 Hello, and welcome to the Burlington Mayor's Show for the month of November. They're getting in at the tail end of November here, and we are excited to have you all here. We're trying something new this month, too. We're both on Live at 525. We're doing a Facebook Live feed of it this month for a great, what's going to be a great show. We're calling this the Holiday Special. We've never done a Holiday Special on Live at 525 before, and we have a great lineup of city partners here to talk about different aspects of what is happening during the holiday season here in Burlington. These are city and tertiary marketplace-led initiatives, and there's a lot to cover, so we'll dive right in in a second. I will say, if you want to call in and ask about any of these holiday events or really anything that's on your mind, 8-6-2-3-9-6-6 is the number, and we love hearing from you. But until we hear from some callers, we're going to dive right in. We are trying some new things at the library under the leadership of Mary Denko, who's our director at the Fletcher Free Library. She's been with us. How long has it been now, Mary? It'll be two years in February. Two years in February. Not quite two years. Ow. It feels like you've become such an institution so quickly. It feels like you've been here longer. You're having a huge impact on the library. You're bringing that 150-year-old or close to that institution, modernizing it in a variety of ways, and doing new things. We had this great eclipse event last year. We had a cooling center this summer during the heat wave, and last week we did something new to you, and you were really personally involved in doing something new at the library on Thanksgiving Day. Right. We opened up for Thanksgiving. We opened up from 12 to 4, and it was great. We had limited services, but it was a nice time to be open, and people came in and they used the library in a variety of ways. They hung out in red, used the computers. We had some families that said we just need to get the kids out from underfoot from the cooking that's going on, so they went into the kids' room and read books, played, and used the computers there. So it turned out to be a really great day. Great. And about 100 people came out? Yes, over 100 people. And it's a pilot that we're trying, and so we're going to do it again on Christmas. On December 25th, we're going to be open again from noon to 4. Limited services, but come on down to the library if you want a place to go. It was you and your husband that kept us open on Thanksgiving days. Yes, my husband and myself, and we also got some volunteers from the community that came out. We had some people brought snacks, and we had coffee and cocoa and tea, and that was nice too. Just lovely. Yeah, it was a good time. And then I'll make a quick plug for this weekend. We have our friends book sale, so we have the Friends of the Fletcher Free Library. They're our supporting nonprofit agency, and on Saturday from 10 to 5.30, we're selling books, and on Sunday from noon to 5.30. So it's a great time to come pick up some wonderful books. Books for gifts? Great. So that's, so thank you for that. We actually, we do have a caller already. Let's go to the phone line, and hello, you're on the air with us. Hello. Good evening, Mayor and all, Dale Tolson from the New North and calling. Happy holidays to everybody. Thank you. Thanks, Dale. Happy holidays to you. It's been a while since you've called in. It's good to have you back. Okay. I got one concern, and that affects everybody, I think, in the city. The heads and departments working together, and around this holiday season, I think they all need to work together to make it a better holiday experience for everybody. The way the Department of Public Works is operating right now, they're not working together with our fire department and our police department. We've got the bollards up, we've got the planners up. Snowplow drivers take great pride in plowing our streets, and we don't need to put things in their way unnecessarily, and these things are in their way. Our emergency personnel take great pride in not having any white marks on their nice bright red vehicles. These things are in their way, it's causing problems. Now, I'm talking about working together here. It doesn't sound like we're working together if we leave these things up inhibiting the work of our snowplow removers and our emergency personnel. Management has got to get together and work on it to make a better experience for all, and I will bring up one more- Okay, I'll go for it. One more thing about working together. Okay. This past weekend on North Avenue, around the 1300 block, there was a major hole dug in the middle of the street. It was left unmarked from Thursday through Sunday. I reported it on C-Click Fix. It was finally addressed on Monday morning, but in that time, fire department personnel drove over this, police department personnel drove over this, and public works snowplows drove over this, as well as many visitors to the city, as well as many residents in the city. It was very, it was not marked at all. If you didn't know it was there, like I do because I live around here, you didn't see it. It had an adverse effect on vehicles. That's working together. Police departments, fire departments, Department of Public Works, etc., all working together and communicating. We need to do better on that, and I hope that's a holiday goal. Thank you all. All right, Dale. Thank you. I appreciate you calling in. Let me address a few elements of that. Big picture, Dale, I think you're on to something with this sentiment that department heads need to work well together. Part of the legacy of how we evolved as a city, I think that has not always been one of our strengths. We had this commission form of government that really kind of was structured in, that you had different departments, were very much in their own kind of silo, and had their own bosses, really, and there were certainly attempts at collaboration, but in that structure, it was hard. It's something I'm proud of as one of our long-time department heads here. I think the level, I'd like to think, and I, you know, Dorian's just being nice to me, but I think the level of cross-departmental coordination has really come a long way over the last seven years. It's been a major goal of ours. We have a number of processes that we put in place