Walrod named vice chair of Madison County Board of Supervisors

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WAMPSVILLE, N.Y. — Madison County Board Chairman James J. Cunningham announced that Georgetown Town Supervisor Paul Walrod will serve as vice chairperson of the Madison County Board of Supervisors. Walrod, who owns and runs Many Maples Sugar House in Georgetown, began serving as town supervisor in January 2014. He has served as the chairman of […]

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Chick-fil-A to start operating at NBT Bank Stadium for Syracuse Mets games

Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Small Business, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The local Chick-fil-A franchise is set to begin operations at NBT Bank Stadium for Syracuse Mets games beginning Wednesday as the team hosts the Rochester Red Wings. The Mets, in conjunction with its concessions partner, Oak View Group, announced the addition in a Wednesday statement. Chick-fil-A will operate a standalone cart on

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New York AG announces $4.7 million for CNY in settlement with JUUL over youth vaping

Nonprofits, Education & Training, Featured, Health Care, Law, Accounting & Taxes, New York News, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Central New York counties and some school districts will share a total of $4.7 million from the state’s settlement with JUUL Labs Inc. for its role in the youth vaping “epidemic.” The regional money is part of the $462 million multistate settlement with JUUL, New York State Attorney General Letitia James said

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The regional money is part of the $462 million multistate settlement with JUUL, New York State Attorney General Letitia James said in announcing the award on Tuesday.

James announced the dollar amount during a visit to Public Service Leadership Academy at Fowler High School in Syracuse.

The youth vaping led to a “dangerous rise” in underage e-cigarette use nationwide, per James’ office.

Altogether, New York was awarded a total of $112.7 million through the settlement, which James is distributing to every county, Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), and the five largest cities in the state to support programs that will help reduce and prevent underage vaping.

“Like the big tech companies that have fueled a mental health crisis among young people with their addictive products, JUUL marketed its dangerous and addictive vapes to children, putting millions at risk,” James contended in a news release. “Across our state, e-cigarette use among kids spiked after JUUL hit the market. I’m proud that my office ensured JUUL paid for the damage they did to young people. The funds we secured will help schools and communities in Central New York fight back against the youth vaping epidemic. I thank all of my partners in government for their partnership in this effort to protect our children.”

James sued JUUL in November 2019 for what she said was its “deceptive and misleading marketing that glamorized vaping and targeted young people.”

Money distribution

The Syracuse City School District, area counties, and BOCES will split the funds.

Counties

Cayuga County — $397,684.96
Cortland County —$276,771.10
Madison County — $396,519.43
Onondaga County — $1,452,272.89
Oswego County — $582,809.54

School Districts / BOCES

Syracuse City School District — $322,481.76
Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES — $188,908.33
Onondaga-Cortland-Madison BOCES — $857,352.80
CiTi BOCES in Oswego —$299,339.81

Work begins on Thruway bridge in the town of Schuyler

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Energy, Environment & Sustainability, Law, Accounting & Taxes, Manufacturing & Engineering, Mohawk Valley, New York News, Nonprofits, Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Subscriber Only

SCHUYLER, N.Y. — Work has started on a $4.7 million project to rehabilitate the New York State Thruway/I-90 eastbound and westbound bridges over Sterling Creek in the town of Schuyler, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced. The bridges — located at mileposts 227.4 and 227.41, just west of the Schuyler travel plaza — are part of the

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Sandy Chen

People on the Move

FustCharles, a certified public accounting firm in Syracuse, has announced the transition of former senior audit associate Sandy Chen to the firm’s senior accountant position.

Shaina Smith

People on the Move

FustCharles, a certified public accounting firm in Syracuse, announced that Shaina Smith has joined the firm as an audit associate. Smith received her bachelor’s degree

NNY Community Foundation offers $30K grant for Food Bank of CNY distribution center expansion

North Country, Construction, Design & Real Estate, New York News, Nonprofits, Subscriber Only

WATERTOWN, N.Y. — The Northern New York (NNY) Community Foundation says it’s providing a $30,000 grant to the Food Bank of Central New York to help pay for the expansion of its distribution center on Interstate Island Road in Van Buren in northwest Onondaga County. The Food Bank of CNY has an 11-county service area,

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The Food Bank of CNY has an 11-county service area, including parts of the North Country. In Jefferson, Lewis, and St. Lawrence counties, the Food Bank partners with 70 different food pantries, soup kitchens, backpack programs, and other organizations to provide nutritious foods below cost.

In turn, those organizations serve hundreds of North Country families, providing emergency food assistance to residents who couldn’t otherwise access nutritious foods, the Community Foundation said.

