 Thank you for joining us today as we're so excited to receive $50,000 hometown grant from T-Mobile for Champlain Street Parks revitalization. My name is Sophie Sauvet, I'm the Parks Comprehensive Planner for the City of Burlington, the Department of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, and my team leads a planning, design and construction of all things parks, and that includes the Greenway and Cemetery throughout the city. So we're very, very busy, but we love these moments of fun. More than 600 communities apply for the T-Mobile home grant, and Burlington is the recipient of one of only 25 awards. That's something that we're super proud of and super excited about for this park. Without the $50,000 from T-Mobile, we were facing a shortfall to make all the planned upgrades to Champlain Street Park. For example, we would likely need to scale back the envisioned play structure, and we would need to forego concrete pads under the picnic tables, which will make them accessible to all. But these funds will help us complete the park as envisioned by the community. As we work towards making all of Burlington's playgrounds and parks accessible, our parks more inclusive, welcoming and equitable spaces. We recognize that Champlain Street Park, a true neighborhood park, is a priority. This project has been the work since before COVID, when we led the first public outreach events to garner support for upgrades and ask everyone what they want to see in this park. As a key green space in this vibrant downtown neighborhood, we have witnessed the excitement for the planned change that's augmented as more people provided feedback and lent a hand on a workday held by CVOEO and financial support from both CVOEO and the King Street Neighborhood Revitalization Corporation. If it wasn't for COVID, things might have moved faster, and things might have been implemented, but it probably would have been a different park. So we're really excited that what we've proposed is what was really envisioned by the community. Because as everybody knows, COVID provided, of course, a lot of grief, but it also reminded everybody that we need our green spaces, and a lot more people came out to voice what they want to see in Champlain Street Park. Having access to green space, as we all know, is an invaluable part of fostering healthy, safe and happy communities, and we recognize that South Champlain Street Park is one of those key spaces in Vermont's largest city. We look forward to completing work on the park, which has already started. We've cleared some vegetation. We've added in some ornamental fencing, and we've also cleared out a lot of brush that was in the park. But what we'll be implementing in the coming months, as the RFP is now out, is including new inclusive playground equipment, an accessible pathway throughout the park, benches for resting and watching kids in the sunset, which we heard a lot about in our outreach. Bike racks, lighting in the back of the park, and new landscaping. Thank you to all the members of the public who provided feedback throughout the public outreach process. It's evident that this community cares about green spaces, about Champlain Street Park, and including everyone in play, giving families a place to play for free and providing a welcoming space for connection and community. Thank you to everyone involved in securing the hometown grant, particularly our project manager, Max Madalynski, who can be here today, who managed the whole process. Grants director, Nicole Loesch, as well as mayor, Wayne Burr, Brian Pine, director of CEDO and representative from the King Street Neighborhood Revitalization Corporation, Paul Dragan from Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, mentioned as CVOEO, who helped secure additional funds for Champlain Street Park, and Nate Lentieri, Parks Commissioner, who has been an incredible advocate for this unique community park. Now I'll pass it on to Paul Dragan, executive director of Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, sorry, I'm stumbling, to highlight his organization's reasons for supporting this project. Thanks, Paul. Thank you so much, Sophie. It's a long name. The acronym can be tough as well. So I want to thank Sophie and Burlington Parks so much and Max as well for all their work and their efforts in bringing this park to fruition. I really want to thank the mayor and the city for highlighting small places, something that could be easily overlooked, but so important to our overall community. I want to thank T-Mobile so much for the incredibly generous donation for this park. I just also want to take a moment to thank the Vermont Community Foundation. They provided CVOEO with a small grant, which we also matched to help revitalize the park. And I'm going to introduce Nate in a moment. Nate, I didn't know you were a Parks Commissioner. That's amazing. Yeah, Nate's amazing. I'll introduce him in a moment. So gardens hold very special places in our communities. They're those rare places where people, plants, trees, and wildlife intentionally gather and coexist. Gardens are an anchor to our communities. And they should not be seen in isolation, to businesses, to transportation, to the homes we build. But rather, they should be seen as a nexus and a way to tie all those things together. Part of our very important social fabric. Gardens bring forward the best of us because they demonstrate hope and possibility in the future and a commitment to an interconnected world. So I feel really deep gratitude for all the folks that came together to provide support for this garden. And I want to introduce Nate, because Nate is a rare community leader. He sees the possibility. He sees the future. He sees how important small and beautiful places can be in a complex world. He's a real leader in our community. And we've been so proud to work with him. So introducing Nate as our next speaker. Hello, everyone. Thank you all for being here. I'm going to start with some thank yous again. As with many projects, the classic adage of takes a village to raise a barn is definitely true for this little park. And that's something that's really been an important part of the process. Really, since Burlington Parks and Rec started their process in 2019. But it goes beyond that both earlier and beyond that today, too. There's been a history of neighbors coming together to, in various ways, steward this small, public green space in this really diverse king and maple neighborhood that is often overlooked just because people are doing it not for recognition, but for community, but to just give a little bit to make something a little bit better for the people around them. And