to try to encourage that. We, for example, we have something called BTVSTAT now, where we sit down once a month and we look together with all the department heads at one table. Each department takes turns reporting out, and everyone knows, I think, more what's going on in other departments than we used to, and we kind of share lessons and good things that are going well, spread through the city in different ways. We started, you know, something Mary's been involved in and Dorian has been involved in of late is when we committed to doing an equity report this year. It's kind of organically, from my perspective, BCA, the library, and parks started meeting and thinking about how we are providing services for kids and having conversations that I don't think have really happened in the past. So you're right that that is a really important part about having a successful local government, and we're trying to do that. I know that's not specifically the issue you called in about. Certainly, I'm concerned here, the incident on North Avenue you're talking about, I'll look into that. I had not heard about that, see if there's anything systematic that we can address there. There's a lot of controversy around the issue with the planters and the bollards that you're raising. And I guess the best I can do there is to assure you that you're right that there are concerns among snow plow drivers about some of these areas. I was on the route last year during one of the big storms with a snow plow driver where we went down Union Street and it definitely did make that a little bit more, you know, significantly more challenging that particular route. We have had a robust discussion within city government about what should come out seasonally, what should stay, that the quick build items are built so that they can be removed and many of them, a number of them are during the winter months, some of these planters are being moved out of there where we think there's a really problematic obstacle to snow plowing in other areas of decision has been made to leave it for at least this season. We're experimenting with new areas here, we may make different choices in the future, we are taking input from the snow plow drivers and certainly the fire department in how all this is done. But it's not easy, they're competing demands, competing interests being kind of sorted out here and we try to do that the best we can and do it in a way that can't please everybody but hopefully tries to get the balance right. So with that, we're going to go back to the kind of holiday special here. And so we talked about what happened on Thanksgiving at the library and what's going to happen in this coming weekend and on Christmas in the weeks ahead with another one of these sort of special openings. Jenny can you talk about what's happening right now in the downtown on the marketplace in terms of holiday promotions? Yeah, well the day after Thanksgiving we had our big holiday kickoff. So the tree has officially been lit, Santa is officially in town for the season. So it's really kicking off holiday shopping, celebrating this season with your family, with your friends. We're trying to make everything really accessible downtown so that people can come enjoy themselves and celebrate you know what it's all about. We have free holiday activities every weekend, free for families to enjoy, miniature train rides, Santa's reindeer come. That's my favorite. Yes, the Santa 5k is this weekend. There really is something going on all the time from now leading to Christmas and additionally part of the holiday kickoff weekend was Black Friday sales but also small business Saturday which is such an important day for local merchants and to really get the message out there about the importance of shopping locally to emphasize how many local stores we have downtown. 75% of businesses on Church Street are local which people don't often realize but most of them are owned by people that live here and that that really helps make Church Street what it is. It's very unique. Yes, there's you you will find so many unique local gifts that you can't find online so that's really part of what makes Church Street so special. Excellent. It was exciting. Thank you for organizing that sort of press conference to kick off this amounts of small business Saturday event. It was exciting to be a part of that and check out some of those local shops. I think central thing we want to make sure we're communicating clearly this year is that Burlington is open for business. Yes, there's some construction going on in the downtown but there's plenty of parking within two three blocks of Church Street. There are hundreds and hundreds of available spaces even at the busiest times. We are running more, you know, we have the biggest parking promotion that we've you know really ever had or anytime recently in terms of extended free parking opportunities either in the garages or through the app and so you know if someone tells you they're not going down to Burlington to shop because they're worried about parking. Tell them not to work. Tell them to call the mayor and find their space. I don't know if being able to shop and then having good food in between the shopping so you can like you know rejuvenate and do more shopping. Yeah, go read a book or go look at some art and really break up the whole experience. Yes. Lots of different kinds of activities I think in our downtown which I think is what makes it a unique shopping experience. Yes. Yes, we're so grateful to DPW for partnering with us on four hours. It's a good cross-dependent collaboration effort there. Yes, they have been remarkable to work with. Four hours of free parking in the Lakeview garage which is next to Hotel Vermont and the College Street garage which is next to the Hilton. So really you know that's it's huge. That's double the free parking. Thank you for pointing out those locations because that's something that a surprising number of people even people who live in the area I think don't understand fully about the Burlington downtown is it is true that once in a while the marketplace garage that that is that garage does fill up. Yes, it does. However if just go to the west side of Church Street you know barely farther away there are multiple city-owned garages that always have dozens and dozens not hundreds of empty spaces and so we have tried to you know we've