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Water Utility Survey Work Continued After Rahway Paused the Bid Process
Records show Rahway's paid political consultant, MAD Global Strategy, helped shape the mayor's water utility remarks and kept surveying residents around the city's vote to pause the sale.
Rahway Water Tower looming over the Rahway Sewer Utility, July 2026. (The Central Jerseyan)
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Chris Howell | August 24, 2025
Two weeks after the Rahway City Council voted to cancel the bid process for the city’s water utility, Mayor Raymond Giacobbe’s administration met again with its paid political consultant. The topic was “Water Surveys.” Residents were never told about the session.
That meeting was not an isolated follow-up. Records obtained by The Central Jerseyan under the state’s Open Public Records Act show survey work involving MAD Global Strategy, LLC extended past the council’s vote to halt the bid process. The records also show the consultant played a hand in shaping the mayor’s own public remarks on the issue in the weeks leading up to that vote.
This newsroom has previously reported on MAD Global’s role in the city’s push to privatize its water utility, and on the roughly $200,000 the city spent studying a sale through ratepayer funds. The new records pick up where that reporting left off. They show the consultant’s work on the water utility did not end when the bid process did.
Survey and polling work tied to the water utility was underway by late 2025. MAD Global partner Laura Matos reviewed results with city staff and a second consultant on November 24. She then sent a “Survey Results Deck” to Michael Willis of T&M Associates, the city’s engineering consultant on the project, on December 1.
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The City Council voted to cancel the bid process on March 2, 2026. Records show that by March 18, a meeting titled “Water Survey Discussion” had been scheduled in person at City Hall. Attendees included the mayor, Business Administrator Matthew Pukavich, Assistant to the Business Administrator Anthony Armando, and Matos.
In response to a records request, the city clerk’s office said it had no survey or polling records related to the water utility on file. It’s possible the underlying data was held by MAD Global rather than the city itself. The company did not return a request for comment. But the records obtained by The Central Jerseyan show city staff reviewed survey questions and met with MAD Global to discuss results.
The survey work was not the only place where the line between the city’s own voice and its consultant’s blurred. On February 26, 2026, Matos approved the city’s draft press release announcing the cancellation. She replied, “This is perfect.” That same day, Giacobbe emailed his own State of the City remarks on the water utility to Matos, asking her to review them before he delivered them. The mayor did not respond to a request for comment.
Billing records from Waters, McPherson, McNeill, P.C., the city’s outside counsel on the water utility matter, show a similar pattern a month earlier. On January 22, five days ahead of a scheduled Council presentation, city officials met with MAD Global, T&M Associates, and the city’s outside auditor. The firm’s billing records describe the session as a “run through” of the mayor’s prepared remarks.
T&M Associates, the city’s engineering consultant, laid out the case for a sale at a public hearing on February 2, 2026. Engineer Michael Willis told the council that parts of Rahway’s water system date to 1871. He said keeping it running would require roughly $33 million in capital improvements over the next 10 years, all funded by the utility’s 8,200 customers. Willis pointed to rising labor and material costs, aging pipes, and ongoing treatment mandates. He said a private buyer with a larger customer base could absorb those costs more affordably than the city could on its own.
However, the city’s auditor later told the City Council on August 3 that the water utility was “a very sound financial operation.” He cited a fund balance that grew from $6.2 million to roughly $7.8 million.
None of this work was ever authorized or disclosed as a standalone city contract. MAD Global’s fees were $5,000 a month, plus a $13,750 lump payment in November 2025. They were billed as a “Consultant Fee” inside Waters, McPherson, McNeill’s water utility invoices, paid from the same fund as the sale process itself.
Editor’s note: The Central Jerseyan is free to read and supported by advertising. If you value this kind of local reporting and want to help sustain it, you can become a citizen supporter on Patreon. Your contribution helps fund continued coverage of local government, schools, and community issues.
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