The Food Bank is a “longtime” Community Foundation partner. In 2017, officials opened a North Country office on the third floor of the Northern New York Philanthropy Center in Watertown. It also has a permanent endowment and charitable fund at the Community Foundation to support its work in the tri-county area.

“Each year, the Community Foundation and its donors help supply nearly every food program across Jefferson, Lewis, and St. Lawrence counties and each dollar goes further because of the efforts of the Food Bank of Central New York,” Rande Richardson, executive director of the Northern New York Community Foundation, said in the announcement. “As has been true before, we feel this additional investment in the Food Bank’s capacity will benefit the residents of Northern New York in important ways and strengthen local food pantries for years to come.”

“We are thankful to the Northern New York Community Foundation for its recent support of our 34,000-square-foot expansion of our distribution center. Every day, thousands of pounds of nutritious food is distributed throughout our 11-county service area which includes Central New York, the Mohawk Valley, and the North Country,” Karen Belcher, executive director of the Food Bank of Central New York, said in the announcement. “The decades-long partnership between our organizations has provided critical support of our work, and the work of our community partners, by helping to secure access to nutritious food.”

The Northern New York Community Foundation provides grant support annually to organizations that operate in partnership with the Food Bank, per the announcement. It cites the Food Bank as indicating one in eight people in Northern and Central New York are classified as “food insecure.” Each dollar that local food pantries and soup kitchens spend with the Food Bank can provide enough food for three meals.

MACNY, PEB honor achievement in workforce development at award ceremony

Manufacturing & Engineering, Education & Training, Employee Benefits & Human Resources, New York News, Nonprofits, Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — It was an event that included recognition for registered apprentices and those supporting STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers and education as well as scholarships for students. They were all part of the 2024 Workforce Development Awards that MACNY, The Manufacturers Association, and Partners for Education & Business, Inc. (PEB) hosted

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They were all part of the 2024 Workforce Development Awards that MACNY, The Manufacturers Association, and Partners for Education & Business, Inc. (PEB) hosted on Wednesday, June 12 at Le Moyne College. The nonprofit PEB is MACNY’s K-16 (education) arm, per the MACNY website.

The awards celebrated the accomplishments of students and registered apprentices pursuing an education or careers in manufacturing and other industries.

In addition, “as a testament to their commitment to upskill and bolster the talent-development pipeline,” MACNY concluded the program with a first-ever apprentice signing for four of its own employees to “signify the beginning of their apprenticeship journey.”

“This year was especially meaningful for MACNY because four of our own staff members signed their apprenticeship paperwork, demonstrating our belief in the effectiveness of the program and the value of building our workforce through upskilling,” Randy Wolken, president and CEO of DeWitt–based MACNY, said in a statement. “On behalf of the MACNY Board of Directors, staff, and the manufacturing community, we would like to extend our congratulations to all of those that were honored at this year’s event.”

The ceremony also recognized 29 registered apprentice graduates that earned their Journeyworker credential in 2023 from the New York State Department of Labor.

The companies that received recognition for expanding their registered-apprenticeship programs from January 2023 to April 2024 included 110 Metalworks Inc.; Allen Tool Phoenix, Inc.; Bausch + Lomb; Belden Inc.; Bush Industries; Consolidated Precision Products (CPP); EMCom, Inc.; Hardinge, Inc.; Hubbard Tool & Die Corp.; Indium Corporation; Knowles; North Country Dairy; Superior Metals Manufacturing; and Thompson & Johnson Equipment Co., Inc.

PEB also used the event to announce its 12th cohort of CNY STEM Scholars, which includes 11 Central New York students, each of whom had a company sponsor, MACNY said.

Meeting set for June 26 to discuss reuse of former St. Luke’s campus of MVHS

Mohawk Valley, Construction, Design & Real Estate, Law, Accounting & Taxes, New York News, Nonprofits, Subscriber Only

UTICA, N.Y. — The third community meeting for the redevelopment master plan regarding the former St. Luke’s Hospital Campus is set for Wednesday, June 26 at the MVHS Center for Rehabilitation and Continuing Care Services, 1650 Champlin Ave., Utica. The community visioning workshop will take place from 7-8:30 p.m. in the Soggs Room. The event

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The community visioning workshop will take place from 7-8:30 p.m. in the Soggs Room. The event is hosted by Oneida County, Mohawk Valley EDGE, Mohawk Valley Health System (MVHS), and the town of New Hartford.

