 Well, a wonderful thing it is to welcome you all here to welcome people that have been working on this project for many years as well as so many kids and families that we know are going to enjoy this for years to come. You know, in my time as mayor I've gotten to work on many great projects working with the community. We've opened major projects of all sorts from roundabouts to roads to new housing, train stations, transit stations and a number of new parks including the new frame landmark on the waterfront. And each of these efforts has their own challenges and rewarding moments and serves the community in different ways. But there is nothing more fun and hopeful as days like today when we get to open a new playground. We've done this, this is the seventh new playground over the last decade and this is not just any playground. The new Oakledge universally accessible playground, this opening is a particularly joyful day. As we say, this is a project that was, this is a project that was driven by the vision and the collaboration of this community. And as a result, it is the first of our playgrounds to be designed from the ground up to be universally accessible for kids and families. For all kids and families. Thanks to the early advocacy of parents and neighbors, broad community engagement and participation, careful design and creative problem solving, this playground is safe and inclusive space where people of all abilities can play and explore together. I am especially grateful to Oakledge for all. We're going to hear from them in a moment, which has been incredible through this process. I'm very thankful to the Parks Foundation as well for their unwavering commitment to seeing this project through. Despite many setbacks and challenges and we see you have the head of the Parks Foundation here as well. Thank you for being here. We're killing. And I want to thank the Parks team that has Parks Recreation Waterfront team that has worked so hard on this project over many years as well. The first, if you're on the Parks team, raise your hand. It's been a great effort. The first beginnings of this project were over a decade ago in 2010 and this team has stuck with it and made sure we got to today. We hope that the lessons that we've learned together through this project as well as the joy that it is already bringing to Burlington kids and the region's kids will inspire other communities across the state to prioritize equity and inclusivity in the design of their own public spaces. I know that with this new playground, the accessible treehouse that we've been fortunate to have here on the other side of this park for many years, as well as the new universal beach access that's just behind me, Oakledge will become a destination for families from around the region and really around Vermont because of the unique experience it offers. Together, these projects show the power of great collaboration and Burlington's commitment to being a place where everyone lives in a place and everyone who visits here is valued and belongs. With that, I am honored to introduce Julia Wayne from Oakledge for All, truly without the energy and enthusiasm of parents and neighbors of Oakledge for All. This exciting project would not happen, so Julia, welcome. I would like to welcome the OFA committee members, Oakledge for All committee members up with me because I don't think I should be the one to be up here alone. Ten years ago, we've had many different amazing people along the way and some of them are here today with us. Liz, I see you. You're under our orange tent. She's manning the tent for us. So I'm Julia and on behalf of Oakledge for All, thank you so much for being here today. After ten years of creating a vision to make an accessible playground in Burlington, one that provides equal opportunities to play for people with disabilities, we are finally here. It took the courage and commitment of many community members, advocates and champions to make this possible. We are also appreciative of our long-time partnership with Burlington Parks Recreation and Waterfront and their vendors, as well as all of the friends and families that have shared their expertise, experiences, time and love. And thank you for our many generous donors along the way. So to truly take apart the traditional playground concept and reinvent it so that as many people as possible can have fun, make friends and get some healthy play outside in our community spaces, spaces is a paradigm shift. So often the greatest barrier to people with disabilities is not one's own ability or limitations, but simply having access to opportunities. And it takes a lot of good work, understanding and imagination to create spaces that are intentionally accessible. Where play spaces themselves are designed to be engaged by as many users as possible. Here's to making a dream possible and making our world a better place for everyone that we care about, one playground at a time. With that said, every project has its learning moments. This playground is still a work in progress as we are working to improve access to the slide. Please scan our QR code. You can find a QR code at all of the tables. And please give feedback on how this space feels to you and how it might be better. Good, thanks Manny. He loves it. We have come a long way and in order to keep improving, community input is so valuable. A big thanks to the Parks Foundation. Parks Foundation! For