Thank you so much for joining us today for this session on People Power in Bike Advocacy. My name is Sandhya Laddha and I am the Policy Advocacy Director at Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition and I have some amazing panelists with me here today but I'll come to them in a few minutes. So before I jump into the session, I'd like to tell you a little bit about Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. SVBC is a non-profit, it's a member-based organization and our mission is to create a healthy community, economy and environment through bicycling in both San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Our goal is to get 10% of trips by bike by 2025. We have two main branches of work. One is changing the built environment, that is what our advocacy team does. We work with decision makers, we work with community members to bring about safe bicycle infrastructure and policies so people feel safe and comfortable riding their bikes on the streets. On the other side, we work on changing behavior, that is where our programs team works with the people, they organize a bunch of social rides, they organize safe routes to school programs, commute workshops and so on, so people feel comfortable riding their bikes on the street. Diving a little deeper into advocacy, we have three main branches or three streams of our advocacy work. First and foremost, it's the staff. The staff is responsible for the day-to-day advocacy work, relationship building with the decision makers and working with the community. Then we have our local teams, we are going to talk about this in detail in today's session. Our local teams are our grassroots base of support. And finally, we have a policy advisory committee. So whenever we seek advice on regional issues or we want to take a position, we reach out to the policy advisory committee. They are an advisory body, as the name suggests. So what are we going to talk about today? Let me begin with introducing everyone here. My name is Sandhya. Hi everyone again. I'm the policy advocacy director at SVBC. I've been here for about three plus years now. I was born and brought up in India and I moved to the United States four years ago and have been working in transportation and making streets safer since then. I'm passing the mic on to Ari. Hi, I'm Ari. I'm the team lead for the Sunnyvale team. I'm also a college student. I'm at Mission College right now in Santa Clara and I'll be transferring to UC Davis in the fall. Woo! Yeah, so I'm very excited about that. I've been biking all my life and I started getting to bicycle advocacy work when I first started biking to school for the first time and I was like, hey, that fothole could be fixed and there's a bike lane and then there's not a bike lane and that needs to be fixed. And so I got involved with the bike coalition and eventually became a team leader of Sunnyvale. Thank you, Ari. And also congrats on getting into Davis. I did not know this until now. Yeah, let's give it up for him. It always blows my mind just how young Ari is because he is so active in lobbying us. So my name is Omar. I'm on the city council for the city of Sunnyvale. That is the appropriate amount of applause for Sunnyvale, I guess. I feel really lucky because I got in at exactly 8.59 today. There was an accident on the 8.80, so this might be a surprise. This might be a surprise to everyone in the room, but there are downsides to taking cars. Who would have thought? But I was elected two years ago now in 2020, studied policy analysis and management at Cornell, graduated class of 2019 and I've just been so excited to get to work with Ari and people like y'all on improving our bike infrastructure and, you know, moat ship within the city of Sunnyvale. Thank you, Council Member Dean Omar. My name is Rayan Modeshemi. I am a co-lead for the San Mateo local team, which covers mostly San Mateo but does some advocacy and are joining cities like Hillsboro and Berlin Game and Foster City. I am a recent college graduate. I graduated from Columbia University and I studied operations research because I thought that all the problems in transportation were solely technical and that there were no political issues with transforming political change. Needless to say, I stand incorrect and have tried to work for the past year or two to understand how we can make political change and especially in suburban places that are further behind the curve in terms of implementing bicycle and pedestrian projects. Thank you. Thanks Ari, Omar and Rayan for being with me here today and let's get into talking about this local team model. So jumping right into the very first presentation, today's structure will be I will give a brief about what the local team model is for SVBC and then we'll dive deep into two of our amazing local teams, that's Sunnyvale and Santa Clara. So jumping right into the, to what exactly is this local team model? So as I mentioned before, SVBC covers two counties, San Mateo and Santa Clara and together we have 35 towns and cities to cover. That is a lot of jurisdictions and we want to be involved in every bike project in every city. We want to be involved in every bike plan, provide feedback, input, make sure all the right bike projects are in there. We want to let cities know that you have dedicated bike-prepared funding for in their city budget process. We want to be involved in policies, attend B-PAC meetings, council meetings, suggest bike-share, build relationships with city staff and council. How are we supposed to do that with just a small team of four? I can see so many bike coalition reps here, there's Muddin, there's Bikes Bay, there's Sonoma. All of you know it is a struggle to be present every single place. So and like what are the problems that we had, we could, we had to pick and choose between projects. We barely had about four to five major campaigns every year. We had to prioritize between cities. We had to pick one or another. We had limited participation in B-PAC meetings and council meetings. And all of this led to limited engagement on the ground issues. So that led us to shifting our goal or our focus to this local team model. I've said local team a lot. Let's now dive into what exactly it is. So these are city-based teams. They include people who live, work, or play in a particular city, who know their city better than a person who rides or drives on these streets every single day. It includes parents who want safe routes for their kids. It includes seniors who just know the history of their city in and out. Or it could include passionate advocates who have such deep connections with their city staff or decision makers. Or it could be just a bunch of concerned citizens who just want to make their streets safer. And all of these people come together to advocate for making their streets safer for people walking and biking. What exactly do these teams do? They have regular meetings, they set up their goals, and they have a work plan. They have campaigns, and they put in strategies and tactics together to make sure they achieve their goals.  And they work with city staff and decision makers very closely. In short, they come together, they organize and advocate. What is SVBC's role behind all this? We provide them technical expertise, we provide them educational forums, connect them with decision makers. We are like the bridge between community members and the decision makers. We provide advocacy and leadership training, provide IT resources, access to tools, help with organizing and admin, provide funds whenever possible. So that is SVBC's guidance or supporting role. We have nine local teams. I know I said 35 cities, but we just have nine local teams so far. And those include San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, not San Mateo County, San Mateo, Redwood City and San Carlos. What has the impact been so far? I said we were able to do only four to five campaigns per year. Now across all the nine local teams, we have 30 plus campaigns. We're able to stay involved in every bike project, at least for the cities in which we have local teams. We have stronger relationships with decision makers. We have high participation in all BPAC and relevant council meetings. And we're able to have a larger impact with respect to making streets safer for those walking and biking. Now, I give you a glimpse of what local teams do and that they've been doing amazing work, but that does not mean that the staff work is over, or we can just have one person managing it all. There is a lot of behind the scenes work. We've put together recommendations. We've put together structure, protocol and processes for working of these teams. And I'm going to give you a glimpse of what that includes. First and foremost, we have recommended leadership roles so that team members are accountable to the work that they're doing and are also consistent throughout. First and foremost, we suggest everyone, every team to have a local team leader. This person is in charge of facilitating meetings, putting together an agenda, also leading campaigns. Then we have a greeter. We have people join local teams at different points of time. So the greeter brings them up to speed on what the team is working on. They also try to gauge their interest, and