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The Jersey City Board of Education is raising the alarm about a cannabis dispensary proposed near a city elementary school, setting the stage for what could be a prolonged, ugly public battle over where legal marijuana will be sold in the city.

Board President Gerry Lyons, Vice President Gina Verdibello and Trustee Lorenzo Richardson spoke at a planning board Tuesday meeting to address a zoning application for The Cannabis Place 420 Corp. and argued that approval of the 1542 Kennedy Blvd. location could “create a dangerous situation” for children at nearby School 30.

They maintained that putting a cannabis dispensary violate federal guidelines and would put federal funding at risk, although nothing in the federal statute on controlled dangerous substances says anything about school funding.

They claimed the crux of the issue is the contradiction between federal law and local law on the legality of marijuana. While it has been legalized in New Jersey and other states, it is still considered illegal on federal law, and selling marijuana within 1,000 feet of a school building is a federal offense.

Jersey City requires dispensaries to be at least 200 feet from a school. The dispensary at 1542 Kennedy would be more than 200 feet from School 30, but less than 1,000 feet. Federal statute says the seller can be prosecuted, but it does not call for any sanctions against a school that is close by, or the school district.

“By placing a dispensary within 1,000 feet, the Jersey City Planning Board will be aiding and supporting the violation of this federal statute, which could result in penalties including loss of funding to our district,” said Richardson, who failed to provide any evidence of the supposed threat to funding.

“For a school district and community that has already been significantly cut by state aid, any loss in federal funding would be devastating, unnecessary and unforgivable.”

Verdibello echoed Richardson’s objections and asked the planning board to delay on voting on The Cannabis Place, a request the board declined. It ultimately voted to approve the zoning that would allow the dispensary to proceed.

“If the BOE members can provide evidence (that shows federal funding would be rescinded) we will of course work with the state of New Jersey to amend the laws here in Jersey City,” city spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said, noting that 75% of Jersey City voters approved legalization.

“The proposed laws in Jersey City were publicly considered with extensive community involvement over the last year before being approved, so this letter now from the BOE is confusing.”

Lyons said his opposition isn’t on the grounds that he disapproves of cannabis. “I don’t really care who smokes pot, who drinks, none of my business,” he said.

“Being on the school board on and off since 2010 I’ve seen all issues been brought up about places that have caused problems in the neighborhood schools, and I’m very fearful this will be one of those in the future,” Lyons said, although he didn’t cite any of them.

Planning board members noted that their votes are based only whether the application complies with all the zoning rules. The dispensary still needs approval from Jersey City’s Cannabis Control Board and a state commission.

The three school members noted other objections.

“Most schools, particularly Number 30, attempt to conduct outdoor classrooms in open space with the best and safest educational environment,” Richardson said. “With students being outside more while a cannabis dispensary is fully operational right next door is a recipe for disaster,” he said. “Children will be outside for significant portions of the day within eye and earshot of this dispensary while it’s open for business.”

Critics of the “location” critics says that like marijuana, liquor is a legal product that can impair people, but the proximity of liquor stores to schools has never been raised. In the case of School 30, three liquors stores are located within a radius of a few blocks.

The objections mirror complaints made by elected officials and some residents in Hoboken, where the city council has backed down from original plans and implemented new zoning restrictions.

The Jersey City City Council may not be so cooperative.

Ward B Councilwoman Mira Prinz-Arey pushed back against the board of education’s complaints, noting that the city council has held joint meetings with the board and the proximity-to-schools issue wasn’t raised. Other city council members could not be reached for comment.

For former Jersey City schools Superintendent Franklin Walker, the sweetest goodbye to a 48-year career in the district that ended in January may be yet to come: The Board of Education is set to approve a payment of more than $200,000 for his unused vacation and sick time at its Thursday meeting.

Walker retired with more than 300 banked sick days, according to the Jersey City Board of Education’s documents. Walker held more than 20 positions in the district over the course of his career. He also had 71.5 days of unused vacation time and 94 days of “terminal” leave when he retired.

Board of Education President Gerry Lyons declined to comment on the payout, commonly referred as “boat checks.”

The large payouts for long-time public workers continue even after a law enacted in 2010 to curtail the contractually obligated largesse. The law capped local government employees from collecting more than $15,000 in payment for unused sick time, but that law only applies to employees hired after 2010.

A bill to limit all public employees — including ones hired before 2010, like Walker – passed both houses of the legislature in 2010 but was vetoed by then-Governor Chris Christie, who pushed for the even more aggressive measure of ending those payouts completely.

