As sure as the saying 'God made little green apples' goes, I will get slammed for “MacBashing” for this piece. But someone needs to ask where John McCormac, his chief-of-staff & head of the Woodbridge Redevelopment Agency Caroline Ehrlich, and his Town Council members are taking this township.
For those who may not know it, the old 6th Avenue Electronic store on Rt.1 North will soon be transformed into a medical marijuana (pot) center. The pot will be grown and dispensed from the center, once the building is renovated, according to Sunday’s August 26th article in the Star-Ledger. The center will service the medical marijuana needs of central New Jersey patients. (Whatever happened to using pharmacies to dispense prescription medication? Woodbridge certainly has lots of those. Couldn’t all those taxpaying entities use the extra revenue? But I digress.)
At present, it is unknown if the McCormac administration is giving the property purchasers, Compassionate Care Centers of America Foundation (one has to love some of the names these entities pick), property tax relieve through a ‘Pilot Program’. If so, those property taxes are not shared with the School District or the county. Then too, when was this deal presented to and approved by the Woodbridge Planning and/or Zoning Boards (there is a children’s playground right behind the building) or even the town council. Were there public hearings on the matter? How many off-duty police will be employed at the pot shop. How many hours can they, our police, work before their primary job, the one the taxpayers pay them to do, suffers?
Find out what's happening in Woodbridgewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Perhaps residents of Woodbridge Township should question why neighboring municipalities, like cash-strapped Perth Amboy, rejected the pot shop. But in the Magic Kingdom, we have legalized gambling near our schools in Fords, a semi-public golf course in Colonia, a taxpayer funded miniature golf course in Woodbridge, a toxic landfill in Keasbey, a contaminated old factory in Avenel, (need I go on), so why not a pot shop? But, hey, maybe, just maybe, when all those things are taken into consideration, along your ever-increasing tax bills, having a 'pot shop' so close at hand might not be so bad!
