 All right thank you so much everybody for coming out today. My job here really is just to give thanks and appreciation. I want to start with this wasn't our idea to do a grand reopening of the community resource center. This idea came from a guest who I was spending some time in the park a lot and his guest said to me well don't all these great renovations why not get everybody together and why not do a grand opening and I was delighted this morning because I got a text on my phone from Brenner a community outreach worker and his guest had the idea to have this event for the grand reopening just received housing and a housing voucher and is moving in today to an apartment with the Champlain Housing Trust. I'm feeling very close to these days so it's great news because this person was living outside for a really long time and that's like an example of the work we do and the work we can do when we all work together so deep appreciation for the tip from our guests to actually do this reopening. I also want to take a moment to appreciate all the guests that come to the community resource center. This is really important they are valuable and important members of our community and we will never forget them we will always serve them and this is their permanent home. We had a time where this resource center came and went. Sara knows this, Marcella knows this, we were in different locations. Now we're here at Feeding Chittenden soon to be Feeding Champlain and it is a permanent community resource center for people who are unsheltered experiencing homelessness and other members of the community that's what we do right we build community. So I want to thank our community resource center team Brenna Todd Adam Ryan everybody there's a few of them they provide incredible services all day long here housing advocate services and a whole wide range of other services. I want to really thank our Feeding Chittenden team. The Feeding Chittenden team provides incredible meals here every single day and I especially want to thank our Feeding Chittenden soon to be Feeding Champlain Valley director Rob Mann because when we were moving around trying to find a place for people Rob said yeah why don't you come on over to Feeding Chittenden so to do that we renovated the space but in renovating the space we displaced all our staff folks so we could serve more people in the community so they've been working off-site and they've kind of sacrificed a lot so our goal in the next phase is to build the second floor so we'll serve as office of this conference space and meeting space so we appreciate any of your support around that capital campaign. I also want to thank Tom Crotain, Green City Builders who's done a great job Tom's been working closely with CHT Champlain Housing Trust not only on this building but he's working at the Samaritan House our other shelter Franklin County to do renovations and we recently took on the Champlain and Emergency Shelter and Tom is going to be doing that work as well so thank you so much Tom for everything and I've got a host of different people that I deeply want to thank. The mayor, Mayor Weinberger has been so incredibly supportive of CVOEO our work around homelessness in our broader work we have a lot of different programs we feel backed up we feel supported we feel a compassion we feel the energy and it's the mayor and it's the mayor's office and it's Sarah Russell the special assistant and homelessness and Marcella who is not here and Brian who have done everything to support CVOEO so this has been really really valuable partnership and a relationship so thank you so much Mayor and I think in terms of thanks I just want to mention I'll introduce Michael in a second we had a really special relationship with the Champlain Housing Trust I just meant to mention this place Samaritan House Champlain Inn we work so closely together and we couldn't appreciate our partners more absolutely than Michael, Chris and the whole team at the Champlain Housing Trust and I want to thank members of our congressional delegation for coming I'll introduce them shortly. I'm sorry to talk so long without further ado. Paul thank you for that you know more importantly thank you for for your incredible work in the community I do feel like we challenges that we are facing mean that organizations are working very closely together on a number of fronts we're cities grateful for the partnership over at the Elmwood Avenue shelter we're grateful for the new about to launch partnership down on Shelburne Avenue as you take over the management of what has been the a new place shelter there and we are very thankful that we can announce the reopening of this resource center today you know this the community resource center is is still relatively new addition to this community it's something that really came about as a result of the pandemic and the some the initial emergency steps that the city and partners took during the pandemic we have been proud to be a funder of early efforts here both through the use of ARPA funds then very importantly Senator Leahy said can direct congressional directed spending I guess I can't quite look at you guys on the Leahy front anymore but I know you're continuing on continuing on that work the we are also excited about the talk of you know not more than the talk with the plans for future expansion the city has been supportive of that for years through our community development block grant funding and we look forward to to that happening um you know I I think uh we should