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"The kids absolutely love it," the local Boys & Girls Clubs CEO Joseph Licata said of Maywood's first after-school special needs program.

|Updated Tue, May 2, 2023 at 4:52 pm ET

BERGEN COUNTY, NJ — Inside of a Maywood clubhouse, kids with special needs participate in a mix of activities — from making glitter bottles to running obstacle courses — all as part of what is the town's first after-school program for that population.

Established by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Lower Bergen County and the South Bergen Jointure Commission (special education school district), this new program seeks to remedy the purported lack of after-school services for youth with special needs, and, in effect, level the playing field.

"There is a lot of focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, yet there is a population of children with disabilities who are too often not given the same opportunities," the local Boys & Girls Clubs CEO Joseph Licata said. "My hope was to create something fair and equitable for these kids."

Developing this program, Licata said, had a double benefit for both the kids and parents, in that the kids are getting more opportunities for social interaction and extracurricular activities, but also that the parents are able to more easily balance work and family responsibilities.

"The kids absolutely love it, and the parents have been so appreciative," Licata said of the approximately six-month-old program.

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He emphasized the rare nature of such a program — which now serves about 10% of the Jointure Commission's school district population, or about 12 kids — and said he is not aware of hardly any other comparable programs in the immediate area. As such, growing the number of kids served by the program is the goal, the CEO said.

"(The Clubs') mission is to enable all kids — with or without disabilities — to reach their fullest potential," Licata said. "It needs to be fair."

The difficulty, however, is that program — specifically due to the low child-to-staff ratios and the hiring of trained aides and para-educators from the Joint Commission — is expensive, he said.

Fortunately, he continued, the Boys & Girls Club had received a grant from Lakeland Bank to get started, and the nonprofit's staff is looking at other ways to raise funds to keep the program going in the future.

As a firm believer in the idea that if one does the right thing, the financial resources will follow, he said he is almost certain that the Club, as it always has in the past, will piece together a budget that works.

"I am holding out hope that some angel out there will hear about this and give a meaningful gift to support the program," Licata said. "$5, $10, $100 or $1,000 — any- and everything will help further the Club's mission."

If you would like to donate or learn more about the program, visit bgclbergen.org/south-bergen-jointure, or contact the Club's project director at [email protected].

MAYWOOD – Last month the Borough Council held a special meeting to take care of just one matter: dismissing the borough administrator.

This week they had another special meeting to hire her replacement: Donna Puglisi, a North Haledon council president who works as the recreation director in Elmwood Park.

She replaces Roberta Stern, who had held the post for more than eight years. The council voted unanimously on June 30 to let her go. During the meeting, held via Zoom, Stern said that she was “very disappointed and quite surprised” by the decision.

“I recognize with the change in administration, other changes often follow,” Stern said. “During my tenure, I’ve always acted in the best interest of the residents of Maywood.”

Mayor Richard Bolan called Stern a "journeyman during a time when our town had a need for that" before going on to say that the governing body now has "a new focus so a change was needed for our new direction."

At a special meeting Friday, the council appointed Puglisi. Bolan said there were 18 applicants and that the hiring committee interviewed four people.

Bolan called Puglisi "energetic" and "motivated to move Maywood in the right direction." He noted that she has worked for 20 years in municipal government and is a certified public manager.

"She has an enthusiasm for the position to serve the town well," Bolan said. "Her ambition is for the path in front of us and we are happy to have her."

Puglisi has worked in Elmwood Park as the recreation director for nearly a dozen years and has served on the council in North Haledon since 1999.

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One resident, Susanne Iosbst, expressed displeasure with the change. As a member of the pool committee, Iosbst said, she didn’t always agree with Stern, but she was a woman who got things done. Iosbst said she didn't “see anything in her performance that warrants" her removal.

Puglisi isn’t the only borough official with ties to Elmwood Park. Bolan previously served as a building and construction official in the borough and during that time there was some overlap with projects between their departments, he said.

Borough officials in Elmwood Park confirmed that Puglisi would be leaving her post there.

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

Guess you really can’t beat the real thing.

Coca-Cola gets its iconic taste thanks in part to a chemical processing factory in a sleepy New Jersey neighborhood that has the country’s only license to import the plant used to make cocaine.

The Maywood-based facility, now managed by the Stepan Company, has been processing coca leaves for the soft-drink giant for more than a century and had its license to import them renewed by the Drug Enforcement Agency earlier this year.

The coca leaves are used to create a “decocainized” ingredient for the soda and the leftover byproduct is sold to the opioid manufacturing company Mallinckrodt, which uses the powder to make a numbing agent for dentists, DailyMail reported.

It is unclear how much coca leaves the Stepan Company imports annually, although the New York Times reported in 1988 that it brought in between 56 and 588 metric tons of coca leaves from Peru and Bolivia each year, citing DEA figures.

One ton of coca leaf costs over $5,500 in Peru, so the Stepan Company would be paying between $308,000 and $3.2 million for the shipment of the illicit leaves if the amount it imports has remained constant over the decades, according to data from agricultural company Selina Wamucii.

Ricardo Cortés, author of 2012’s “A Secret History of Coffee, Coca and Cola,” wrote that he obtained records from the National Company of the Coca, a Peruvian state-owned company, which showed that up to 104 tons of coca leaves were exported to Maywood each year between 2007 and 2010.

