 Alright, good evening everybody, I want to thank you all for attending the rededication and opening of the nation street, Henry Ski Fianza Playground. Today is a special day for the town of Franklin, as we give thanks to the folks that helped create this amazing playground, and we get to open the park to the community. This is our first of many community preservation projects in Franklin, and I would first like to recognize the community preservation committee for their funding and support of this project. The chairman is Chris Feely, Dave McNeil, Monique Doyle, Phyllis Malcolm, Mike Giardino, Wayne Sumerian who's behind me, Lisa Oxford, Jeff Livingstone, and Rick Power. I would also like to thank our finance committee and the town councilors for their support of this project as well. Councilors include Chair Tom Mercer, Robert Delorco, Glenn Jones, Debbie Pellegrini, Melanie Hamlin who's here today, Brian Chandler, Kobe Frangillo, Patrick Sheridan also here today, and Ted Cormier-Ledger. And of course, be remiss if I didn't mention our town administrator, Jamie Helen, he's here as well today, welcome Jamie, I want to thank him for his leadership and his vision to realize the importance of playgrounds like this for the community. I want to really emphasize, more importantly, is the hard work and the dedication of our Department of Public Works employees. Brutus Kanaridji is here today with his wife Wendy, I want to thank him as well, and his staff, they worked tirelessly down here for days, and without them this park would not be open so quickly and done with such beauty. Special thanks to the Highway and Grounds team, Carlos Rubello and Tony Burnetta and the guys that really worked here hard were Pat Farrell, Ethan Bush, Bennett Morse, Steve Nasuti, Harrison Markot and Tom Ruth. I'm just so impressed by the skill and the attention and detail that their staff has and what they've been able to do. They built all of these retaining walls, put in all the benches that you're sitting on are all in real heavy cast concrete so they won't never move. They did all the mulching for us in the hydro seating and raked that all in and coordinated all the efforts to put in the fencing, so that was a real tribute to them. How about a round of applause for RGPGW. And the trees. Yes, and the trees, I don't want to forget those, that was a sore topic, but we put in more trees than we actually had to take out. There were a couple dead ones that were in danger of falling and we wanted to make sure that they were safe, so we planted twice as many trees as we took down. I also want to thank the Recreation Advisory Board, Wayne Sumerian and Larry Pollard and the gentlemen that helped my staff, Kim Carney and Sean Fitzpatrick and Sheila Adoletto for putting up with all my pictures and excitement and the progress of the park throughout the whole construction process and they helped us, you know, put, bring this ceremony together, so thanks to them. I also want to thank Tim Pascoe from Childscapes, he's the playground construction manager, so that was really helpful to have somebody with such expertise to help throughout the process. Now a little bit about the park. This park was designed by Nancy White myself about over a 10-month period. We spent months going back and forth about the equipment, the colors, the components which are geared toward children with disabilities. Nancy and I designed the original Nation Street, taught a lot 20 years ago in 2003, so that was nice to be able to work with her 20 years later on the same project. She was a dear friend for over 22 years, who lost her battle to cancer on December 9th, 2022, just one week before we completed the design of the park. So, you know, really sad that she wasn't here today to see the opening of the park and all the kids play. She'd be so proud how the park came out as she was a champion for playgrounds and more importantly playgrounds designed for children with disabilities. This past December, our DPW demolished the old play structure and excavated the site to prepare for the spring install. We purchased the equipment and constructed this new handicap accessible playground for children ages 2 to 12 years old. And the playground features two separate play structures. The one directly to my right here is geared toward 2 to 5-year-olds and the one in the back is geared toward children 5 to 12-year-olds. The 14-foot net climber that you see over here. We also have an all-inclusive whirl that the kids are on here so wheelchairs can roll right on there and they can enjoy the fun just like everyone else. We have a Franklin-themed bifocal rocker over here to the left. And we have the kite customized quad seesaw. So, then Franklin, as you know, flew the kite so we thought it would be cool to theme that. We also have in the back the new adaptive swing seat and we also have an expression swing seat which is my favorite where parents and toddlers can share in the swinging experience by facing each other as they're swinging to and from. That's pretty neat. The entire play area is poured in place rubber that you're standing on here. This brown poured in place making it truly accessible playground. This is our 10th playground, the town of Franklin in the last 20 years. I'm proud to say we have the best facilities in the state and this is a credit to our DPW and the recreation staff. So a big round of applause for our DPW and the recreation staff. At this time I'm going to ask Wayne Chairman Wayne Sumerian to come up to the podium and say a couple words about Henry Ski-Fianza. Yes, first of all I want to thank Ryan Jetty, REC director for all his hard work and his staff in making this possible. It's a fantastic job. I probably go back with Henry Ski-Fianza further than most people here today. I was a frequent visitor to the pool room down the center of Franklin which he ran. And we'd have basketball games on Friday night, Tuesday night, and we'd head right to the pool room. And if we won, everything was free. So that was very much appreciated. He's a great guy. I was good friends with his son, Marty, aka Yogi. A guy that could make me laugh when I was sad, whatever, a great guy. And also his other sons as well, and his wife Ruth. Just going to read this particular paper right now. The Nation Street Totlot was dedicated to the memory of Henry Ski-Fianza, a neighbor to the playground that would frequently visit the area. Ski was a type of guy that would make sure the playground was safe and clean for the young people of Franklin. The playground was renovated in 2003 between a new ADA compliant totlot for age-appropriate two to five years old. The playground featured large play venture structure with on-ground components, wiggle worm, two-spring animals, balance beam, and a blocks climber. The safety surfacing was engineered wood fiber, which was 12 to 18 inches deep. New bucket swing seats were added for a safer swing set area. Today, Ski would be proud of the current playground, and I'm sure his family who is here today can attest to that. But it just, I think just a great tribute. Ski really took pride. He was always advocating for this particular playground. And that's why we're here today. Just wanted to give the Fianza family an opportunity, if anybody would like to come up and say a few words, I'm not sure. I don't want to put anybody on the spot if everybody's okay, and they just want to open the playground. We're okay with that too. Did you want to sit? You're all set. Okay, you speak on behalf of the whole family, huh? So further ado, I'm going to ask all the kids to kind of come over here next to Sheila. Sheila, can you line them up? Can you let them kneel down in front of the ribbon? We're going to cut the ribbon to this beautiful new playground so that the children can be the first to enjoy the playground. Kneel down, Griffin. Kneel down. Kneel down. Kneel down. Does he get it on? Turn around. Wait a minute. Is that one? Okay. You're supposed to kneel down. I'm not going to kneel. Is that good? I told you to turn around. Griffin, turn around. Turn around. Add the boy. Add the boy. Add the boy. Sorry, granddaughter. Look up at the cameras, Grandma. Not this time, we're going to have Ski's great granddaughter, Scarlett, cut the ribbon for the new playground. We don't want to cut anybody's hair. That's up guys. Just move up a little bit, okay? We're going to let her... Oh, Scarlett, you got this.