then they loop them into specific campaigns the team is working on. We have a note taker to take notes and send it out to the Google group. And then we have an outreach head who puts all the team work out on social media, so everyone else knows the amazing work the teams are doing. SVBC hosts a monthly bike-tivist forum series. Now what's the term bike-tivist? So all these local team members who are our bike advocates, we call them bike-tivists. And we hold a monthly bike-tivist forum series, which is on the third Wednesday of every month. It is broken into two pieces. The first half or the first hour is an educational forum, and it's on various topics. And these topics are related to the various goals that the teams have. For example, a team might be interested in vision zero, while some other team might be interested in safe routes to school. So we just get together, discuss with teams on what are the different topics they're interested in, and host our educational forums accordingly. The topics we've covered so far include vision zero, the problem of parking, national transit justice, micromobility, enforcement, and a lot of similar ones. And the second hour is dedicated to local team meetings. So since we're all meeting on Zoom currently, we have breakout sessions, so then we have nine breakouts, and each team has their individual meeting in a particular breakout. Free COVID, we used to meet in person, in some cafe, and get together, know each other. But we're doing all of that over Zoom right now. We're hoping to be able to come back at least to a hybrid model, where at least once in a couple of months, we can all get to see each other in person. And then remaining time, we continue meeting on Zoom. Hopefully, we get there sometime. We also recommend lots of fun and involved activities to build a stronger bond between all these local team members. So one of the activities we did was brainstorming. So this was done at a very first kickoff meeting for one of the teams. Since all the local team members are volunteers, they come up with their own motivation and interest when they join a particular team. So this brainstorming idea, or this brainstorming session, was to bring together, bring on the table, everyone's interest. So somebody was interested in maybe a bike project, which is right outside their house. Maybe somebody was interested in getting a bike superhighway. Maybe somebody was interested in slowing speeds in their city. So everyone brought their interests to the table, and then the group had a discussion. And together, they pick and chose top five goals for the year. So this was that fun activity. And fast forward to one year later, the team did an analysis, a SWOT analysis, to understand where they are at, what went well, what didn't go well, and how could they improve. And based on that, they came up with a work plan for the next year. SVBC also has a local team toolkit, which includes basics of setting up and maintaining every team. It has recruitment methods, it has some different tactics on how to grow and engage your team, how to keep people motivated. It has a local team charter, which talks about do's and don'ts. It has sample letters to council, sample script for talking with council members, and so on. So this is like a guide or a handbook for all local team leaders and members when they are running their own teams. So this was a brief or a glimpse of our local teams, and they have been doing such amazing work. This is not an exhaustive list of the wins that our teams have had in the past year. They've been meeting with city staff, they've built great relationships with council members, and they have been able to push the cities really hard to let the cities know that we really, really care for getting in better bike infrastructure and policies in our cities, and we want to make those improvements, and we want to make those improvements now. With that, I'm gonna stop here, and we can take maybe a couple questions if there are any pressing ones, and next we are gonna segue into talking about how the local team leaders have been running their teams. So yeah. Hi, thanks. I have been so inspired by the work that Silicon Valley is doing, and I've sat in on some of the activist forums, and I'm working on getting a similar model going in my own county. So what I'm curious about is the timeline that it took you to get this rolled out to the sort of more robust program that it is from, you know, okay, we have this idea that we're gonna do this, because obviously I'm building on some of what you've already done, and it would take me a lot longer if I didn't have that, but just sort of, yeah, a little bit more about your timeline. So we had local teams existing for quite some time. In fact, one of our local teams existed before SVBC did, but the teams were mainly just to get together, update each other on what's going on, and maybe like write to cancel if and when needed, but they never really had their campaigns. So we shifted to having the teams run their own campaigns two years ago, back in 2019. If I talk about kicking off one particular team, for example, we recently started a North San Mateo county team, it took about six months to do some background and prep, to like first get hold of some passionate advocates who would be able to lead this team, then also like meeting with city staff and council members to set the stage, and then set up a Google group so that we can, like as in when we talk to interested people, we can pull them on the same platform, then we did a survey to understand what are interests of people and how much time can they spend on engaging for this team. And yeah, it took about six to seven months before we could have our first kickoff meeting. And then once we had a kickoff meeting, we identified a team leader and then went on from there. But yeah, it could like, some cities took about six months, some cities took about a year. So it is a long process, lots of background work before we actually set into these meetings. Sure. Hello, I'm curious about the genesis of the Silicon Valley organization and the one that you work for. Who funds it and who do you answer to? So we're a nonprofit organization and we have three branches of getting funding. We are a member-based organization, so one third of our funding comes from members, one third funding comes from sponsors and grants, and one third comes from major donors and corporates. So we're not directly answerable to anyone, but we work with city staff and decision makers to push them to bring about that change. I hope that answers your question. How have you been in existence? SVPC has been in existence for at least more than a decade. There was a lot of transition. We started with only Santa Clara County and then we evolved further. We had just one part time staff where we did a couple contracts around bike to work there and then we shifted into including San Mateo County and together, I think that was about 10 to 15 years ago and that is where we are at now. I'm gonna lead on to the other presentations at this point and then we'll come back to Q&A later. Thank you. Ari, would you like to go first or should we? I'll take my side first. Okay. What? Go to the next slide. So here's a picture of me on a ride. You go to the next slide, actually. So my involvement with Bicycle Advocacy kind of accumulated over time. I started with just helping out a campaign to get improvements to the Sunnyvale Bicycle Plan in 2020 and then I started a campaign to get a lane close on my street. This was all before I became the team leader of Sunnyvale. I actually never intended to become a team leader but I was at the Zoom meeting to decide who would be the next team leader of Sunnyvale and there was only me and one other person in the meeting so it actually worked out perfect I think. I had since I had the experience with leading a campaign and I had the interest and the time but I think a lot of other team leaders including myself we walked into this excited but also a little nervous because we weren't entirely like sure what we were doing in the sense like we didn't know what we didn't know. So we're grateful to have the support of the bike coalition education and then also just learning from council members and learning from city processes. Next slide. So some of the benefits that I found with the local teams model is definitely the fact that we can really use the local residents energy. People might not be interested in advocating for something like on the other side of town or in the next town over but if there's a project on the street and they like to bike then they'll be able to find a very passionate lead advocate for them. So oftentimes for a campaign that's on a particular street all there are people in my Google group who will step up and I'll have them present to council members, help make the presentations, help create bullet points and other things on the campaign and that really works well to have that local knowledge. Each team has also kind of developed a unique style I have in bike Sunnyvale some different informal roles for different people. I think it's a bit different than the San Mateo team and all teams are different sizes and so that's also and have different levels of activity going on. So that's also