it's so inspiring to me to see that ethos every day continue to be perpetuated in such a positive way. Oftentimes, you can't see the impacts of these small decisions right away. But then you look down the line and you see we're in some place totally different in just a small amount of time. So I don't know if many of you spent much time in the Champlain Street Park prior to the redesign in 2019. But it was a space that was definitely in need of some love. But it was a very special and important place, regardless. And I want to talk a little bit about place making and the importance of place with the rest of my time and talk about our neighborhood. So myself, I'm a member of the king and maple neighborhood. It's one of the distinct, defined neighborhoods within Burlington. But it's one that's often kind of overlooked in terms of its importance. It's one of the most urban communities in the state, most densely populated, and the most diverse, racially and economically. Despite that, many people look right past it as a neighborhood, despite its distinct differences from the south end, the downtown, the waterfront. Yet it still persists as originally a working class neighborhood in the early 1800s. It still maintains its roots as a place for working class members to live and thrive with their family and their community. That's not to say it's without its problems. All communities have their problems. And ours is feeling an impact right now of some really major trends. We all know them, the impacts of the pandemic, the impacts of our other pandemic and the opioid crisis, rising costs of housing, rising impacts of climate change, all these things are acutely felt in our neighborhood, daily. I see them daily, I feel them daily, I talk to my neighbors about the way that they are impacting them daily. We can't undo that all today, tomorrow, in our park, but we can, one step at a time, move in a better direction. And I wanna thank everybody who's recognized that and been a part of that, the folks from CVOEO for their sponsorship, the folks at Parks and Rec, Max and Sophie and all the amazing folks over there and the department and on the commission, the mayor's office and CEDO and the King Street Revitalization Corporation for coming in and being a part of this and recognizing that it's a small space and we're making a small difference, but the impact can be so much greater than that if we want it to be. So that's all and I also wanna say thank you very much to T-Mobile for this opportunity. It doesn't come around that often that we can move into a place where these small spaces are supported the way that they can be. So thank you all and thank you all for being here and I hope to see you all in the park for a free meal or just some time in the grass, some time soon. So with that, it's my pleasure to introduce our city's mayor, Mayor Merrill Weinberger. Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Nate. Thank you for your service on the park's commission and I'm gonna thank some more people in a moment, but I just wanna start off by saying this is a very exciting project. It's very exciting to be here with all of you. A lot in this to be appreciative and excited about. We've had a real focus on playground redevelopment over the last 11 plus years now. I believe when we, when this playground is done, looking to Sophie, you know, I hope if we've got our facts right, getting back to the state of the city but we can get this one done as well as the Oak Ledge playground which is currently under construction. There'll be eight revitalized playgrounds over the last 11 years. And this is one that I, you know, I think a lot of people will be surprised even there given the way it was neglected in the past and it's gonna be a really great space. I do agree with comments about the importance of the king in Maple neighborhood and it's probably the neighborhood where we have had the greatest degree of public investment, public infrastructure investment in various types over the last, in recent years, when you think about what was done on St. Paul Street, just off of, on both sides of King, when you think about all the investment that's gone on with the waterline redevelopment and, you know, it's been a lot of sort of core infrastructure investment. It is great to see something that is very visible and then it's about the enjoyment in the neighborhood and that the kids in particular in the neighborhood can appreciate. So thank you to T-Mobile for being part of this. You know, normally we like to think here in Burlington that we are a small city that punches above our weight class. You know, we're usually about to like project how we really are larger than a place of 45,000. For today for $50,000 to be, you know, considered a small town is okay. We'll take it for today. Thank you for recognizing the importance of smaller communities and making investments in them. We appreciate the partnership. Thank you, Sophie and the rest, Max, the rest of the parks team for making this happen. And I want to, I think she was here before, oh, there she is, Nicole, I wanna note this as another win for our new grant writing team that, you know, I love that we're thinking we're gonna have another announcement later this week. And if you can really assign that you are and the team is sort of going after opportunities of all sizes and it's very exciting that that is working. So with that, I, you know, I also welcome Brian Pine, the CEDO team and it's interesting to note that this is made part and possible by an old CEDO initiative, a community development corporation. They didn't even know existed before this event shows the sort of long-term impacts of CEDO's work. Thank you to CBOEO, thanks for your partnership on this and so many other areas. And with that, I think we are ready to, you know, to welcome the actual main event here. So welcome. I am not a public speaker, but thank you all. My name's Sean Fitzgerald and I'm excited to be representing T-Mobile on the team of New England T-Mobile and part of our hometown's grant program and the recipient of City of Burlington. It's, we do these, we've been doing these for two years now. We have now 200 small communities and cities and towns throughout America that have been awarded recipients. We award 25 every quarter and this will continue as part of our 25 million dollar investment over the next five years. And it's so cool to be part of this park revitalization project at Champlain Street Park. And with our funding helping to supply playground equipment, accessible playground equipment is awesome. I'm so glad to be part of this project and thank you very much. And without further ado, let's get the check out.