 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for an important event here. I am joined by a number of colleagues who we'll speak in a moment. Kara Alnazrawi is both the director of the church team marketplace. She's also been leading up through the pandemic, our small business support effort, pandemic effort. We have Chujo Samson, who is the owner of Single Pebble here. We'll hear from in a few minutes. Doreen Kraft, the director of Burlington City Arts, since we're on her patio here. She will speak about the artist's market, they'll be taking place shortly. And Mark Bouchette, the longtime owner of Homeport and a great institution on Church Street and a longtime partner. Thank you for being here as well, Mark. We are clearly gathered here this afternoon at a very challenging time. We've we've been living amidst this pandemic now for almost nine months and we're ending a week in which the virus levels continue to surge nationally across the state and even here in Burlington, where we've been so fortunate to be largely spared from these levels of infections for so long. So for now and certainly for the weeks ahead, in large part, our focus must remain on public health and on doing everything we can to slow the spread of the virus until we have a vaccine as our main strategy for protecting the most vulnerable through this to this dangerous disease. At the same time, we know that alongside the public health crisis of this pandemic, there's another crisis and that's the economic damage of COVID-19. And this second crisis is what we're really going to focus on here today. Early on, the federal government came through with a with a stimulus package, a very significant stimulus package that was critical. And that played a huge role in lessening the pain Americans felt through the early months of this crisis. Now, though, that money is almost entirely spent and economic conditions are again worsening. We are in dire need of more federal aid to protect our workers, to support our local business owners, to keep people in their homes, to deliver critical state and local services and much more. As we continue to call for aid, and I do weigh in with our federal delegation and one way or another, basically every week, I am determined to do everything that we can as a local government in the months ahead to make our economic relief recovery efforts as robust and equitable and racially just as our public health efforts have been for the last nine months. So today, because city government can't in any way do it alone, I want to encourage Berlin Tonians who are able to to play an important role in that local recovery and to consider ways that you can patronize our locally owned businesses this holiday season. Our church, Church Street, our downtown and our business quarters throughout the city are treasures of Burlington. They provide the livelihood for many of our friends and neighbors. Indeed, 70% of Church Street stores and restaurants are locally owned. They give our city an important part of its distinctive authentic character and they offer unique and personal goods that you can't find anywhere else. They multiply the local impact of each dollar you spend by recirculating it through through our economy, sometimes many times and so much more. And right now, those essential small businesses are hurting. I'm here today to ask Berlin Tonians who are shopping and dining this holiday season to consider seeking out our local businesses. There are multiple ways that you can do this. First, and I'm going to touch on some points and then we'll hear more detail about this. First, local businesses in Burlington are operating under strict public health regulations, including capacity limits and mask wearing. And so a lot of thought has been put into how to make in person shopping safe during this pandemic. Second, as we'll also hear some detail about, many, many Burlington businesses have worked very hard to really alter their businesses during this time and expand alternatives to in person shopping and dining, offering takeout, curbside pickup, even home delivery. And you can see all those options on a webpage and one place, a webpage that the city with Tara's leadership has built. It's www.loveburlington.org. Third, you see behind us these great booths that have just gone up over the last couple days. There will be three outdoor winter markets on the three upcoming weekends where shoppers can browse goods outside in an environment that's carefully regulated for COVID safety. We know that doing anything outside is much safer than the comparable activity indoors. I want to give a shout out. You can you can see work continues on this. As we speak here, getting the power in Zach Williamson, playing a key role in this from VCA as he does in so many city initiatives and events. We also want to thank our friends down at Generator who fabricated the parts and did much of the assembly as well. A couple final just a final thought for me. I truly believe that Burlington can and will emerge on the other side of this pandemic as an even stronger and healthier community. Our locally owned businesses are an important part of that and I encourage everyone who's able to consider ways to help them. With that, I am going to turn over the microphone now to Kara on this rowing and we'll hear the rest of from our colleagues. We'll take some questions. Thank you, Kara. Too much to add. I think the mayor hit all the main points of the reason for this for us all to remember that these business owners and their employees are our neighbors. There are friends, their children go to school with our children. They are members of our community and it's also vital to remember that our economy is driven by us. It's not driven by anyone else. It's us. It's our dollars. It's our initiative to go out there and seek local options. This means that we can save our community so that as the mayor said, we can get onto the other side of this pandemic and emerge vibrant and healthy enough to keep going and keep growing. These next few weeks are very crucial for these businesses as we all know the fourth quarter of any year is mainly the time when these businesses make their most revenue and it's also the time in our economy where the most dollars are being spent. There are safe and contactless ways to do business in Burlington right now and spend your dollars locally. These merchants and restaurateurs have been bending over backwards to come up with ways to safely get their products into your hands. You can do contactless sales, curbside pickup. You can have local delivery. They have expanded website offerings that previously a lot of our local businesses did not have but we've been working hard to get it to them. You can find them all on loveburlington.org. You can sort by any number of filters to find exactly what you're looking for. So just in closing I urge all Burlingtonians and everyone in the surrounding communities to please make that extra effort to spend your dollars locally. Thank you. To emphasize the incredible safety that has been what has guided all of our work over the past nine months in dealing with the pandemic with the leadership of our mayor and you know I was talking with somebody yesterday who said to me you know but you're encouraging people to go out when you know in some ways we've been encouraged to stay home and be safe. But I would say and posit that actually the ways that we're asking people come together is very safe. These are very regulated spaces where people can come together, shop, view all kinds of new products and offerings and learn about what's available in the community and it's so much more