a unique factor. One of the interesting things about bike Sunnyvale is that we actually rebranded from the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Sunnyvale team to just bike Sunnyvale because I thought it would be much more clear what we're doing because not everyone knows, unfortunately not everyone knows what SVPC stands for but we also create a website. Some, I think some of the larger teams have created a website right Ryan and as teams continue to grow I imagine more teams will create their own websites as well and we also collaborate and learn from each other. We have local team meetings monthly where all the team leaders will just talk about upcoming things, give feedback to each other and talk about the next bike to this forum. It's a good place to collaborate and give each other tips and then finally we're able to collaborate across city lines. So for example, for a project in Sunnyvale an advocacy campaign that we were doing I also reached out to the neighboring cities of Santa Clara and Mountain View and Cupertino and got some advocates from there too to also send letters and talk to council members. And that was really helpful. We also can rally together for cities that don't have local teams. For example, Los Altos doesn't currently have a local team. So we, so the surrounding cities, local teams all got together and we reached out to our advocates. That's unfortunate timing. And we got like 20 people to speak at a meeting at Los Altos to get bike lanes on El Camino Real which passed. So that was very exciting. Thank you. Thank you. So over the last year and a half or so we've had 11 campaigns to get more bike lanes and get bicycle friendly policies changes. Most of these have been successful. We're very happy about. We've made active transportation a city priority. We've had successes for three or four projects to get more bike lanes on certain streets. One of which is Sunnyville Avenue which Omar can tell us more about in a few minutes. And this was a particularly important campaign because it was the most important North South corridor in the city and it also involved removing street parking. So the way we generally go about these campaigns is we'll create a slideshow presentation and meet with council members. We will create a kind of mass email system or campaign. So me and maybe some other volunteers will write up some bullet points on why the city council should do X for these reasons and couple bullet points. And we really encourage people in their emails to customize it and make it personalized on why this bike lane will benefit me. It'll make it safer for my kids to get to school. Something like that. Making it personalized rather than just repeating the bullet points, it really has a much stronger impact. We also are able to use the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Event Brights, sorry, E-Bulletin which is like the mailing list and there's like something like 10,000 people on it and has a 20% open rate. So for example, Sunnyville Avenue project to get people to speak at the council meeting and other public meetings and to write emails. We just sent an email to everyone on the E-Bulletin who lives in Sunnyville and the surrounding cities to come speak and write letters and we got a lot of letters written and then I also got people to come to the two public meetings on this and we got like, I think the ratio of people to speak in favor was free to one of the projects that I was very excited. You wanna talk about the, you know. Okay, oh wait, so I'll talk about something about Avenue and you'll take it back. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, okay. So I'll quickly touch on it. It's interesting because I'm on the other side, right, so I'm on the council in Sunnyville.  And so when we did Sunnyville as, you know, as Ari mentioned, they put together a whole campaign around it and as many of you have probably experienced when you're working with councils, if you're removing parking spaces, it gets controversial really fast. I know, it's a shocker, who would have thought? Ryan did it when he started but, you know, one thing that I think is so important about the advocacy model that bike Sunnyville uses is you have to be at that granular of a local level for these changes to happen because, you know, like Sandia was referring to, when you're at the leadership level, you can't be everywhere, you can't be at each of these cities. So getting the local model is so central to it because, and this is a sad reality, is politicians operate in their own ecosystem. You know, they, and like I said, it's sad to say but we, you know, follow our own incentive structure and a lot of times it's not just what's the best decision here to make based off of the merits of the facts but each politician has their own career trajectory they're trying to follow, their own interests at heart and a lot of the time what ends up happening is well what's the incentive structure here? You know, if there's only one group of people that are showing up and saying, hey, if you take away our parking spots, we are gonna make sure you don't get elected again. There are a lot of, I'm not one of those, but there are a lot of members of council who that has an impact on and so having people on the other side saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, this equation has another side to it and we're there as well and we're showing up, that has such an important, important role to play and I think that that actually was the reason we were able to overcome the weight of those residents who, you know, there are about 60 or so houses I believe who we are losing about, you know, 40, I wanna say, parking spaces. There were 100 or so parking spaces on nearby streets that were open and available but obviously the residents are gonna say that but Bikes Sunnyvale showed up and made that apparent to every single council member and showed those facts and told that narrative and I think it was, if that hadn't happened, I don't think the policy would have passed. Yeah, I think so, Mar. Like we go to the next slide. So part of, the other part of the local teams that we like to do is doing events. In conjunction with, you know, SRDC often has their own events that are, but we like to do ours as well and these are really great opportunities to get more members of Silicon Valley. The Bikes School Coalition, it helps us get more members for Bikes Sunnyvale specifically because every time someone signs up for an event, they get added to the SBBC Eventbrite system and their Salesforce system and so we can send emails to them later. We've done eight local rides and there are lots of fun and we draw attention to, you know, infrastructure that needs to be improved and sometimes we get articles written about them as well. Oh, sorry, bike to work day, that's our bike to wherever day in the pandemic times. Yeah, so thank you for the reminder. So we, the local teams have also been involved in setting up tents for bike to wherever day. So like in places where there's high bicycle traffic, we'll set up a table, set up a tent and tell people about the Bikes School Coalition, tell people about the local teams and I think we've been able to be pretty successful with that. And finally, I lead free bicycle repair events in my free time and so we've done like eight of them, fixed 328 bikes so far. Yeah. And one of the really awesome things about being under the Silicon Valley Bikes School Coalition system is that we're using their Eventbrite system. So I mean, A, we don't have to pay for that and B, we can actually really easily copy over events because they're like the registration system, we just copy it for like two, for the next event each time and we can also duplicate it for other cities. So for example, in San Mateo, Ryan and his team created their own free bike repair event in San Mateo and they fixed quite a lot of bikes on their first event, it was very impressive. Next slide. So as a team leader, I've learned a couple of very important lessons that apply to both bicycle advocacy and life. Reputation and relationships really matter. It's really important to keep those relationships good with council members, even the ones that you disagree with and keeping a strong reputation of the local team and preserving the good reputation of the Silicon Valley Bike School Coalition as well. We learn to pick and choose our battles, not if the city staff says this is physically impossible, we're not going to follow that campaign obviously. Making partnerships is really important as well. So for example, reaching out to the PTA if we're trying to put a bike lane somewhere and there's a school nearby, getting the support of the PTA, getting the support of other local advocacy groups that are maybe involved in climate change or housing is really helpful to bring together a coalition. We celebrate every win, even the small ones, because a bicycle project might only come to council every three months or something. And so that's part of why we do monthly rides to keep people excited and keep people engaged. And so I'm leaving into fall unfortunately. So I've created a transition plan for the next team leader. So I've written out a whole document of what I've learned, the things that team leaders need