just be very clear that what the the work that the CVOO the Feeding Chittenden is doing right now here in this building and elsewhere in the community given the circumstances that we're facing is critical life-saving work there is a just tremendous need right now as a result of the combination of very challenging factors factors of economic factors as we come out of the pandemic the incredible shortage of housing that we're facing now and the related unprecedented number of people who are living unsheltered in this community and a drug crisis that as bad as we thought it was last decade is is worse than ever these are tremendous pressures we see the strain of these pressures all around us every day um we would be feeling them far worse we would be have a far more dire situation our hands if we did not have CVOO Feeding Chittenden, CHT and other critical partners stepping up meeting this need committed to making sure that we do right by everyone in our community and that's what the community resource center is really about the city is is proud to be a supporter of and we're going to continue to be a strong partner to you going forward in this and and around the city thanks Michael Mati needs no introduction I just want to really thank Michael and all of CHT for an incredible partnership over the years it it takes all of us to come together to solve homelessness and Michael's been just a tremendous partner so thank you Michael so I'll just be very brief I did prepare some remarks 30 years ago we partnered with CVOO and developed the emergency food shelf at this location uh the city of brelinton actually provided a bond to underwrite that and a fundraising campaign happened in the community which built the relief buildings which include this building legal aid and what was the CHT headquarters and Cotsway station and Cots headquarters down in south windows game great effort it's good to see that 30 years ago 30 years today we're still doing that kind of work and that we continue that work and the support that we're doing in this community on the personal note I was the lead developer of this building so when I was given a tour and said have you seen this lately I said yeah I think I was helping when they poured the foundations on this one so it's great to see this building as small as it is as a facility continue to transition and do the work that it is doing in the community so we're proud to be a partner in this now for decades and hopefully for decades to come it is a part of our mission to support the development of community facilities such as this one for Feeding Champlain and we'll continue to do that we want to we renew we want to today we want to continue renewing this partnership in the development of this resource center looking forward to the next phases I want to thank the contractors who we can't do anything without great contractors out there Donald Dugan and our staff who led the development and their work were humbled and proud to be a part of this let me say we're cvoa you know we're not getting married but we're dating heavily we got a lot of work together and it's all good work so thank you very much Paul let me be a part of this thanks so much Michael and of course it takes partnerships on all levels right the community the nonprofit level at the city level the state level and what would we do without our congressional delegation we have the most amazing uh congressional delegation and staff in the in the country so Earhart thank you for all you've done for us and please come on out thanks Paul and uh Michael thanks for reminding us about the relief campaign that was a real path breaking uh campaign back in the early 90s and part of that campaign really brings us to what we see today here on on North Winooski Avenue was an entire effort to redevelop this this neighborhood which had long needed redevelopment and nonprofits like cvoa and the food shelf really and legal aid were anchors for for that so thanks for reminding us about that I cut my 10 pages of remarks down to just a couple here but let me just say thank you for having me here today on behalf of uh senator sanders uh want to congratulate and thank Paul and the cdoeo team uh Michael and uh shamblade housing trust team for their partnership in this and of course uh the mayor and the cdoe team that's uh that administers community development block grant dollars which are what has helped make this important expansion possible um on birdie's behalf I really want to thank everyone here today because I know all of you do um different things to help alleviate poverty in our community and to help alleviate homelessness and to help bring people into feeling part of the community which is what everybody really needs they need opportunity they need housing they need food they need their basic needs met but everyone also needs a community to be part of to to thrive so thank you for all of all the work that you're doing um having grown up in a family that uh struggled financially uh senator sanders understands full well the toll um that economic hardship can take and the importance of meeting people's needs in a country that is the richest in the history of the world it is absolutely unacceptable that close to 600 000 people are sleeping homeless on our streets in our country um every year uh in vermont we have three thousand two hundred ninety five folks who were counted last year as part of the point in time count um on census on homelessness uh that we're living either in motels in encampments um or in other