Protest Fails to Sway Board from OKing Cape Assist Grant Application

CREST HAVEN – A trolley-load of Wildwood opponents and Mayor Ernie Troiano could not dissuade Cape May County freeholders from approving of a grant application that will fund Cape Assist’s renovation of a building at Leaming and New Jersey avenues. Cape Assist plans to renovate the K&K Building, formerly a law office, into a prevention and counseling center. No drug treatment will take place, now or ever, vowed Cape Assist Chairman Richard Rutherford at the Aug. 25 meeting.
About 50 neighborhood residents filled the meeting room; some toting professionally-designed protest signs stating, “Freeholders Stop Dumping on Wildwood” and another urging Cape Assist Executive Director Lynne Krukosky to locate the proposed facility near her house in Court House. When she took the podium, Krukosky informed the group, “I live in Goshen.”
Freeholders, advised by acting County Counsel James Arsenault, unanimously voted to allow the grant application. While Arsenault advised that Wildwood still retains zoning control, and that the county was powerless to impose its will on a town, due to home rule, he also told the crowd that funding for any non-profit agency flows through the county, not the municipality.
Troiano lauded the work of Cape Assist, which has an office at 3819 New Jersey Ave., but wondered why the city was chosen for the new site. Freeholder Director Gerald Thornton informed him that Cape Assist alone selected the site, and that the county had no input into site selection. The county, he said, similarly offers its application process to all non-profit agencies, although it has no oversight over any of them. 
Residents feared the new prevention counseling site will someday become a treatment center, something Freeholder Will Morey said that Cape Assist should work with the community to convince them of that fact. However, given the tenor of opposition demonstrated at the meeting, such a reaching of middle ground seems tenuous at present.
After all parties had spoken, for and against Cape Assist’s intented facility, the board voted to approve the application.