fun that shopping online on Amazon or other places but it is an incredibly safe and I just want to drive that point home because I think that it's important for people to feel that in order to come down. Also this is a gorgeous downtown and there are so many public murals and statues and beautiful places to stop and great places to of course take a moment grab a bite with your family etc. So I wanted to talk very briefly about the creation of these stalls. They were made and designed by artists, engineers, and generator and I'd like to say their names. Elliot Katz, Sheamus Hammond and Alex Hall were in the lead and they did an extraordinary job of adapting some booths that they saw that were used in Montreal and throughout Europe and adapted it for our use here and materials and these were yes they've taken a lot of time to put up the first time but we're going to be able to reuse these over and over again and create opportunities throughout the winter for our community to continue to come together. This weekend of course we're featuring artists in the artist market these stalls will be filled by 19 different artists who will be sharing their craft their where their art form with with you. I encourage you to come down for sheer entertainment to see what is made in this community what is produced locally is it is totally amazing and it will be a beehive of creativity that you'll get to experience by that. The last thing that I want to say is that one of the most creative pieces of the silver lining if you will in this pandemic has been the way that different departments have worked together in ways that we've never done that before and so for instance as just an example the library friends of the Fletcher Free Library will be out with us here and they'll be a part of this sale and raising funds for the library for books for young people so we collaborate much more creatively much more often and much more thoughtfully in this time and we're so lucky that has a community that loves each other cares for each other and believes that the answers are within all of us so thank you so much for coming out and being with us and sharing the word today. I can expect after this is the safe place so there's so many support from the government a single pebble sends a large way to feed everyone so I just want to say thank you. I also say that you know obviously some folks are going to do in-person shopping and sometimes it's necessary you don't know what you want necessarily even through the thickest of normal December shopping those days are fairly light for folks and it's a good time to come and not also many of the businesses are doing shopping by point I have an assistant to to shop with you while you're down there as well it's I would say that it's important to support those things that you like because they can go away and and you know we've made it thus far given us and we really appreciate that very similarly about many city operations we've learned how to do do things in this dark challenging months ahead but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and when we get on the other side of this we will be a stronger and better community we got this this event is about making sure as many of the valuable members valuable businesses that make up the downtown that offer so much and are such a part of the authenticity and the unique uniqueness of Burlington's downtown make it through and are there with us on the other side so with that we'd be happy to answer any questions hard you have the $1,400 they're an asset that the city will retain yeah that we'll be able to use in the future oh absolutely yeah making investments like this you know one of the first things we did at the beginning of the of the pandemic was to in the first weeks of it was to set aside out of city reserves about a million dollars so that we can move quickly make investments like this if we saw ways that that we could help help the local community in one way or another whether it's a public health intervention like the wastewater testing we've been talking a lot about this week or an economic development investment having these local dollars from the city's financial strength able to invest quickly and move quickly in this tumultuous evolving time um has has allowed us to do a lot more than we would have the city council had not supported that if we didn't have those resources sorry can i jump in real quick um we just clarified our numbers these boots um that were designed and created by the generator are a thousand a piece and there are 10 of them all right any other questions if not thank you all for coming okay um well why don't we why don't we just wrap up this first if uh and i'm happy to talk about other things so um thank you all great to see you all good luck with the rest of the holiday season thank you for being here too good and uh we'll see you all again soon thank you all for being here too so do you want me to just stay here yeah i just want to touch it go ahead pick from up the wastewater testing yes the other day you mentioned that there's more COVID-19 being detected in that wastewater in the city of Burlington i'm just wondering if you can talk about that a little bit more and so yes we've been doing this testing we as a emerging kind of innovative technology starting in august is when we first started the baseline testing and we've been doing it exactly for a moment like this the promise the opportunity of wastewater testing is that it is unlike many other ways that we track and measure the virus many of them happen pretty late in the process after someone has gotten sick and is symptomatic um or is even in the hospital that's where a lot of the metrics come in by that time someone has been sick for a long time and they've have been at risk of spreading the disease to others wastewater testing people get us many people who get COVID-19 they start shedding signs of the virus in their waste very early on and so that what what we saw with the test results that came back Wednesday is that from before Thanksgiving to the Sunday and Monday after Thanksgiving there was a substantial jump in the amount of of the virus in Burlington's wastewater citywide and what we did yesterday is basically raise a warning flag about that announce the people that what we feared that the virus would transmit at social gatherings over the holiday appears to have happened in a significant way if you were at one of those gatherings and are living here in Burlington we are strongly urging you to go and get tested right away so that we all can know you can know and your neighbors your neighbors won't know exactly but the community can know the public health system can know that you are positive and then hopefully we can contain the virus quickly so the purpose of putting that information out yesterday was to raise a flag to make a call to action if you were at over the Thanksgiving holiday a social gathering with other households we strongly urge you to take advantage of the vast testing resources available here in Burlington get tested as quickly as possible so that we can know whether or not you're positive great thank you thank you all I forgot to make one point and I this is like I never do this so it's okay if I'm back and I'm on camera well you know we talked about the fact that these cost a thousand to produce and that the city contributed significantly to the creation of them Northfield Savings Bank is our underwriter for this event and their funding helps support the making of these as well as underwriting the artist market this weekend so we want to you know big shout out to them for their incredible support