to do and documenting all of that so the next person can take over and run it smoothly. Yeah, Omar, do you wanna talk a little more? Yeah, I'll touch on a couple other things before we transition off of Sunnyvale. But let's give it up for Ari again. I mean, that was fantastic. You know, I think just two of the other things I wanted to touch on is another story of a success that Bikes Sunnyvale has had. And again, I think just for more context for everyone, I'm only on the other side of the equation. So a lot of this is learning for me where I'm like, ah, that's what you all are doing. And now I'm taking my notes, and now I know, just kidding. But no, but it really is like, it's interesting to see this model from the other end because I can tell you about how effective it really is. And that's kind of what I alluded to with the Sunnyvale have story. And so I think another good story is, the reason you need to be so granular is each city has its own policy process. And sometimes when you're not doing local politics work, it's hard to see that. But just because, yeah, at the state level, everything is so homogenous in terms of, if you have a bill, it goes through these committees and it goes this way, yada, yada, yada. Each city does it very differently. And so in Sunnyvale, we have what's called our study issue process. And so for any major policy changes or major infrastructure builds, we have a very specific process of how those go through. And at the beginning of the year, all of the different study issues from bike infrastructure to universal basic income to police policy, all of them are ranked according to the city's ability to actually do them this year based off of our resources. And so that ranking process is super important and it's also very controversial. And so one of the benefits of the local team model is when we were going through that ranking process this year, one of the study issues that had been, I think created by the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission was for Hollenbeck Ave, which is another North-South one. It's an important corridor that goes from very dense single-family zoned area into schools, into some of the shopping areas. And it connects to some of the other main corridors. And so there was a study issue to put a bike lane on there because there was none at the moment. And it ended up getting onto, not only was it being low ranked, it was set to be completely cut off and say, you know what, we're just killing the study issue entirely, it's not gonna move forward. Bike Sunnyvale got one of it and they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So they were able to meet with all the council members and come in with a very specific ask of, well, instead of just approving it, let's also focus on the strategy of this year. Let's get it off the chopping block, okay? Like, you know, take it from nothing to at least being deferred till next year, which is, you know, it might not seem like the biggest ask, but if you're not at that granular level of strategy, then you're gonna totally lose it.  And so through their lobbying efforts and through meeting with council members and actually getting stakeholders who were, you know, affected by it, they were able to turn that tide and I think it ended up getting ranked this year and not getting completely killed. So that was huge and such a testament to why the model works. And then the other thing I just wanted to mention too is, and Ari mentioned this point as well, that importance of sort of the human and social aspect of it all, you know, it really is sad to say, but elected officials are human and there are good things about that, right? But, yeah, all of the fallacies that come with it are also there.  And so understanding how to play that and understanding how to actually build relationships with each of those is so important because things as simple as having those events, you know, inviting all of the electives, getting them to be partners and getting them invested really shows up months later when you're on the dais because it impacts that framework that I've seen each of my colleagues have where, you know, after they've gotten to Bikes Sunnyvale events, after they're actually biking alongside the advocates and they see them not as, you know, an us and them relationship, or an us versus them relationship, but as it's been, you know, an and relationship, it changes that dynamic significantly and makes so many of these victories so much more possible. So shout out to Bikes Sunnyvale for everything they do. Thank you. Thanks, Omar, who can pass it off to Ryan now for his same tail. For sure. And really shout out to Omar as well for truly all the wonderful work that you're doing in Sunnyvale and to have an elected official come here and like support bike advocacy in an open forum is something that should be acknowledged and it excites me and I'm just happy to see that, you know, we have folks who we can work with, you know, up and down the peninsula. So thank you. And Ryan heard my statement about elected officials having egos, so good job. I have to practice for San Mateo because, and yeah, so I guess, so my name's Ryan. I grew up on the peninsula in Hillsborough and I live right next to San Mateo. So there's this city that is very bikeable in nature that I grew up next to and became a transit nerd, you know, really love public transit and active transportation. And I like to say that I learned how to read by like just reading all the street signs and roadway signs and nerding out on maps about transit systems and bikeways and, you know, cities around the world that are much better than here. And I think what's interesting is that as someone who got slightly involved with SVBC prior to the local team model, I've been able to see how kind of the advocacy impact has changed before and after. So I'd say roughly in like 2015 or 2016, I was in high school and I was interested in a bike share system that the city of San Mateo was piloting and bringing those bikes to the high school that I was going to. So that was kind of my first foray into advocacy. As a high schooler, I wasn't super successful but I got practice meeting with the city staff and talking through the issue. And the city staff were actually the ones who connected me to SVBC. And I thought that was interesting. So I got connected with some of Sandia's former colleagues and I essentially went to events. But what I noticed is that the footprint of the organization wasn't super big. Like they helped table at one event but it wasn't necessarily like something that a lot of people knew about. But it was better than nothing, right? And I just saw how completely that has changed with having this local team model of dedicated bikedivists who have a local understanding and the hyper local interest in that specific area. So since then we've been able to have regular monthly meetings and monthly rides since I got back into it in roughly 2020 coming back from college during the pandemic. And I was able to kind of see how great it is to have a parent organization to help support you technically, resources, advice, relationships with elected officials and of course a large email list that also helps to push forward more change. So a little bit about our group. We are roughly like, one thing I like about advocacy is you can have a small group of dedicated folks and have an outsized impact. So we are actually just, I would say like five to 10 dedicated members with a larger email list that we turn out to meetings. But the people who are in and out every day thinking about this, it's about five to 10 people. So some of our campaigns have been regarding adding bike lanes into the city. So there was a recent campaign to implement bike lanes on two segments of street in San Mateo that are responsible for 30% of all bike-related collisions in the city and it required the removal of 214 parking spaces in a part of the city with high parking demand, with roughly 85% usage of the parking spaces on that street. So it was a very tough lift. It required five months of additional advocacy and outreach, reaching out to council members, getting petitions. There was a very active opposition that got us 700 signatures on a petition against removing the bike lanes. And it required us to dig deep, go into the technical arguments, explain how actually if you removed the 214 parking spaces, the expected additional blocks that folks would have to walk to find parking was roughly one to two blocks. So not the end of the world, not ideal, but there are other parking mitigation solutions that you can come up with, like residential parking permit programs, allowing driveway parking in front of driveway aprons for residents and making use of empty parking lots at night because overnight parking was the issue for this neighborhood. There are other things we can do and still accommodate bike lanes. And it was hard to get that message out, but we kept on hammering it. And after five months of meeting new people and getting involved with the project, we were able to, by the slimmest of margins, pass that at the city council. So there are now, but there will be bike lanes in the near future on those segments of road. So it was a tough lift, but it really helped me see what the