done various things with wayfinding and you know we actually have ambassadors out during this holiday season to try to direct people in person towards those other garages once the marketplace garage is full but we need we need people to get the word out in other ways as well. Those other garages are just two blocks from Church Street so you know it's it's really not that much farther it's just getting there and good exercise. Yeah and if you park in the on the Cherry Street side and then you walk up Cherry Street you can see the beautiful new mural that's on outdoor gear exchange so if you haven't walked up Cherry Street they haven't seen it yet so get your picture taken in front of the love mural. Right yes two mural two gorgeous murals on Cherry Street. How do people Jenny you got a great social media operation if people want to kind of pay attention to events as they unfold on the marketplace how do they do that. Yes we have all of our events listed on our Facebook page Church Street Marketplace we also have all of our information on our Instagram at Church Street Marketplace we post information about parking about events about all of the stores we're going to be posting a lot of gift ideas that you can find locally so there will be a lot of holiday content and we also use it to engage you know I love seeing the pictures that people post and they tag Church Street or they are taking selfies in front of the tree with their friends and so we always like to engage with people and see them having a great time. It's really it's a really outstanding social media Instagram feed and Facebook page for people who do that kind of thing. So great so you know so that's that is you know we are taping this show or some of you are watching it live here on November 29th just as we are kind of underway with the holiday season and and these promotions and the opportunities are going to go all the way through Christmas of course something that is going to happen at the end of the holiday season as we start the new year during craft from Burlington City Arts long-time director of Burlington City Arts is here to talk about this exciting event that is also we want people to know Burlington is not is open in the way it has always been and and even improved ways on New Year's Eve as well with what we're calling highlight. We are throwing out that red carpet to our community members and to visitors and family members from around the world and highlight will be the new New Year's Eve celebration it will feel distinctively different but it'll also have some very familiar parts so some of the old-time favorites what we call the traditions that became beloved by this community we're continuing we're creating a larger parade but very much having the things that people love and there's going to be lantern making in the schools and community centers in the month leading up to first night and so we're hoping we're gonna have 800 children and families walking in the parade carrying their handmade lanterns and we've got some wonderful new events like the fireworks are gonna be at 8 o'clock in the evening as opposed to having two sets so we're gonna have one larger set and hope families will stay downtown and to do that we're going to have an enormous bonfire down on the waterfront and Cirque de Fuego's beautiful magical fire acts and events inside of Echo throughout the day and then turning into a dance hall at night so many of the organizations that have taken part in first night in the past have rethought things and we have not one artistic director but it's community led so there are community members and artists throughout the Vermont community who created proposals and then a community of their peers chose some of the best and ones that we could run with this year and we funded them and they're creating events throughout Burlington and I think that's really important to it there is a tremendous focus on the downtown because of the energy there but it will emanate out into all of the neighborhoods into the north and the south and throughout the evening so you can go with your family park one place but you'll be able to take public transportation very easily to get to other parts of the city and in the years to come we hope to expand that we're you know this is an experimental year you know people gotta like ride the train and you know no there's gonna be a few surprises and you know be with us in this but I think it's gonna be just a thrilling evening there's gonna be some tremendous talents some artistry and artists that people adore and I's Mitchell one phone ringing off the hook today I don't know what got out but yeah yeah can I volunteer and come to the show I want to see her can I you know so we're excited about that but there's also like very accessible events that are about making art or coming to the library Mary talk about a few things happening at the library so yeah we've always kind of been a nice space for first night and we're excited to continue that with highlight we've got from 1 to 4 p.m. young tradition Vermont is gonna be programming and we're gonna have a instrument petting zoo they're gonna do some cool things throughout the day and then from 4 to 5 we've got the giant family drum circle that's gonna be there a drum circle in the library I mean you gotta love that right up in our children's area at 1130 we're going to do a noon years Eve stories and snacks so the little ones can come and do a countdown at noon instead of midnight which will be fun we've got some light up the year with Lego creations we've got some special light up Legos that we have for the teens we're doing LED wearable circuits so I just love this theme about light it's been a great theme for us to pick up on and run with yeah very definitely yeah so I think there is something for everyone and I also we're going to help people sort of like concierge sir service to be able to plan so that you can think about how you might as a family enjoy the event or if we're gonna do that well we're gonna do it for social media we're gonna do it on the website we're gonna put some what a day could look like and what you could follow what's a great idea for a family who has young children this is would be fabulous for teens when you should take your children home quickly find the babysitter and come back out and you know so that there really is literally a multi-generational