many, many years. So thank you, big thanks to the Parks Foundation. They have an exciting announcement today to make a new project for continuing what we started here at Oak Budge. One playground is not enough and the Parks Foundation is launching a fundraising campaign to improve the accessibility of other playgrounds throughout Earlington. Okay, so we hope that you can lend them your support. Starting with a raffle that we have today. So under the orange tent, we have things to raffle off today. But they'll be speaking in a minute to tell you more about that. So we will now hand the mic to John Adams-Polts City of Burlington Parks Project Manager and our longest standing partner of over eight years on the team. He loves very much. Without John as our champion as well as his team, we would not be here celebrating today. Julia, I'd like to turn some attention to me, to attention to Julia, who we would not be hearing about, who ten years ago came knocking on the door of the Parks Department and said, Hey, do you want to build a universally accessible playground? And we said, kind of what? And over the course of the next couple years, we got our ducks in a row. We did a comprehensive plan for the whole department. They said, build a universally accessible playground. We did a sighting study for this particular park, Oak Legs. And that sighting study said, build the playground in this location. And from there, we set off and put together a team that could design and build this playground. Of course, with lots of input from the community and lots of input from stakeholders, the two little men brought to the table. We did have a lot of community input and a lot of real deep creativity and commitment to play from our landscape architecture team. A brand new design of some of the Massachusetts, unfortunately, they were here for an hour at the beginning of the afternoon but had to go back home to take care of the kids. So they were instrumental in putting together the design of this playground. They really are visionary and really well known and becoming more well known for their design of playgrounds. And as Julia said, we're always looking to make them better and they are helping us work out some details with the slide to increase its accessibility to participate in. I also want to thank the greater teams that it takes to build a project like this. I believe I see Ben from ECI over at the base of the stairs. We have an incredible contractor working on this project. They really got it and really paid attention to all the details. And happy to say when I would come here in the morning, they would have slid down the slide or tried out another piece of goodness. They weren't shy about that. We also had resident engineers keeping an eye on everything and they were a crucial part of the team. And I don't know if anyone knows that Oakledge Park has an angel. But Alicia, who's over there under a white cedar tree, is the angel of Oakledge and kept an eye on all of the construction. Got to know all of the crew members and brought them treats and all sorts of great stuff. And of course, we can't build something like this without money. So I want to talk a little bit about the sources of funding that I took to build this project. It's not a normal project. It may not look super expensive, but it was super expensive. Penny for Parks, of course, is our reliable source of funding for playground improvements. They got us started. The city's bond, the land, water and conservation fund, federal money managed by the state of Vermont. The building community's grant from the state of Vermont. And finally, the Dana and Christopher Reeve Foundation, who helps pay for the slide, you'll see their stickers on the slide that we just put there this morning. We also wouldn't be here today without the city's larger team and their support, including of course Parks director Cindy White behind me. The mayor, Laura Weinberger, who for many years has really supported this project and I think wanted to see this day happen and I'm happy it happened before we say goodbye to you. And lastly, I hope the kids are getting ready to line up behind me because we're going to smash through a piece of paper, falling all children. Almost, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. All right, before we... Hi, how you doing? We have one more person to hear from and that is Brooke Gilman of the Parks Foundation. One awesome thing that happened during the end of this project is the Parks Foundation came on board and we developed a... I know you really want to slide. So do I. And we developed this plan for initially five years and five playgrounds but it really is going to go on forever. Brooke, you want to come up and tell folks about that. They've already raised a bunch of money for a pomeroy, which is the first playground that we're going to undertake. And I will let you decide. Between joy and a little bit of information for all of you. Hi, everyone. Hi, everyone. I am Brooke Gilman and I am the current chair of the Parks Foundation for Burlington. Thank you, everyone, for joining today. This is incredibly exciting and before I make my remarks, I first want to acknowledge all of the current and past Parks Foundation board members. Please raise your hand. There's a lot of them here. Yes, a lot of depth of support. Thank you all. Thank you. All right. So the Parks Foundation of Burlington, it's