Walker took over as superintendent in 2019 after the Jersey City Board of Education voted to remove Marcia Lyles from the post. Because her contract was not up when she was removed, the district had to pay her at least $230,000 for the remainder of the contract — not to mention a nearly $400,000 settlement a year later when Lyles sued in federal court.

Before her, Charles T. Epps Jr. was paid more than $268,000 to step down before his contract was up in 2011. Those cases were voluntary choice by the school board, though. Walker’s payout is required by his contract.

Perhaps the king of school “boat checks” is Frank Gargiulo, the former Hudson County Schools of Technology superintendent who was paid $940,000 in three years after he retired in 2018.

The Jersey City school system’s finances for the future are in doubt. It faces a $250 million hole in funding over the next several years as the state continues to trim aid to the district. The board of education raised taxes by an average of $1,000 per property owner in 2021 to fully fund its budget, but the question of how to plug that hole in the future remains unresolved.

If there’s one thing Rutgers University professor Kevin Lyons is sure of, it’s this: People might have an image in their heads of the spinning blades of offshore wind turbines …

Those aren’t drawn to scale.

From end to end, just one of these turbines’ blades can match or even surpass the size of a football field. Pieced together, these megastructures are far bigger than you might expect — giving, in the view of Lyons, their local manufacturing and assembly an outsized importance in this new industry’s success.

As the expert in the Supply Chain Management Department at Rutgers Business School describes it, their transport wouldn’t be a breeze. Just one massive blade may have to be loaded onto a series of heavy-duty trucks. Maneuvering those blade components through towns on a path from the Midwest to the East Coast could take a week or more. Shipping from Europe wouldn’t be any quicker.

Now, Lyons said, multiply that by the thousands of turbine blades needed for an effective offshore wind farm.

“I always joke with my colleagues, ‘With that model, it’s going to take 10,000 years to get this built,’” he said.

Lyons, who was also named to Gov. Phil Murphy’s New Jersey Council on the Green Economy, is a supply chain person. That means he’s interested in taking the big-picture renewable energy ideas and putting them under a logistics microscope: How do you move parts around? Where are supplies coming from? Who manufactured those parts?

He’s hoping a lot of that will have Garden State answers.

“Not having a strong local sourcing strategy, to me, at least, is not very wise,” he said. “Shipping all these needed components from here, there and everywhere would take forever. That’s why something like what New Jersey is doing with its Salem County site is critically important.”

Lyons alluded to the 200-acre Paulsboro Marine Terminal in Gloucester County, where wind energy giant Ørsted is teaming up with EEW Group, a German steel pipe manufacturer, to locally construct 400-foot-tall, 5 million-pound steel plate monopiles.

Those components are used as foundations for offshore wind structures, as well as turbines and blades.

As Madeline Urbish, Ørsted‘s head of government affairs and policy for New Jersey, puts it, it’s also part of the foundation for more localization of the offshore wind farm supply chain.

“I think New Jersey in general has made very strategic investments, and that’s what’s really going to attract the supply chain,” she said. “A big part of that is that the regulatory certainty is greater than we’ve experienced in other markets.”

Besides the international companies setting up shop locally, Lyons sees potential for existing New Jersey manufacturers to find a place creating components that will soon be needed en masse.

“In New Jersey, we have such a robust manufacturing sector — with about 10,000 manufacturers in the state — and that’s not highlighted maybe as much as it should be,” he said. “And, while they’re not all involved in offshore wind components, some could choose, as demand surges for that particular area, to make a transition to support the state’s renewable energy push. For some, it wouldn’t be too heavy a lift.”

The major sign those manufacturers capable of capturing business in this emerging market have looked for, Lyons said, is that the offshore projects are on solid ground. They don’t want to upend their current business model for a state-driven initiative that’s going to have starts and stops, he said.

That solidness is plain to see already, he believes. And Lyons doesn’t expect a leadership shakeup, whether in the governor’s seat or anywhere else, would change that.

“I could see some other priorities being implemented, which is the prerogative of whoever is in the State House, but, once an industry is invested in, bonding is approved and budgeting priorities are set in a particular direction, it’s hard to reverse,” he said. “If someone came in and said, ‘Everything we’ve talked about before is null and void,’ it would be interesting — and anything in today’s climate is possible. But the momentum on this one, at this point, is real.”

There are other current trends upping the importance of a more localized supply chain.

Lyons pointed to the already-existing issues in the global supply chain that could further exacerbate a slower industry buildout. Namely, there are problems with the supply of circuit boards and transistors, which are utilized in building pretty much everything from cars to appliances. They also help form the motorized elements of wind turbines.

