We spent how much!? Looking back at the Historical LPS and Middle School Building Costs
Figure 1 - Totals spent on LPS and Middle School up to Fall, 2025
Since the new Middle School and revamped LPS(*) have come online post-referendum, there have been a large number of additional mainteannce outlays that are driving the total costs of ownership of these buildings through the roof. To help people understand why people are so upset these expenditures, you need to look at how much we spent on these buildings from 2022 to the fall of 2025.
(*) Yes, LPS was renamed to South Hunterdon Regional Elementary School. We simply will not call it that and will stick with LPS.
The Referendum
We'll start with the Referendum itself. Tax payers were sold on a plan to spend $33.4 million to gut-renovate LPS and build a brand new Middle School. Figure 1 shows the breakdown by school.
Figure 2 - Referendum amounts
Note that the above numbers are approximate per-school, and the Referendum allowed the district to re-allocate the amounts between the two projects.
Also, as it turns out, the NJ State Dept of Education has a policy to ignore voter referendum amounts, and to allow school districts to exceed the voter mandates by millions of dollars.
This is an important loophole voters are never told about when they vote on school referendums.
Extra-Referendum Spends
What many tax payers don't realize is that the school district did not stop with the $33.4 million authorized by the referendum. They definitely exploited the loophole mentioned above, and spent far beyond the Referendum amount on referendum-defined items, but they also spent even more money on non-referendum items. This was done with a combination of so-called "ROD Grants" as well as just pulling random money from capital reserve and other budgets.
LPS Total Spend
The table below shows what we actually spent on LPS.
Money Source | Item | Total Cost |
Referendum | Scozzari Contractor | $8,487,222 |
Referendum | School-Managed | $3,544,208 |
Jesus School | Renovation & Rental | $641,330 |
ROD Grant 501 | New Roof | $1,295,000 |
ROD Grant 502 | Additional HVAC | $494,651 |
GRAND TOTAL | $14,462,411 |
So while tax payers thought we were spending around $12.7 million "all-in" on LPS, in reality we spent about $14.5 million. And guess what? We are still throwing money at the LPS money pit.
It is also worth noting that we did not throw the originally allocated $12.7 million at a single contractor to manage. Instead, we only gave $8.5 million to Scozzari as the General Contractor on the project, but the reamining $3.5 million was managed by the school district directly and USA Architects. By doing this, the district more or less evaded laws about contractual amounts and change orders.
Middle School Total Spend
As of Fall, 2025, we spent the following on the Middle School:
Item | Cost |
Main Contractor (Ebs-Dobco) | $20,270,059 |
School-Managed Costs | $4,008,111 |
Ballfields | $10,988 |
GRAND TOTAL | $24,289,168 |
Here is the breakdown of costs that were managed exclusively by the district and USA Architects, and was not included in the General Contractor costs:
Item | Cost |
Architecture | $1.369,927 |
Cabling | $61,127 |
Misc Construction | $95,369 |
Engineering | $175,228 |
Fees & Admin | $40,280 |
Floors | $373,613 |
Furniture | $1,304,571 |
Music Furniture | $53,241 |
Networking Equipment | $11,901 |
Scoreboards | $18,082 |
Security | $424,596 |
Front Sign | $32,041 |
Water Room Buildout | $48,134 |
At the end of the day, voters were told that the new middle school and the renovated LPS would cost us $33.4 million in total, "all-in".
The reality is that the district spent over $39 million, and that number is still growing as more "emergency" maintenance is occuring on both schools.
How did this happen?
The district and USA architects chose to "manage" a huge number of vendors themselves, including the hacked LBJ Interior. The district showed zero discipline here, and allowed USA to balloon total costs by over $3 million, with no repurcussions to USA or anyone else.
The Jesus School costs were intentionally hidden by Superintendent Suozzo. He was asked point-blank before the referendum what this would cost, and he refused to tell us. We found out after the fact it was over $600K. And we are still paying them rent for pre-school classrooms.
After we were told LPS would be renovated into a new 21st century learning space, the Superintendent went behind our backs and asked for almost $2 million more in "ROD Grant" funding because he missed critical items that were failing in the LPS money pit. The "all-in" apparently did not include fixing a failing roof and failling HVAC system.
The irony - we were told they didn't pursue a combined PreK-8 entirely new school because that would be "too expensive". The costs for that combined school? $39 million.
With all of the above in mind, it's also worth pointing out the limitations of this "all-in" solution:
The district still doesn't own the LPS playground, or much of the parking lot. That is owned by Lambertville. This has caused endless headaches
LPS and Lambertville show severe congestion nearly every day, despite what the totally fake "traffic plan" indicated
LPS is too small, and we have to rent Jesus School classrooms to fit in PreK
LPS is still in a flood zone and is at risk everytime we have severe weather
MS has almost no parking at all. For events, parents have to park illegally on the side of the road
MS has no path between it and the middle school
MS lockers are reported to be too small and messed up
The MS and LPS have been plagued with HVAC issues - for brand-new systems.
Money for the HS is being diverted to the MS and LPS money pits.
As mentioned, the above numbers only tell the tale out to the end of 2025. A future article will detail those additional items and reveal the real final costs to tax payers to date.
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