places unfit for a human habitation including um over 650 children I mean think about that 650 kids living without a place to call home every every night that's just an absolute tragedy and it's completely unacceptable to uh to my boss um it's unacceptable that we have more people living with food insecurity and reliant on snap benefits than ever before all these are reasons why the senator fights every day to make sure that federal funding which is helping make this important expansion possible to help bring federal funding to burlington and to vermont communities to help make these kinds of resources available for vermonters especially vermonters who are vulnerable and experiencing hardship this is why the senator is fighting hard to make sure that the government does not shut down at the end of this month the federal government shutdown would be an absolute catastrophe for this country and it is something that bernie is fighting every day to to prevent one of the things that the senator has been proud with senator lehi and uh best senator welch and uh congresswoman ballot to bring back and engage in his community directed spending that's the new titles for earmarks and we're also pleased that the senator nominated phase two of this project for one of his congressional directed spending awards it would be a 1.5 million dollar contribution to phase two and we're we've got our fingers crossed we don't know it's made an important hurdle by being included in the senate's budget however the senate's budget still needs to be reconciled with the house we don't know exactly where that's going to end up especially with a looming potential looming government shutdown but we've got our fingers crossed that will make it through to the finish line and hope to be here to help celebrate the beginning of phase two at some point in the very near future so thanks again for having me today and congratulations everyone thank you so much jaren hard you know part of the transformation from feeding chintin to feeding the shampoos valley is to really get food out to where people are at all four counties adison chitin and franklin and grand al county are feeding chitin and staff where i see rob midhat nana have really led that charge we know right now that um rates of food insecurity among children and adults in vermont are higher than the rest of the country so one of the first things we started to do rob and his team started to do was where can we create food hubs we had james come up and visit colchester the warehouse uh there and talked about the importance of a food hub uh expansion we've got one in middlebury we're developing one in sheldon but we got congression community uh directed spending for that food hub and colchester from senator welch through james's work and connections and we so so appreciate that we have to alleviate hunger in this state yes thank you paul for the introduction and everyone else for your remarks so far my name is james mcnerney i'm constituent services and outreach representative in senator welch's office obviously the senator is stuck in dc at the moment and sense his regrets that he wasn't able to be here but asked that on his behalf that i offer his congratulations to cv o yo in the whole team for the completion of this really incredible renovation project here um and how needed and necessary it is right now you know while we all come to terms with the post pandemic reality i think the truth is for so many vermonters things are more precarious now than ever from finding access to affordable housing to accessing healthy and nutritious food options to staying warm during the quickly approaching cold winter months all of those things are absolutely vital and our communities have a partner that is really second to none here in cv o yo so as these needs continue to grow so must our capacity and our creativity and our desire to solve these sorts of problems that that we're facing and and all of those qualities are really on display here today with the completion of this expansion project and its future iterations and they've been on display at nearly every cv o yo event that i've been to including the champlain street park cleanup sponsorship and and the the food hub that paul mentioned here just a minute ago and and those are really uh those qualities and successes that have resulted are really a testament to the leadership that we have at cv o yo at feeding chitenden certainly from the mayor in his office the city of berlington and from cht as well uh so the senator certainly remains steadfast in his commitment to advocate for programs that protect and support our most vulnerable communities in vermont and i know the inspiration that he takes from your leadership is something that will be very needed as he continues to fight the good fight in dc so on behalf of the senator congratulations on the completion of this project congratulations to paul and the cv o yo team special thanks to mayor weinberger the city of berlington the cht for their partnership and we await with excitement future developments to come thank you and you know we're so lucky in our delegation and we're so blessed to find out that uh congresswoman ballin was joining the delegation she's always been a great friend for social justice and human rights david i'd like you to come up and speak and thank you for coming thank you very much paul my name is david share here on behalf of congresswoman ballin she's very sorry she couldn't be here today the main message she wanted me to pass along was a message