towns in northern Hunterdon, Susses County, and Warren County are all close to Asbury, NJ.
West Amwell? We're 45 minutes away from it.
We will do a more detailed analysis in the coming days, but to be really blunt, this slide deck from Mayor Deal is some major Bullshit to be pulling on the townships of East Amwell and West Amwell.
The real reason Mayor Deal is doing this is some sort of spite campaign against our Construction Officials themselves, and to sever ties with other conservative townships, and align West Amwell more and more closely with Lambertville over time.
The last thing Mayor Deal wants is a success story of us partnering with East Amwell for shared services. We're only supposed to be Lambertville Mayor Norwick's lap dogs.
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