Rahway's Big Plans Come With a Big Question: Who's Paying?
As Rahway's budget sits overdue, residents are still waiting for answers on how City Hall plans to finance its latest redevelopment push.
Mayor Raymond Giacobbe unveils a rendering of the East Cherry Street Park during his 2026 State of the City address. The city has not disclosed a construction budget for the park or the other downtown projects it has announced. (City of Rahway / YouTube)
Chris Howell | May 1, 2026
Rahway residents are still waiting for a 2026 municipal budget. New Jersey municipalities are typically required to introduce their budgets by February and adopt them by late April. Rahway has done neither, and city leaders have offered no public timeline for when one will arrive.
The delay comes at an awkward moment. Mayor Raymond Giacobbe is in the middle of an election year and the most ambitious downtown revitalization push of his tenure.
Since 2023, the city has authorized more than $9.6 million in bond ordinances to acquire properties for parks, performance venues, and streetscape improvements across several downtown blocks. The most recent, $2.75 million for two Hamilton Street parcels, is up for final adoption at the May 4 council meeting.
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While Rahway’s downtown has come a long way over the past two decades, the neighborhood is still pockmarked by boarded-up houses and empty lots. The Hamilton Street parcels contain two ramshackle buildings and an empty lot where a church once stood, sitting behind chain-link fencing. A few blocks away on Pierce Street, a row of boarded-up homes lines a stretch across from the train station, also acquired with city bonds.
Giacobbe has called the centerpiece of the plan the “crown jewel” of downtown. The James “Jim” Kennedy Amphitheater is expected to be a sustainable outdoor performance venue that would connect the UCPAC, Hamilton Stage, and The Gallery Space with an art walk and rain garden. The city has also acquired land on West Main Street and East Cherry Street for parks and streetscape improvements.
“We are not just building more; we are building better,” Giacobbe said during his March 5 State of the City address, where he also announced a strategic shift toward non-residential development to strengthen the city’s tax base.
But none of the bond ordinances authorizing these purchases include a construction budget. The city has not disclosed what it will cost to build anything on the land it has bought, and Union County’s role as a funding partner for the acquisitions has not been publicly detailed.
The Rahway River with the city’s water tower in the background. One month after voting unanimously to seek buyers for the utility, the council reversed course.
To be sure, Rahway is not alone in its fiscal timeline. Other municipalities, like Woodbridge and Edison, also traditionally approve their budgets over the summer. Yet the state is trying to change that with earlier deadlines, and neighboring towns like Cranford and Clark have complied.
Rahway’s budget became significantly more complicated in March, when the City Council walked back its plan to sell Rahway’s municipal water utility. City officials framed the potential sale as a way to address the system’s projected capital needs of roughly $33 million. Yet just one month after voting unanimously to seek buyers, the council reversed course after residents showed up to meetings with pointed questions about privatization.
The mayor said the reversal allowed for more time for “thorough evaluation” of the system’s “long-term infrastructure needs.”
Supporters of keeping the water utility public point out that the system still generates a surplus, which the city council has been redirecting to offset city costs. The 2025 municipal budget anticipated drawing $1,055,308 from water utility operating surplus, up from $913,933 the year before, according to city budget documents.
Andrew Garcia Phillips, a Rahway resident running for Council Member-at-Large in the June Democratic primary, said city leaders mismanaged those funds.
”If the water utility has a problem with debt or delayed maintenance, these surpluses should have been used to address those problems first,” he said.
T&M Associates, the city’s engineering firm, told the council in February that the system faces more than $33 million in capital improvements over the next decade, including water main replacements, storage tank upgrades, and ongoing PFAS remediation costs. Water rates are already scheduled to increase 5 percent annually through 2032, and sewer rates have risen 8 to 10 percent in recent years.
Garcia Phillips also noted that the mayor’s statement left the door open for the sale to return after November.
“The mayor did not say it was canceled,” he said. “This leaves open the possibility of the sale being introduced again, perhaps after the election has passed.”
The Central Jerseyan reached out to Mayor Giacobbe and Council President Jeffrey Brooks for comment and did not hear back by the publication of this article. Both have said any proposed sale of the water utility would require voter approval in a referendum.
The budget delay is not without precedent. Last year, the council passed the budget during a state of emergency due to flooding, when many residents were unable to attend the meeting safely. Brooks, in an interview last summer, said the council moved forward to avoid state fines.
In an interview last year after the 2025 budget was adopted, Giacobbe blamed his business administrator for that year’s late start and said he had urged him to move faster on the next one. That next budget is now overdue.
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