of thanks and gratitude for the extraordinary extraordinary work of cv o yo and cht the work that you all do is so vital and important as the mayor mentioned uh it's always important but we are dealing in a moment right now where these types of services and the hard work you do on the ground is just so essential and important is only becoming more so so thank you very much for all that you do as erhard also mentioned the you know this this type of event this type of thing requires congressional funding very often to get done it did in this case i would be remiss not to note that the congresswoman is in the middle of a battle down in the u.s. house right now just to get any budget passed through that body and the work that you do here what this new phase of construction represents for the services for the community is an illustration of how vital it is that we get behind a normal rational federal budgeting process that allows for these types of vital services to continue and the congresswoman just is so grateful for what you do and notes that it is things like this that are at stake in the work that she's having to engage in down there so thank you for everything i'll keep my remarks brief it's hot in the sun which none of us are used to after this summer so thank you all thanks so much david uh so i didn't introduce myself and i was still to introduce myself paul dragon i'm the executive director of cvoe o thanks again for coming i do want to say if you want follow-up you're invited to take pictures inside if there's guests here please ask for permission we get an amazing outreach team so when i see a few two few of them here adam todd brenner ryan you can ask them questions about what the work feels like if you have questions about the food service i talk to mid hat if you have questions questions about the expansion from feeding chitin into feeding champ plane valley talk to rob man he knows it all or anna and also i just really want to deeply thank our communications team they do such a good job of always putting this together it's a lot more work than maybe it looks like jason addy taylor and others thank you so much um so yeah that concludes the day and uh thanks to our friends the media for highlighting this important issue thank you i think of course we would take some questions as well if there aren't from the media i did just want to uh um something i meant to mention i don't think any of us quite uh maybe someone else mentioned it but i think it's important for everyone here to know that the scale of the impact that this community resource center is having um there have been just in the in the past year my understanding 2300 individuals who have been served by the community resource center and that's over 25 000 separate visits so it's uh you know it is a small place we're hoping to expand it but even in the in its current form um what is happening in here both with the meals programs as well as the resource center is just an enormous amount of impact and i want to echo my thanks to the cvoe team making that possible and i do want i appreciate that but a couple other people mentioned as well but the the cdoe team sarah russell special assistant in homelessness uh we created this position i'm knowing that we were facing a challenging period and very grateful for for you and the whole team under brian pines leadership are doing so thanks questions if there are any just talking about what was done in here thank you and thanks to the mayor for picking up the slack i didn't i i missed the data there's a enormous amount of work going on here and i can see marcella maybe rolling her eyes because marcella's kept us on track with the data the work that's been done here um it's it's it's pretty amazing um it was a much smaller place you'll see that when you come in there was a wall shelving and there was a small office there we removed all that we uh redid the walls and painted them redid the floors um we are also uh teaching a culinary kitchen academy so there's a gate that will come down so um the students and our chef john can teach in there with some quiet we put in new heating and cooling system there wasn't a cooling system before it it's an efficient system and we have table set up we can sit about 50 people um and there's some more touch ups that's that's going to be happening as well but it's a it's a great expansion um and again we are looking for that second floor so we can bring our staff back in and have them work out of this site you're serving about 125 people per day do you expect that this expansion will bring in more people are you able to host more people in a day yeah i that is a really great question so we serve have meal service beginning at nine and it goes through 11 hot meals nutritious meals culturally appropriate foods some of the times really really important we were actually seeing around 140 people a day i think our top has been 185 we've probably averaged around 125 over the past year i'll let you talk to adam and the team afterwards we haven't turned anybody away so i don't this place is small you'll see that um i don't think we've had to ask people to leave so somebody can sit yet because of the way it runs but that may you know need to happen at some point um and we also do a lot of to-go meals to people and i just want to say feeding chicken and does to-go meals like all around the county and they've started meal service at the shipping and emergency shelter thank you all right thank you so much our staffs here if you want to ask questions