potential is for just one person to change things and I can honestly say it's one of the most satisfying feelings to look at a project or look at an infrastructure change and see that without you being there or without your group being there, that would not have happened. And sometimes when looking for purpose, it becomes very gratifying. So that's something that the local team model has definitely given me. And it's also through that process, we learned about how to kind of engage with council members, which I think is very useful in a city where removing parking is controversial. Let me look at my notes here. So a little bit about our organization structure. So we have a slightly different model from Sunnyvale in terms of we have three team co-leads. Ari is like, we look up to Ari in terms of like how to do things and are always asking him like, does your website look like like bike repair events? Like there's so many things that through the local team model of connecting with other teams around the area, we're able to get that experience and build off of the experiences of others and Ari has just been like fundamentally amazing in terms of helping us grow our team. So also a shout out, really big shout out to Ari. Yeah. In terms of communication, so communication has been one of our issues, but I actually think that the pandemic helped us grow our team in that regard. Number one, the bike-tivist forums that SVBC puts on are truly amazing and have helped drive people interested to one join SVBC, but then also come into the local team afterwards. And because it's on Zoom, it's like, it's a webinar, you can just go check out if you're interested. And while in-person events are important and engaging, this helps get those folks who might not necessarily come out to an in-person event, but who might have their interest peaked in some policy issue area, and then they come to the local team meeting and have those personal connections, which are also on Zoom right after the bike-tivist forum. So that's super useful. So we do most of our communication in meetings like that, and then asynchronously over two different forums. So we use Google Groups and then Slack. And I'd say one of the ways that we've been able to help grow the team is just by developing that online presence and being able to turn out people rapidly through, by basically blasting to our dedicated members on Slack for smaller issues and then blasting to the entire Google Group, which has about 60 or 70 folks when there are other issues. And for example, on the bike lane project I was speaking about, we were able to turn out roughly 20 people, 20 to 30 people to three different meetings over the course of five months, which was fun. So it definitely was interesting. Some other things that we do is we have monthly rides that serve to generate interest and foster membership. We did a bike repair event and were able to, with Ari's help, fix about 50 plus bikes. And that was our first one. And people were like, whoa, what's happening? And it really helps having those events establish yourself as a presence that council members and other folks start thinking you're a little more official. With that, there are challenges in the sense that the more official you seem, the more politically savvy people expect you to be. And for volunteers who are ready to complain regularly about other things to city councils, it's been a learning experience that we have to learn how to be politically tactful, especially because there are council members who maybe while they might be more naturally inclined to support bicycle and pedestrian projects, they aren't always going to vote in our favor for a lot of the reasons that Omar has said and you don't say. You don't say and I'm sure it's not a surprise to anyone. And because of that, it's important, I would say one thing we've learned is both, how are you gracious in defeat, but also gracious in victory when there are a lot of people who are pissed off at something that you've done and a lot of council members who are unhappy with the way a vote has gone, but how do you maintain those relationships? Because in the end, you still need them. Like we still have a lot of work that we want to do and want those council members to come to our side in the future. Some other things that are on our mind is how can we, like it's very hard to mobilize four campaigns consistently, which we want to do. We are volunteers. So how can we get the city to help us a bit more, which is it's a big aspect that we've benefited is by having relationships with city staff members and making allies within the city bureaucracy in addition to council members. So getting pointers from city staff in terms of why is something happening this way or like what are the technical reasons behind you recommending this project or this configuration? For example, on our bike lanes, you were like, why can't you have protected bike lanes? And they're like, well, the road's not wide enough. If you did that, you would have to convert to one ways and you'd have to do all these traffic studies and actually more people are gonna get mad about your project than less. So it's good to have a city perspective while also pushing back on the city perspective when they're like, oh, that's not quote unquote feasible, which they like to say a lot, which is quite annoying. So yeah, so I guess what I've learned is that you can have love-hate relationships with staff and council members, but always be gracious and have a working relationship with them. Let's see, so yeah, so SVBC really does provide a lot of that support that has helped us grow, certainly. And I think for an all-volunteer group, it's important to have that to keep on, at least continue providing an ecosystem for folks to meet even if there are lulls in the advocacy. So yeah, that's kind of what I wanted to say. I guess another big thing that we're working on and definitely welcome support from a parent group that's where I think this model is especially successful is how to get dedicated funding for bike pet improvements to get the city basically to help us because we don't have that. And right now in San Mateo, and through that we had to learn how to go through the city planning process. Omar was talking about how they have the issue areas process in Sunnyvale and in San Mateo they have a blue sky goal setting process where they come up with a strategic work plan and it's like this process that's relatively shrouded in mystery. We don't know what's gonna happen and it's just like what is happening here and why was this sentence of this goal taken out between this draft and the second draft of your strategic plan? And I think that going into it, we really learned that we have to be on top of it starting like months in advance and through that work of understanding our city's planning process, we were able to get one line added into one of the goals to start the process of identifying a dedicated funding source for these bicycle and pedestrian projects. Yes, so yeah, you can clap but that's just step one and then like getting the support for whatever policy to actually institute said identified funding source whether it requires a campaign, a ballot measure or something is something that I will be thinking about in the next couple of years as well as our general plan update and how we implement policies and programs to make our city more like Barcelona. What the funny thing is in our general plan a process, they're like, oh, we should do super blocks like Barcelona and I'm like great, like that's a great idea. Thank you for putting it out there but like let's flush it out and actually make sure that we have an idea of what this alternative is. So we can get something we're excited about to then move it forward. And so I think that for us working with SVBC to understand these more city bureaucratic processes can get a lot of bang for your buck down the line when hopefully in the future San Mateo has a dedicated funding source instead of the paltry amount relatively that is funded compared to roadway projects which is just a common theme across our region and across the US. And then also how do we get more pro bike other policies like unbundling parking costs from housing or office space and things like that. So yeah, so that's all I have. Thank you. So that's all we have on the presentation side and we're open for Q and A. I can pass the mic around. Thank you so much for that great presentation. What do you do when staff, which is one of the.