a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We were established 10 years ago to support our great city of Burlington's park assets as well as recreation programming. And it's with this mission that and our operating with a full volunteer based board that we support our parks either directly through fundraising or in instances such as today as a fiscal agent and sponsor for truly inspirational and transformational efforts that community based groups like Oak Ridge for all bring forward and want to contribute to the city. So essentially we can act as the fiscal agent to help facilitate that when other community based groups want to get involved and bringing wonderful things to our community. So thank you again, Oak Ridge for all. I'm going to thank you many times, but that's the first. So, but it's with that that inspired by what has happened here at Oak Ridge for all and where we are today and seeing this amazing joy and play that we are excited to announce that we are establishing a playground for all playgrounds forever fund that with the mission to raise funds to make all playgrounds in Burlington universally accessible forever. There is a need to replace playgrounds currently. Many of our city's playgrounds have been removed. You may wonder why there's not many playgrounds left at certain key city parks like Letty would be a great example of that, but there are others and many are also on target to be removed because playgrounds have a life cycle and you know you can't have broken play structures and the risk of injury and such. And so together with the funding that the city has already put forward through the pennies for parks and the commitment that the city is making to our playgrounds we have a goal to raise $1 million, $1 million, $1 million to support the next five playgrounds but with that we can't stop there because that still doesn't solve all of the needs and so that's why this is a playgrounds for all, playgrounds forever fund so our goal is to raise the first $1 million to support the next five playgrounds and then beyond that to keep going and going and going until all city playgrounds are universally accessible. So today I am excited people have already, John and others have announced that we have some good news to share and I am excited to be able to share with you that we have already raised over $130,000 towards this goal. So it's a great start and we are forever thankful to those that have helped to kickstart this incredibly inspirational and transformational goal. The first $130,000 together with the funds from the city will go a long ways towards building that first next park that it will be accessible at Conroy Park in the Old North End and that's going to be a reality hopefully within the next year plus or minus, yeah, plus or minus project work of course. And so today I want to thank our key lead donors that believed in the vision for accessibility and inclusivity with our children and with play and thank you in particular to Pat Robbins and Lisa Schromberg also to Lisa Steele, thank you to Sarah Meiskins and Michael Grunen family and thank you to the OD family and with the support of these amazing donors as well as the rest of the Parks Foundation Board and support that that board has given through donations as well we are a long way to our first playground and we feel like we're off to an amazing start and are confident in our ability to move forward to continue raising more funds to make this a reality all throughout the city. So we welcome the whole community to get involved in this whether just through spreading the word, directly fundraising, donating or through advice and knowledge and information sharing of how we can make the playgrounds more accessible and improve and make improvements even from where we are today. So we have community stakeholders and partners, Oakledge for All being the most important so thank you again to Oakledge for All for not only just inspiring but helping us in this path forward as a key partner and we'll have other partners as well such as Ramon Adaptive and other community stakeholders that have a key to advise us in this effort. And so with that you can go to the Parks Foundation Parks Foundation of Burlington's website for more information about how you can get involved and I just again want to thank Oakledge for All and the team at the Burlington Parks and Recreation Waterfront for all of their support and for inspiring not just today but what will come tomorrow. So thank you all let's keep going and let's keep playing together. All right now we get to go to the Exciting Burger but the kids if you want to start gathering down here right behind you. And in just one housekeeping item we brief the three amazing cakes today that we can celebrate. We're really trying to be aware of allergies so the cakes that are on the left table are gluten free and then we have treats on the other table that do have gluten in them so please just be aware if you take cake from the gluten table or you take something from the non-gluten table it's really important that you don't mix them because there may be some children and adults here with real allergies so again just being aware with their allergies when you enjoy some beautiful cake and we are going to be ready let's take a few more kids here if anybody else wants to. Let's hold it tight. Do you want a countdown? Sure. All right we're going to do a five second countdown are you guys ready? Yeah!