Importing coca leaves was banned in 1921, but the legislation left an exemption for Maywood Chemical Works, which ran the factory before Stepan Company bought the site in 1959.

Meanwhile, the legal exemption the factory has received helped the Coca-Cola brand to become the massive globally recognized company it now is, with is worth around $265 billion.

“Coca-Cola’s success as the mega-company it is today is due, at least in part, to special privileges granted by government during World War II, and the suppression of potential competitors in the early years of Harry Anslinger’s anti-drug policies,” Australian economics think tank Mises Institute wrote in a 2016 article.

Anslinger was the former head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics between 1930 and 1962 and is widely recognized as an early proponent of the war on drugs who had a major role in the federal criminalization of marijuana.

Cortés wrote in a 2016 blog post that he visited the National Archives and saw letters between Anslinger and Maywood Chemical Works joining forces to deflect a Life Magazine reporter’s story about the coca leaf importation.

“We do not desire the publicity which such an article might bring us,” Maywood Chemical’s President M.J. Hartung wrote to Anslinger in 1949.

The next year, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics filed an internal memo regarding the matter.

“Less publicity of articles about coca leaves and narcotic drugs will be better for the public,” the memo from July 1950 reads, going on to call past coverage of the issue unsatisfactory.

A new list is out from Mashed..."The Best Diners in Every State."

Gosh, how could they choose the best in New Jersey? There are so many fabulous diners throughout the state. Now that I'm thinking about it, isn't New Jersey the diner capital of the world? Just kidding. Although, it deserves to be.

Diners are the best. The menus are usually huge, making whatever you're in the mood for available.

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My favorite thing about diners is you can get breakfast at any time of the day. Late night is usually my favorite time to grab a heaping stack of pancakes with butter melting and running down the sides with a side dish of pork roll (yes, it's pork roll, NOT Taylor Ham).

Oh, yum. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. This may sound gross to you, but, I love dipping the pork roll into some extra pancake syrup on the plate. Don't judge.

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If you think you have New Jersey's best diner in your neighborhood, you're probably wrong unless you live way up in Bergen County, North Jersey.

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I know what you're thinking. I too would have thought for sure that New Jersey's best diner is in Mercer County. I could name a dozen at least that are fabulous.

But, Mashed has named Maywood Pancake House the best diner in the Garden State.

It's up in Maywood (Bergen County) at the tippy top of the state.

Here's what Mashed had to say about it:

"New Jersey is a hotspot for excellent diners, and the Maywood Pancake House in Maywood is among the best in the state, in part because of its healthy spin on traditional diner cuisine. While most diners focus on rich comfort food, this restaurant offers plenty of vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options. Its breakfast menu in particular features plenty of vegan and gluten-free meals for everyone, including delicious pancakes."

Looks like I'm taking a road trip.

To see the rest of the list of the Best Diners in Every State, click here.

MAYWOOD — The borough will have the choice between two contractors, Hackensack University Medical Center or Paramus EMS, to provide in-town emergency medical services, a gap that was left when the 77-year-old volunteer emergency squad dissolved last year.

Less than two months after the Maywood First Aid and Emergency Squad closed shop, and with only one full-time paid EMT in town, Maywood is looking to outsource its emergency medical services.

“We're deciding at this point who we’re going to go with,” Mayor Adrian Febre said.

Paramus EMS Chief Milton N. Kohlmann declined to comment. Michelle Kobayashi, executive director of Hackensack University Medical Center's EMS, declined to comment, citing contract discussions.

In December, the volunteer First Aid and Emergency Squad ended its run, citing members' inability to complete the mandated training because of their day jobs. With the squad gone, Mike Schmitt is the only full-time EMT left in town.

The medical center's EMS has already visited Maywood Borough Hall and inspected the facilities and the two ambulance vehicles, Febre said. If Maywood were to contract with the medical center, EMTs would likely use Maywood's ambulances and be stationed full-time at the municipal complex, Febre said.

“Basically it comes down to coverage and it comes down to having a vehicle in the town,” Febre said.

The volunteer First Aid and Emergency Squad had been around since 1941. The paid EMT service in Maywood has been around for 15 years, Schmitt said. Schmitt receives a salary of $32,317, Jean Pelligra, the borough clerk, confirmed.

Maywood is one of the latest towns to move toward outsourcing emergency medical services after their volunteer squad either dissolves or is disbanded. In 2016, Bogota approved a contract with Holy Name Medical Center for 24-hour emergency medical services and disbanded its volunteer first aid squad.

In neighboring Rochelle Park, residents and members of the township's volunteer ambulance corps packed a January council meeting, protesting a Township Council resolution that would disband the corps and contract with Paramus EMS. After 4½ hours of discussion, the council chose to table the resolution. Discussions are ongoing.

This is not the first time the Maywood Borough Council has attempted to outsource the town's emergency medical services, said Schmitt, who has been a full-time EMT for 12 years. Three years ago, there were preliminary discussions to contract outside of Maywood, he said, but he quickly protested against it.

"I put it on Facebook," Schmitt said. "I put petitions around town. They decided not to do it. Maybe they didn’t want to deal with people complaining."

Three years later, the fight has left Schmitt, and he just hopes he can stay on the town payroll until the end of September, his retirement date

"I'm not even really sure about fighting," Schmitt said. "It’s just too late."

The Maywood Borough Council is expected to discuss the two proposals Tuesday, at the next council meeting. Contract details were not immediately available.

Email: [email protected]