Hi everybody, welcome back to the Preservation Burlington TV show. It's been a while and we've missed everybody and are looking forward to a whole bunch of really fun and interesting things. I'm really excited because I have a friend and a guest today who's actually going to do our intro and bring us in. Come on, wind us in Patricia because Patricia was host of the show for a really long time. So three years maybe? Yep. Yep. And then somehow I got stuck with it, but. Welcome, welcome to that. Alrighty, well here we go. Haven't done this intro in a few years but let's go for it. Welcome to the live at 525 Channel 17 Preservation Burlington TV show. Perfect. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. So, Preservation Burlington is a 501C3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to preserve and protect historic architecture and the livability of our neighborhoods through education and advocacy. That was the mission statement when I served anyway as the host and on the board of Preservation Burlington. So there's that. And now as I said, Preservation Burlington is a nonprofit organization. What is the one thing that a nonprofit always wants? Volunteers. Volunteers people. We want volunteers.  But hey, you're saying, no, no, I've got more time. Committees. Committees are both prongs of Preservation Burlington. Oh, I hear you. You're saying, no, no. Not only do I have more time, I really dig the mission statement of Preservation Burlington. No worries. Talk to someone about becoming a board member. I have to say that was some of my most interesting volunteer experience and I have a lot of volunteer experience and that was some of the most interesting. Honestly, including hosting the show. So you never know. But now you're thinking, oh, wait, wait, wait, no, no, I don't really have that kind of time. That's all right. What's another thing nonprofits always want? Your money. We're happy to take your cash every day of the week. All day. Every day. Anyway. And if you want to do that, I think you'd have to go to PreservationBurlington.org maybe. Yep, still. Yep. Yeah. So anyway, looking forward to having a chat tonight. I'm Patricia Arrojo and I'm actually the guest. Yay. Perfect. Patricia, it's better than I've ever done it. You hit all the topics, that's everything we need and we're looking for people and active board members. And as you know over the years, we've had a lot of really great people involved and we continue to and we're always looking for fresh blood and new folks to come in and bring perspectives and different ideas to the board. Absolutely. That's great. So that was really a terrific intro. Thank you. I want to say, you know, as you know, everything's been on hold for so long for so many people and we've been struggling, but we've been managing, right? So we've had a couple of cemetery tours that we've done. We've done a couple of things with the old East End group that's up and running now and they're great. So we've been out and about and doing things. We haven't done the Homes Tour in a couple of years. I didn't think so. Yeah, this is, I know. And then we decided to scrap it this year. We're going to have a heavy June walking tour schedule, which is not instead of, but to make up for the lack of a Homes Tour this year. So we're just doing a whole bunch of stuff and getting back to the TV show is one of the really, for me, fun things and one of the things that I really enjoy doing. And when I saw all the cool stuff that you're doing on Facebook, I saw it and, you know, I know you've got a YouTube channel going on.  We've both enjoyed running the show for a bit. And I just thank you for being on as the inaugural guest for Kickstarting the Preservation Burlington TV show again. Well, thanks for inviting me. Yeah. Well, I just want to, you know, I want more background. First of all, what have you been up to? And when did you really start doing these like video tours of places? What have I been doing? Well, languishing during the pandemic really, like all of us and I have been thinking about a YouTube channel for some time, trying to figure out what would make sense. I play piano, so I thought about having a piano channel. I'm still thinking about having a piano channel because before I have one channel, you're going to have two and just kill yourself that way.  And you're good at it. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.  I dislike it. I don't like it. It's boring. Oh, it's boring.  And I want people to realize it's actually pretty interesting. And it's just about every one of us. That's what it is. Yeah. It's other people's stories. Yes. You know, who did what before? And, you know, I mean, I find I've heard the same stuff.   We've all been through a similar experience recently. If you can look back and see that people in 18, you know, 19, 18, when they went through the influenza pandemic here, you know, this is all sort of happened before. And one of those people experience, you know, and visiting these places makes it real. True. And when I'm visiting all these cemeteries, I know it's a lot of cemeteries right now. There's no snow on the ground. Well, tomorrow. But today, no, yesterday, no. But when I'm walking, there are a lot of children's graves. I mean, all those itty-bitty graves, trip hazards with a lot of snow on the ground. But, you know, I talk about how they didn't have any vaccines, not a one. So they were dying from smallpox. They were dying from diphtheria. They were dying from tuberculosis. They were dying from, you name it, they were dying from it. You know, you family would have 10 kids and maybe four or five of them or more would even die. So that's there was one guy who was buried in the Village Cemetery in Colchester, who lost nine of his children, nine. I can't imagine the pain and suffering that family went through. So so that's why I find one of the things I find fascinating about cemeteries is visiting those places. I have a lot of cemetery videos today. I have a cemetery video. Oh, yeah. That's that's really pertinent and great because, you know, we have cemeteries in Burlington and we have and we run the cemetery tours. We're doing some cleanup days there for they're often neglected nowadays. You know, people don't use them like parks like they used to in the late 1800s, you know. So now they're just a sort of a place and we have to maintain them. And it's on the back burner, so people don't think about it. So we try to raise awareness. So you're doing the same thing. So and also because there's a lot of history in cemeteries, right? A ton of history. I have I have filmed a lot of Medal of Honor recipients. And it's such it's such a what's what? What you said you filmed a lot of what recipients? A Medal of Honor. Oh, Medal of Honor recipients. Yeah, I just discovered another one. I haven't filmed him yet because I haven't found his dog on grave yet. And with a bit major snow some tomorrow it's going to be put him back hard. Yeah, right. So but I just discovered him and it's it's such an honor to talk about the exploits of these men, the one theater or a Stafford Peck, remember TS Peck Insurance? Yeah, that guy, his exploits were are worthy of a movie, quite frankly. You know, every time you think something's going to go really well for them. No, not so much. And it was just a series of really awful mishaps, but he's still he's arrived. Persevered. Yes, absolutely. And he was in charge of the men. So, you know, he has had this brave extra front for his men on top of it. So crazy stuff like that is just fascinating. How are you going to be so brave? So how did you so you mentioned you were thinking of a piano YouTube channel or, you know, a history YouTube channel? What was the kickoff? What how did you start the history YouTube channel? I just decided to go out and film. I went to Lakeview Cemetery, so Cemetery is just clearly I love. So I want to be an overarching theme tonight, but it seems to be. So so I decided to go there and film a year ago, February, actually, and it merely didn't like a single one I did. Oh, they were all terrible. Wow, such trash deleted all of them. Oh, no, every one of them. Oh, they're terrible. And then I went back and filmed again. And people I knew from the tour had led. So and I found that that was another bumper crop of bumper crop of garbage. So they did that stuff, too. And so what what what what didn't you like about them? What was what was the production value that you didn't like? Bad sound quality or had nothing to do with sound quality. Had everything to do with what I was saying. I thought it was just all garbage. Oh, no, really just terrible. So part of the thing is I can't remember stuff like I used to. I just there's a lot of dates, a lot of names, a lot of stuff like that. If I'm filming three to seven videos in a day, I can't remember stuff. So I just printed off and read it. Yeah, flashcards, except I'm holding my ring like this and that leaves my cane. Oh, right. So which is my pointer for those who watch my videos. Yeah. So so anyway, I now read stuff. I just read. Yeah. And it's just so much easier for me. So much. I mean, same here. Like I'm very I'm very not good at the walking tours. I've stepped in when I had to, but I can't remember anything. And then I read stuff, but then the pages are all backwards. I'm really even terrible at reading stuff.  Right. Well, and I love the tours for you, for Ethan Allen. Ethan Allen Homestead, that was for memory. But I was also my 20s. I was a kid then, imagine that. But the preservation, Burlington Tours and my own tours. I just had a sheet of papers in my hands and I would tell people, I can't remember the stuff that's a lot. It's a lot of buildings. So much. So much stuff. So so might as well just read it. Yep. Yeah. So and then, you know, you read it for a while and you learn some more stuff and you add stuff that might not be in the sheaf of papers because it's a sheaf, people. The sheaf.  