“Public participation in these forums has been great,” Oneida County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr. said in a news release announcing the meeting. “We continue to receive extensive input and valuable feedback, and we want to see that momentum carry through to June 26. Having the public engage in this process is imperative to the future success of the site.”

Fu Wilmers Design, the firm selected to lead the master-plan effort, will be present to engage with the public. The meeting will give attendees the opportunity to review project research and site analyses conducted to date and help shape conceptual site-plan ideas emerging from the research and public input.

Organizers will also share a summary of the extensive responses received through the online Reimaging St. Luke’s visual preferences survey, which is still open and can be taken at www.surveymonkey.com/r/StLukesVisualSurvey.

The project partners held the first public-engagement meeting in February to introduce the project, identify challenges, craft a community vision, generate site alternatives, and help shape the overall campus reuse strategy. The meetings will conclude in September.

An advisory group comprised of community leaders, representatives from surrounding neighborhoods, community-service organizations, faith- based groups, small-business owners, housing organizations, and real-estate developers met prior to public meetings to provide input on the challenges and potential for the site as the project is developed.

A total of four advisory group and four community visioning workshops are planned. There will be three different concepts produced from the master-plan study.

A facilities study for the former hospital site, commissioned by the county, New Hartford, Mohawk Valley EDGE, and MVHS, runs concurrent with the master-plan study. Weston & Sampson is heading that study, which began last November and will help inform the master plan by looking at the present physical conditions of the facility and determining what portions of St. Luke’s can be reused or are not suitable for reuse.

Mohawk Valley EDGE is administering the contracts with the consultants on both projects while Oneida County provides the funding.

More information about the project is available at www.reimaginestlukes.com.

The St. Luke’s Hospital closed last October when MVHS moved its operations to the new Wynn Hospital in downtown Utica.

ANDRO lands $2 million contract for 5G test environment

Mohawk Valley, Employee Benefits & Human Resources, Law, Accounting & Taxes, Manufacturing & Engineering, New York News, Small Business, Subscriber Only, Technology

ROME, N.Y. — ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC has been awarded a $2 million Direct-to-Phase II contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Washington, D.C. The pact will establish a federated fifth generation (5G) testbed ecosystem, called 5GTE, for advanced telecommunications experimentation, the company said. The award is highly competitive and part of

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ROME, N.Y. — ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC has been awarded a $2 million Direct-to-Phase II contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Washington, D.C.

The pact will establish a federated fifth generation (5G) testbed ecosystem, called 5GTE, for advanced telecommunications experimentation, the company said. The award is highly competitive and part of the multiphase Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracting vehicle, which paves the way for additional funding.

The purpose of the 5GTE is to develop scalable, open-source Internet of Things (IoT) 5G test environment capability to support research and development of nascent 5G technologies and advanced telecommunications-use cases, both fixed and mobile. The focus is to provide an open-source, realistic 5G radio-access network (RAN) to enable rapid prototyping of wireless protocols and applications including, but not limited to, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), and multi-access-edge-computing.

The 5GTE will serve as an open-validation platform for government vendors, industries, and academia to validate their 5G solutions prior to commercial rollout.

The contract will help create up to 10 new jobs at ANDRO and lay the foundation for future growth, company officials said.

The 5GTE project will leverage ANDRO’s extensive research base in AI and wireless cybersecurity applications development for next generation 5G innovations. A key requirement is the ability to rapidly and accurately scale as new technologies and devices are introduced.

“The 5GTE must also provide remote access and device update capabilities,” ANDRO President Andrew Drozd said. “To broaden the range of supported devices and to facilitate development, 5GTE will have the ability to support different wireless communication technologies, for example 4G, wireless fidelity, and others.”

The award allows ANDRO to explore the boundaries of deploying AI models for enhancing security to infuse Zero-Trust principles within the open RAN architecture standards.

ANDRO’s Marconi-Rosenblatt AI Innovation Lab, led by Jithin Jagannath and Anu Jagannath, will spearhead the research effort with ANDRO’s academic partner, the Wireless Internet of Things Research Laboratory at Northeastern University, which has a wealth of 5G assets and related test resources. The team also includes ANDRO researchers Suhail Shaik and Mohammed Abu Zaid, residents and graduates of the University at Buffalo.

The company anticipates potential future funding would look to expand the 5GTE ecosystem participation, bringing greater 5G, Beyond 5G, and Future-G presence for commercialization and military transition benefit.

ANDRO provides research, engineering, and technical services to defense and commercial industries in advanced spectrum exploitation, secure wireless communications, software-based waveform development, cognitive software-defined radio networking, multi-sensor data fusion, and sensor-resource management.

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