Another trend that Lyons finds as a compelling reason to move the supply chain closer to home is that other coastal states are building out offshore wind projects. Having a manufacturing base in New Jersey means the state can be in the center of that nationwide endeavor.

“If it all pans out, we’ll be able to participate in not just the execution of our own offshore wind program, but those of neighboring states,” he said. “So, it’s in our best interest to push this — and it’s largely what we anticipate happening. So, we’re very excited about it.”

With Pride Month in full swing in New Jersey, Rutherford celebrated Saturday with its first-ever LGBTQ+ festival featuring live entertainment, food trucks, a beer garden and kids’ activities.

The PrideFest, hosted by Rutherford Pride Alliance, was held in Rutherford’s Lincoln Park and included live entertainment hosted by Harmonica Sunbeam and Honey Marie, as well as musical performances by Daniel Shevlin from Well Strung.

Rutherford Pride Alliance Chairperson Rob Lyons said increasing visibility of the LGBTQ+ community “is more important now than ever, especially for our youth.”

“Growing up I wish I had the opportunity to see local events that provided me with a safe support system,” Lyons said in a statement Friday. “We are so honored to be able to do just that.”

The Rutherford Pride Alliance was founded in 2018 by a small group of residents to introduce LGBTQ+ community members to one another, “as well as to benefit all members of the community – whether LGBTQ+ identifying or not.”

The group organized the first raising of the rainbow Pride Flag at Rutherford’s Borough Hall in June 2019 and has since grown to several hundred members.

“Since our initial Pride Flag raising, we saw the immense support from our town and we couldn’t wait to create a larger celebration for Rutherford and Southern Bergen County,” Lyons said.

The festival, sponsored by American Dream Mall and Variance Films, was cohosted by Rutherford Arts Council, a community-driven group created in 2019 to help foster and fund artistic endeavors in the region. The goals of the two organizations were a perfect match, according to Katie Pippin, co-president of RAC.

“We’re so excited to be partnering with the RPA to host South Bergen’s first art and Pride festival,” Pippin said in a statement. “There’s so much burgeoning artistic talent here! With identity being intrinsically tied to artistic expression, it seemed a natural fit to work with the Pride Alliance on this festival.”

For information on the Pride Alliance and Saturday’s festival, visit RutherfordPrideAlliance.org.

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For the first time in its history, Rutherford will host a festival to promote and foster LGBTQ+ inclusivity, visibility and advocacy.

PRIDEFest, hosted by the Rutherford Pride Alliance and Rutherford Arts Council, will take place June 4 and feature vendor tables, food trucks, a beer garden and kids’ activities. The inaugural event follows the borough's first Pride flag raising in 2019.

"Growing up I wish I had the opportunity to see local events that provided me with a safe support system. We are so honored to be able to do just that,” said Rob Lyons, chairperson of Rutherford Pride Alliance. “Since our initial Pride flag raising, we saw the immense support from our town and we couldn’t wait to create a larger celebration for Rutherford and Southern Bergen County.”

The festival is open to the public from noon to 4 p.m. at Rutherford’s Lincoln Park. The event was made possible in part by a grant from the Bergen County Division of Cultural & Historic Affairs using funds granted by the New Jersey Council on the Arts with additional support from the American Dream Mall and Variance Films.

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"We're so excited to be partnering with the RPA to host South Bergen's first art and Pride festival,” said Katie Pippin, co-president of the Rutherford Arts Council. “There's so much burgeoning artistic talent here. With identity being intrinsically tied to artistic expression, it seemed a natural fit to work with the Pride Alliance on this festival."

The event also features live entertainment with co-hosts Harmonica Sunbeam and Honey Marie, remarks by Garden State Equality, and musical performances including Daniel Shevlin from Well Strung.

Rutherford Pride Alliance was founded in 2018 by a small group of LGBTQ+ residents in the borough. It has since grown to several hundred members from Rutherford and neighboring towns. In 2019, Lyons and his group organized Rutherford's first Pride flag raising, which was also a coming-out moment for the Rutherford Pride Alliance.

The group grew out of a Facebook conversation about rainbow crosswalks in Maplewood and has since become a force in Rutherford, successfully lobbying the borough council to raise a rainbow flag every June at Borough Hall.

Rutherford officials unanimously approved the flag raising in 2019 but not without some controversy. A group called Rutherford United created a petition opposing the move, arguing that the pride flag’s inclusion at Borough Hall would foster division and give unfair preference to a special interest group. The borough refused to back down.

Other North Jersey towns, including Clifton, Englewood, Lyndhurst, New Milford, Rochelle Park, Waldwick and Westwood raise flags in June, designated as Pride Month.

Jessie Gomez is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com and NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.