It's a reminder. Listening to other tour guides who leave the tour because when I was trained to leave the PB tour, I was told I could add anything I wanted. That would be correct and true, of course. Right. Unlike me, who makes things up. Sometimes it just sounds like it. Because sometimes it sounds so preposterous. It can't possibly be true. But it is. And that's the kind of history I love the most. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So so then you felt better. You felt more comfortable with a few of the latter ones. Yes, because the end of May last year, I decided that I was going to upload every day of the week. Oh, shoot me. What was I thinking? What that? Yeah. What the heck? What the heck? I know. So if I only go out and get one video, that's not a that's not a waste. That is the next day's video. But if I can do, you know, five videos in a day, that's that's five days of videos. So five visits to different places. Yeah. That's a lot of driving, usually. Although every now and then the buildings are right next to each other. It's fantastic. So actually, if I could, if I could show please something. Yeah, yeah. Put some stuff up. So I drove down to Leicester, Vermont, which is south of Middlebury. I'm not sure if it's still called Leicester, but these buildings are listed as in Leicester, Vermont. So so I went with Leicester. So I lucked out that two were right next to each other. Hallelujah. And the other one was across the street. So I parked in one place and just walked across seven. A busy street. So I just want to start with this one here. Yeah. I'm not going to show you the other two. One was a meeting house and the other was a schoolhouse town hall that was built that way. Town hall is now separate from it. But anyway, this building that you see on camera now, this is known as the stage coach in Leicester, Vermont. And so let me tell you right now that if you want to go see this place, do not follow Google Maps. Oh, my gosh. First of all, you want to do a street view first to make sure you're actually looking at the same building. You're not. So don't do Google Maps. What you want to do is plug in Junction of Route 7 and Fern Road. I think Fern Road was the other one. And then you'll get to this place. So so so follow my I was finding it was a challenge in the beginning. Well, it could have been if I followed Google Maps. But so anyway, this building is I know 150, almost 200 years old, well built, clearly well built because as we look at the next photo of it. Wow, that bad paint job is not is the least of its worries. Look at those windows boarded up. So it's abandoned right now. I don't know if it's abandoned. I didn't actually step onto the property. I don't want trespass. So I stood on the side of Fern Road and and that road is pretty busy, too. Yeah, well, taking pictures and filming from there. Yeah. So we can see it has a corrugated roof that's starting to rust. I'm hoping the roof stays intact. Apparently has stenciling in there and all kinds of stuff. It was a stagecoach in and then it became a post office retail store. And then became a private residence. And now the pictures. This is on the National Register of Historic Places. So so it's a shame that it looks like this because oh, and the. Let's see is the next picture. I should have written down what was in which order this was. Oh, this I'm sure it's going to trigger your memory. Oh, yeah. Here you go. The barn building, the barn on this building. You see the upper window is open to that. So open to all the elements all year round. Now, the pictures I saw in line of this, it was leaning and it's leaning. It's still leaning. And you can see the the roof is bowed a bit on the on the Eve is a bit on the right hand side. Yeah, yeah, it's pitching out a little bit, a little saddle back. Ah, great terms. I don't know that stuff. I point this stuff and say this is what it looks like this boat. And that's not good. Right, right. It should be straight. That's a red flag. That's a red flag on a red barn. So what's the history of this this building? So what did you talk about when you were filming it? Well, it's what I was talking about was it was a stagecoach in and so the road that we see pictured right there, that is seven. So what's interesting in the 1970s, this build. So this building used to face route seven and then it was turned. It was turned 90 degree angle from route seven looking at Ferndale and push back. So it's actually sitting on a brand brand brand brand new. It's relatively new. It's sitting on a concrete foundation, which I was surprised when I first read that. How is it? How was that? Did they lift it up? Well, they moved it. Yeah. And the reason they moved it was because it was blocking the view on Ferndale for driving because you're going to turn on the route seven or go across it. All right. So. But it's such a shame is in such it's it's tattered really. It's it's it needs a human to help it. It needs a lot of humans to help it with deep pockets because you would know better than I. But I'm guessing that'd be very expensive to fix. Well, what's wrong with it? Depending. Yeah. Right. The extent of what you want to do with a building like that or adaptive reuse, you know. So so that was one of three that were in a little pocket of. Oh, it's fantastic. I don't have those pictures. The across the street on the other side was a meeting house and that had some issues with windows. Not terrible issues yet. But if they don't work on it, it's going to be terrible. Yeah. I've seen terrible. It's not good. I know. And you know, it's funny. I tell people that, you know, the old houses are like you said, well built, they they withstand a lot. They can they can contend with neglect for a really long time.  So, you know, you could ignore it for 35 years. You don't want to. But if you wanted to, you know, so these these buildings. So so that was that was one you did.  What what popped Lester up in your mind as a place to go? Well, not so much Lester planning process for I saw that this was a stagecoach in. I thought I want to film a stagecoach in. OK, just like I want to fill film taverns. I find these buildings fascinating. So do you Google taverns and you try to find like and see what comes up and what's like within our realm that's easy enough to get to? Is that how you do your research? No, actually, I typed in National Registry of Historic Places in Vermont and it comes up with all the counties and all the buildings around the National Register. So you scroll through those and yes, I do. OK, and all three of those buildings are on the National Register. So and then when they were grouped together, I could have done a little hallelujah dance. And I may have done. I may have done the end zone dance. Yeah, yeah, I may have done that because it's it's so much easier when I filmed these three buildings in Burlington, for instance, these the only house I remember is Minstner House. That's the only name I remember. In fact, I don't remember what street they were on. It's so sad they were close to two weeks ago, too. They were close together. Boom, boom, boom, all in a row. Perfect. Oh, I'll film you and you and you. And now I'm done. So you do. So when you film, so that's one YouTube episode. Yes. So how long are your episodes? I know I've watched them my thumb through. So how long is a soup to nuts episode? A cemetery video can be 30 minutes. My my camera, which is my cell phone, gives me a warning when it hits 30 minutes. And it doesn't actually stop filming. What happens is it it separates. So then I have to either knit them together, which is actually pretty easy. Hallelujah. But I just let a video go to 30 minutes and then upload 30 minutes. So today's video is part five of my visit to the Village Cemetery in Shelburne, for instance. And tomorrow is part six because it's another 30, almost 30 minutes for the same cemetery, same area of the same cemetery. Oh, it's beautiful things, cemeteries, like three videos. And I just I'm just walking. Yeah, doing a little bit of talking. I do talk about dates and if someone's still alive, if I happen to know a story. Yeah, but they're really just a stroll through a cemetery. Oh, that's great. That's neat. Yeah, pretty cool stuff. So it's like so your phone gives you a warning. Like we just got a this this is just funny because you said that, you know, you could stitch them together and it doesn't actually just stop necessarily. But, you know, we got the 10 minute warning, which is plenty of time. But, you know, here when we run out of time, the screen goes dark, but we can still keep talking for as long as we want. And it records. So I happen to know that. Yeah, but it's weird for the people watching at home because all of a sudden the camera goes off, but they still hear us. And I've learned not to curse when the picture goes away because it's, you know, it's not good for. Oh, I strive not to curse ever on my channel. Oh, me too. Oh, yeah. So so you're going into episode six with the cemetery, right? That's tomorrow's tomorrow. Yeah. So what are a couple more of your favorites? Sure. All right. So the next one you're going to see is the the absolute opposite of this. Oh, no, that's the barn. There we go. That. OK, yep. This. I think you will enjoy the story of where tell me where it is. I think I know a lot. Oh, sure. A lot on Church Hill Road, two