event happening throughout the 13 hours of first night excuse me of highlight highlight it's a great website by the way it's really filling up and it's very easy to navigate great great I'm glad yeah so I think people with first night we're used to buying buttons to get into the shows we're gonna have a new system this year we will have these pink bracelets I got mine today and buy one for the whole family I will and it will be surprisingly affordable when I do yeah the prices are you know we it is as you've said sort of an experimentation year and the pricing in some sense is also an experiment we reduced the cost for this substantially adults will be able to buy their bracelets for ten dollars and and kids it's only five dollars that kids up to what 12 or what is that 13 so you can take a family of four out for $30 from doing math right that's pretty it's not many other events like that and and if that is an affordable we always have a policy of we will subsidize our entire community and we we're setting up that fun now in fact after we had a lunch in today and we invited a number of people to come to help us support this because we're still fundraising so if anybody wants to ring the phone and dial in and and become an underwriter supporter tonight that would be lovely but someone who was at our little gathering today called and said I'd really like to help create a fund so that you do have the ability to subsidize no matter who calls and needs tickets to to come to this event and I think that's really important and we'll be reaching out to all of the senior centers and all of the youth centers and letting people know both of these events and the activities as well as the access to low-cost or funded tickets so yeah it's it's been a community event in that way as well and that certainly the city is contributing some funding to this effort but it there are a long and growing list of community partners who are chipping in as well to try to preserve what I think has become a great Burlington tradition I think we first night had a tremendous run here in Burlington it has been called the longest running independent first night in the world 35 35 years and I think over that time we really got we were we had a real treat as a community be able to come out consistently on New Year's Eve and have just a wonderful range of opportunities we thought it was really important that that continue and we're we're working hard to to try this and modernize this event bring and bring a new version of it we very much appreciate the law again large number of community partners are helping us do that you know we will say the lead sponsors who have been very generous our Burlington telecom and the new the coming owners of Burlington telecom as part of that as well as Lake Champlain Transportation are leading a long list of generous local donors who are making this happen I mean it's tremendous and I I I do want to applaud the mayor and the city council who really came to us this year and said this is something that is a beloved tradition it's something we don't want to lose we're willing to step up to the plate and fund it to a degree that I don't think the original city budget had imagined but you know really found some creative ways to do that and I think the community in response to that has stepped up in kind and you know this is again one of those it takes a village in order to create an event like that and I think we're you know being true to that Burlington tradition so I'm delighted I'm really pleased and and excited I mean every day something new gets added on Friday we're gonna be announcing five new events as a part of this and so it just keeps growing and not not that our budget keeps growing but there's some individuals and community groups are growing coming forward they're sort of joining something that's already happening or they're augmenting or they're creating something new and they're funding it themselves so it's delightful can you give us a hint well there was a beloved component of first night that families came to every year and it was a circus and it was something that became very difficult to fund and we weren't sure that we'd be able to bring them back but we've found a way to reimagine reinvent that circus and to offer it in a number of different ways to the community so that's making news here on the live at five 25 Mayor's show just a couple minutes left so again to find out to that great website you just you put in Burlington and highlight it should come I like TV org should pop up it's very very easy to get around figure out how many venues are we gonna have do you think in the end well you know I keep saying there aren't as many venues but they're almost are there's about 19 venues okay and they range from how far the farthest south is south would be mid block Pine Street near Conan and the St. Joe's in the old north end great there's sort of the two and what is and you say if people can get and get around on mass trends that we're gonna have what are the it's gonna be full GMT buses or what what's okay yeah great and that will be part of the the schedule will be there but we're gonna just try to run them continuously and specifically targeted towards the hours of the day where the largest number of people might be traveling to those parts of town great all right well we are almost out of time thank you to the three of you for for coming on the show taking your evening to talk about this more importantly thank you for the huge efforts that are happening in these three different parts of the cities to make this holiday season special and vibrant here in Burlington thank you to Dale for calling in earlier we look forward to hearing from others of you next month we do this we try to do this once a month the mayor's show will be back in December and we have a lot going on in city government as we kind of march towards now we kind of starting and we get through the holidays and then we start turning our attention to town meeting day we know it's gonna be a busy one this year we have a number of charter changes that we're working through with the city council right now that voters will get a chance to weigh in on so we hope you'll you'll tune in in December and the months to come on the mayor's show and we may have some of you well I'm sure we'll have some of you back sometime soon thank you all have a great holidays