Each week, syracuse.com will look back at some of our most important and valuable journalism from the previous week. Here are six stories for the week of Sept. 14, 2025.
Subscribe to get the Syracuse.com Exclusives newsletter delivered to your email inbox every Sunday.
SUNY ESF has been losing millions. Will its turnaround plan make things better or worse?
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry President Joanie Mahoney delivered some sobering news to faculty and staff a month ago. In an email titled “Important Budget Updates,” she outlined the need for the school to trim $3 million in salary expenses in the 2026-27 academic year. A voluntary buyout program for older, more experienced staff would be the first step. But it may not be the last. The email ignited a public debate between workforce leadership and SUNY administrators about the cause of and solutions to a significant, multi-year budget deficit at ESF.
Court clears path for ShoppingTown Mall rebirth, but what would it look like?
A decision by New York’s highest court on Thursday may have helped cleared the way for the massive redevelopment of the vacant ShoppingTown Mall, but what the redevelopment will look like remains to be seen. The state Court of Appeals refused to hear an appeal of the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency’s use of eminent domain power to push the mall’s redevelopment forward. The decision likely frees the county agency to take ownership of the former Sears and Macy’s stores, giving it full control of the ShoppingTown site.
Foster parents of 4-year-old boy who was killed by his dad in DeWitt: ‘We fought so hard to keep him safe’
Rykelan Brown, 4, had foster parents who loved him. But Cortland County social services forced him to live with his biological father in DeWitt. The dad, Joshua Emmons, beat him to death in March 2024. Nearly everyone wrestled with those truths in a small courtroom Tuesday in Syracuse as Rykelan’s killer — his own father, who had a history of abusive behavior — was sentenced to 25 years in prison for manslaughter. “The truth is, we fought so hard to keep him safe,” foster mom Sam Adams said at Emmons’ sentencing. “It’s unbearable to think that he felt, for even one second, that he was unlovable or unwanted.”
This super-sized salmon just obliterated the New York State record. Why isn’t it a state record?
On Aug. 31, Cliff Chamberlan landed a fish for the record book: a 6.1-pound pink salmon that obliterated the previous state record, a 4 pound, 15 ounce fish caught by angler Randy Nyberg on Lake Erie in 1985. But due to an act of bureaucratic housecleaning last year, Chamberlan’s state record pink salmon was not, it turned out, a state record after all.
NY Democrats want to ‘fight fire with fire’ on congressional maps. It won’t be that easy
A month ago, Gov. Kathy Hochul promised to retaliate if Texas Republicans moved forward with plans to draw partisan district boundaries for their House seats at the urging of President Donald Trump. But now reality is setting in for Democrats who hoped New York could quickly offset any GOP gains in Texas. Despite her tough talk warning Republicans not to start a redistricting war, Hochul knows there’s not much she can do to change district lines until 2028 at the earliest.
EPA: Syracuse must improve testing, communication on lead levels in drinking water