A killer turned councilman. Masked men. And lots of weed. Welcome to ‘Pot Town,’ N.J.

A confessed killer is now a community leader.

Four council members have abruptly resigned since February. And the mayor claims a mysterious incident precipitated that exodus from the Englishtown borough council and led to his nomination of John Alite — the former mob hitman — as a replacement.

But he refuses to talk about it.

“There’s a lot to unpack there,” said Marc Pfeiffer, a senior policy fellow and assistant director of the Bloustein Local Government Center at Rutgers University.

But there’s more.

Like the former police chief facing criminal charges, including aiding another person in shoplifting. And four cannabis dispensaries sitting within four blocks of each other on Englishtown’s Main Street, leading some to rechristen the town.

“They’re calling us ‘Pot Town,’” said Cindy Robilotti, a former council member, “and I think that’s disgusting.”

A year ago, Englishtown was a quaint “donut hole” municipality of 2,300 encircled by Manalapan. But over the past few months, a series of controversies bordering on the absurd has embroiled the Monmouth County borough.

“We’ve never had, in all the years I’ve been on council, never had four members resign,” said Robilotti, who served on the six-person council for 15 years before she chose not to run for reelection a couple of years ago.

Under the circumstances, an overabundance of legal weed might seem like the least of its problems.

Yet to many, those proliferating cannabis dispensaries and the future of a beloved lake are the real concerns, not the reshuffling of the council. Or the criminal charges involving the former chief. Or their new councilman’s body count (For the record: six homicides and 30 to 40 shootings, he has estimated in published reports).

“I can’t think of any other instance where somebody who was convicted of federal racketeering is serving in public office,” said Chris Gramiccioni, who was a federal prosecutor and the Monmouth County Prosecutor before going into private practice.

Welcome to Englishtown.

The turmoil began to spill into public view in February.

William Lewis and Kyle Jewusiak — who had just won his council seat last November and served little more than a month — resigned from the municipal body, effective Feb. 17. Then, Meaghan Lewis — William Lewis’ wife — and Bill Sabin resigned, effective March 12.

Why did four council members step down in quick succession? It depends on who you ask.

In his resignation letter, Sabin said the council “more closely resembles an autocracy.”

“My wife and I feel that we have done all that we could do to help our town over the last four years, and while the recent decisions by the mayor seem to have given a black eye to our great little town, we’re looking forward to moving on from all the drama,” he told NJ Advance Media. He declined further comment.

Mayor Daniel Francisco says he asked three of the council members — Jewusiak and Meaghan and William Lewis — to step down after an incident in which they “did something to me,” he told NJ Advance Media. “And then I requested them to resign, and they complied.”

Francisco declined to elaborate on what they allegedly did.

But there was never any incident, according to Meaghan Lewis.

“And he never once asked me to resign,” she told NJ Advance Media in her first interview since her resignation.

Instead, the mayor called for her resignation in his email to her husband and Jewusiak — without directly asking her for it — she said.

“He’s never once spoken to me saying that he had an issue with me,” she said.

Meaghan Lewis said she didn’t quit because of his request. She stepped down because of the mayor’s behavior — like making last-minute changes to the meeting agenda and asking the council to vote on draining Lake Weamaconk without giving it enough time to consider the options.

The lake has a dam classified as a “significant hazard” by the state, and requires a solution, according to an engineering firm that gave a presentation last November.

“He wanted to do away with the lake and then wanted us all to vote on it without even once bringing it to the attention of the town,” she said. “So I fought to have a letter sent out to the town, which caused a meeting where there was probably about 200 people there, so he wasn’t happy about that.”

But the final straw for her came during a February executive session — an official, closed-door meeting often involving sensitive matters. Two men “barged in with masks on and caused like this whole big ruckus,” she said. “It was a very uncomfortable situation.”

The men later filmed the council meeting, calling themselves First Amendment “auditors.”

(Councilman Alexi Reque, who was at the February meeting, said the men weren’t aware they were interrupting the council’s executive session until officials told them and they left. “It’s not that they barged in,” he said. “They walked in not knowing.”)

Meaghan Lewis said she didn’t feel safe once the disruption happened. The mother of five believed the mayor knew the men and encouraged the disturbance, because he previously filmed a video with them on the boardwalk, she said.

After the meeting, the men tried to follow the council out of the building, and when asked, Francisco offered up the council members’ names “like it was no big deal,” Meaghan Lewis said.

“He wasn’t there to protect us in any way,” she said. “It looked like he just wanted the drama.”

In her resignation letter, Meaghan Lewis said, “I fear for my own well-being and that of my children,” according to the Asbury Park Press. Francisco, who easily won the Republican mayoral primary and faced no opponent in the general election in November 2023, called the allegation “ludicrous.”

William Lewis and Jewusiak did not respond to requests for comment. (Sabin’s wife, Kim Sabin, also resigned as chairperson of the planning/zoning board, which other married couples also serve on.)

While Englishtown’s situation is admittedly unusual, plenty of towns have weathered dysfunction, Rutgers’ Pfeiffer pointed out.

“Things happen,” he said. “There’s always been oddball situations that happen in local governments.”

But lately, Englishtown has faced more than its share.

To some, all the drama — the council, the mayor, the infighting — is just theatrics among former friends Francisco, Sabin and the Lewises.

“They’ve all gone to school together. They’ve all known each other. They all grew up in this town,” said John Soares, an Englishtown local who co-founded the Bud It Up dispensary last year.

It’s like “classroom bickering,” he said.

With a healthy dose of trolling, it would seem.

Francisco, serving in his capacity as the committee chair for Englishtown for the Monmouth County Republicans, gave the council four names to replace the members who quit.

One of them was his wife.

Francisco, a former executive director of Project Veritas — the conservative group known for its hidden camera stings — admitted he nominated her to “troll” some remaining council members for not speaking to him during the nomination process.

“I knew for a fact they weren’t going to pick my wife,” he said.

But one person they did pick? Alite — the former mob associate turned government witness.

Alite has admitted in court that he aided the Gambino crime family in multiple murders and the sale of drugs.

He made $1 million a year trafficking narcotics for the mob over a 10-year period in the 1980s and ’90s, he testified in 2009. He went as far as to declare he “wasn’t a good guy.”

He had met John Gotti Sr. — the Gambino mob boss notoriously known as the “Teflon Don” — and was soon involved in the family’s illicit activities, according to a 2019 GQ profile. He soon became John Gotti Jr.’s “right-hand man,” the profile said. Alite didn’t respond to a request for comment from NJ Advance Media.

But in 2003, he was on the run, fleeing from an impending indictment. He was arrested in Brazil on murder and racketeering charges under an Interpol warrant before being extradited to the U.S. in 2006, according to the GQ story.

Alite heard Junior Gotti was working as an informant and several others had already flipped, the profile said.

So he made a deal with prosecutors. In early 2008, he pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges and admitted to two murders. He also testified against members of the Gambino family in exchange for a lighter sentence, according to GQ. In 2011, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released in 2012.

Alite, now 62, became a motivational speaker and podcaster. He shared his story and opinions (and lent his expertise on video game assassinations).

But after his 30-year-old daughter died of a fentanyl overdose three years ago, he decided he “wanted to make a difference,” leading him to politics.

And Englishtown’s council.

“I’m here to redeem my whole life,” Alite told The New York Post last month.

What could top a council in open warfare with the mayor, mass resignations and a former mobster chosen as a replacement?

How about an Englishtown leader facing criminal charges, a whistleblower lawsuit and accusations of impropriety?

In 2023, Gretchen McCarthy, the former municipal clerk, sued the borough and former police chief Peter Cooke Jr., alleging wrongful termination for whistleblowing activities during her tenure. She’s asking for compensatory damages of at least $250,000, as well as damages for lost wages and benefits, back pay, front pay (or reinstatement), humiliation, and mental and emotional distress.

In her lawsuit, she alleged Cooke failed to respond to OPRA requests in a timely manner, asked her to provide receipts for funds she didn’t receive and tried to buy a police vehicle without proper authorization. He also failed to register borough motor vehicles with the state, she alleged.

In retaliation for filing whistleblowing complaints, Cooke required McCarthy to fill out a “highly invasive and inappropriate background check,” the lawsuit said.

McCarthy was forced to divulge her height, weight, race, ethnicity, sex at birth, and current sex, according to the lawsuit. She also was required to report any tattoos or scars and any cars she owned, the suit claimed. There’s more. McCarthy was also told to provide signed authorizations for the release of banking records, health care records, credit agency reporting information and all government agency records, according to the lawsuit.

McCarthy was “very alarmed” at the request and reached out to the board attorney at the time, who initially didn’t reply, she claimed in the lawsuit. But she signed off on the background check and had her fingerprints taken.

However, she drew the line at completing a related questionnaire because she had objections, according to the lawsuit. She voiced those objections, and months later, she went on medical leave.

When she returned to work in January 2023, she was terminated, according to the lawsuit. She was told her refusal to fill out the questionnaire was the reason.

“Unfortunately, what happened to her is what happens to many whistleblowers,” said Ty Hyderally, her attorney. The case is the discovery phase, and the trial is anticipated to start over the next couple of months, he told NJ Advance Media.

“When we filed the lawsuit, Chief Cooke was still the chief of police,” he said. “The fact that he no longer is the chief of police is certainly an interesting issue that we’ll be looking into further.”

An attorney for Cooke declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing pending litigation.

But Cooke has other legal issues.

He used a law enforcement database for four years to look up information about two people outside the scope of police investigative purposes, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office said last November.

And while on administrative leave for an undisclosed purpose, he also helped an unidentified co-conspirator in several instances of shoplifting from a local grocery store, prosecutors said.

He was charged with third-degree computer theft and third-degree conspiracy to commit shoplifting, officials said. Cooke was placed on unpaid suspension, officials said at the time.

He had a pre-indictment conference in early April at Monmouth County Superior Court, but the case remains active, according to court records.

Somehow, no one in Englishtown seems upset about Alite. Or the incredibly messy council.

Not even council members themselves.

“I don’t want to say nobody cared, but we want to know what’s our next couple steps, rather than what someone did in their previous lifetime,” said Brenden Sharkey, a new councilman who was sworn in earlier this month.

Residents seemed to agree that a former hitman councilman wasn’t a concern.

“Not at all,” said Joann Damante. “That wasn’t even an issue.”

Only one person objected to Alite’s position on the council at a March town hall. But the man was from Long Island and had a somewhat personal tie to Alite’s former life — he once worked for John Gotti Jr., the New York Post reported. (The crowd was not pleased with his presence, and promptly booed him out of the room.)

However, the legal cannabis dispensaries lining Main Street are another matter.

“Obviously a concern,” Sharkey acknowledged, but noted two of them occupy previously vacant banks.

Even a dispensary owner agrees four is too many for a tiny town.

Someone has the business license for a fifth cannabis dispensary in town, said Soares, one of the other dispensary owners. But as of now, it’s unclear if all will even remain afloat.

“I don’t think four is going to last, to be honest with you,” he said. “One will fail — I don’t think it’ll be us, but I think one will fail.”

Perhaps that’s one problem that can get solved in Englishtown.