words. Church Hill. Yeah. So Church Hill Road is accessed by either end. I highly recommend you come in from the root seven side. And that's because if you use Google Maps, it will tell you you need to turn right onto Tavern Hill Road. So I was driving, I had come in from from the side that's from the right side of that building. So I come in from that side and I was looking for Tavern Hill Road. So I passed a couple of houses. Which are dwarfed by this building. And the thing is, as I passed the second house, the this building just loomed. So have that experience. You're not going to have it from the other side at all. So this will be on your right hand side as you're on Church Hill Road. So there is no Tavern Hill Road. Google, please, Google Maps, please. There's no Tavern Hill Road. This is directly on Church Hill Road. But it's called the Tavern on Mutton Hill. Now, there is a Mutton Hill Road to your left before you get to the Tavern. This one has been fully restored. I read that the second floor had been a ballroom in the day back in the day. This used to be part of the stagecoach road. So I don't know what shifted because route seven, it was is the stagecoach. So yeah, but but this is built 1812, 1813, something like that. So very old building. We can tell by looking at it is very old. Look at this beautiful double chimney with the parapet between. In New York, there's called stone enders because then in between would be wood, but they'd have these big double chimneys on either end of the building. Wow.  Yeah, it's gorgeous. So stuff that you wouldn't hear about because I wouldn't talk about in the video necessarily, the back stuff. And what I ever have is like when I had my 50 subscribers, thank you video. There was about some history books I like to use. Nobody liked that video. Nobody watched it. I think eight people, maybe. Oh, there you go. And a hundred. But that's more than watch a show. So that's that's great. Don't say that. No, no, no. So when I had a hundred subscribers, I had a behind the scenes look of what it takes to put together one of these videos. So some things I was talking about was of unless the original train of thought on that, darn it. The whole the whole memory thing is a problem. In my fault. But but some things to look out for. So if you're using Google Maps, sometimes it's just not going to get you where you want to go. For Union, the Union Church in New Haven Junction, which doesn't actually exist anymore, but there is a sign saying New Haven Junction to be a monger street. It's not a monger street. It's not they tell me to an empty lot with trees. OK. Thank you, Google Maps.  Right. But. But anyway, something to be said for real maps. There is somebody said about real maps, but I don't have a real map. But I guess I do. But I like to use Google Maps. But I knew where it was going to be there. I knew how to get there from one end, but at the other side. So I corrected that in Google Maps. You know you can do that, right? You can correct it in Google Maps. No, I didn't know that. You can. You can. You can just put it in the actual location. So when you're lost, you're like, no, this is where it is. This is where it is right here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then. So, yeah, let's have another, another favorite. Oh, all right. So. Sorry about the title, but it's handy that this is the St. Augustine Cemetery in Montpelier, as you see as part one. This is the entry. One of the entrances to it. This was a request. I had, I did get requests from people saying I should go here, there and everywhere, which is fantastic. I actually have two requests I need to fulfill. I'm sorry if you're watching this show. You're working on it. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. So I finally got there. I had people asking me, please tell me how this is. They have loved ones buried there. They, I was told the grass was knee-high to, you know, it was awful. Neglected like most cemeteries. Like too many of them. But also some of them use prison labor. And the Greenmount Cemetery in Montpelier uses prison labor, for instance. And they didn't, that grass was insanely high. But it was all cut when I got there. But I do talk about the ground in cemeteries. So when other people visit, they're not shocked. This was the worst cemetery I've ever walked for the ground down in this lower part down here. Every step I took, I felt I was gonna break an ankle. Oh no. It was that uneven. It was terrible. But it's beautiful. It's a terraced cemetery. We don't really have those in Burlington. So step down and then down and then down again. Yeah, but I couldn't go down in the lower portion because the land was so, the ground was so bad. I was really afraid I was gonna hurt myself. I'm sure. But the upper level of that was perfectly fine. Go figure. The newer part. Yeah. The newer part. But there are, I don't have that photo, but over to the right, the upper portion of that, there is a fairly large grave marker. The kind that has the ball on top. So it's a cylinder. Oh, okay. It's one of those kinds. Leaning.  Oh no. It's just not. So is there a group? Do you know, did you find out whether there's a group that is trying to, like we have a cemetery commission in Burlington. You know, and I know they're put upon, but they try and they're trying to maintain and get volunteers together and stuff like that. Is there something like that in Montpelier? I don't know. I know that this is, the St. Augustine Church still exists and they're responsible for this cemetery. It's a beautiful cemetery otherwise, but you don't want to walk in the grass there. Not at all. They probably wouldn't take an interview from you, would they? I don't know. I never thought of that. Since we only have two minutes left, there's a, I do want to say for a historic, I may be able to be, I may be working with an historical society come early summer, which is very exciting. So I want to say to historical societies out there, particularly in Vermont, because right now I'm just in Vermont. I'm not traveling out of state right now, but not yet, but I will travel again. If you'd like to work together, I would love to work with you. Film your items, film your photographs, film stories about this stuff. You can talk all you want.  That's actually pretty easy sometimes, occasionally. But, and you can break it up into multiple episodes. That too, but even better for you as a non-profit, I can hook you up with fundraisers on Instagram and Facebook. On Instagram it runs for 30 days and you get all the money at the end. So again, give your YouTube channel. Traveling for History, 1L and Traveling. Traveling for History. And if you want to contact me about that, TravelingForHistory at gmail.com. I'd love to talk with you about that. And if I can ask for some help on something too, I want to film the interior of Burlington High School. I really do. They're gonna tear down my high school and shockingly enough, next year is my 40th High School Reunion, 40th. We'll work on that, we'll work on that for you. I want to thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me. We're gonna upload all your information for the YouTube channel and stuff on the Preservation Burlington website so people can also follow up after this and get in touch with you. But, and we'll get you into the high school. That'd be awesome. Patricia, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. We really appreciate it. This was fun. I really, really do. It was so great to hear what you've been up to. I'd like to thank everybody for tuning in to CCTV, live at 525, the Preservation Burlington Show. Remember, for more information on your house, your town, or that marker you always wanted, go to preservationburlington.org. And we'll see you next month. And the month after that, and the month after that, and the month after that, we're really looking forward to it. Thank you so much. Thanks, Patricia. Thank you. Have fun.


What's good Josh boy Ross back again with another videos and we're gonna check out. This is absolutely perfect for LA night Yeah, shout out to the homie the great one man linked to the original video will be down below this segment on this weeks Monday Night Raw was Perfect. It was fantastic Granted doesn't really make sense because LA night is a smackdown guy and you know misses on Monday Night Raw But you know what if they're gonna go have a program together and it started from the Slim Jim battle row when LA night eliminated the Miz and I guess, you know That's where they they start to you know built their feud off of or built their feud from even though they're on separate brands I'm okay with it because this segment alone was fan Fantastic both on the Miz and LA night side of things So I want to see what he has to say about it This was a really really good segment and if we're gonna get a few this is a good one I'm I am all for it. I think a lot of people are let's get right into this one. See what he has to say God that was hilarious. My man got a pop even while being roasted. I don't know about you guys I'm very excited about this rivalry. You may believe that LA night deserves more Maybe he should go for the world here. We champion right here I believe this rivalry is perfect for LA night right now We have two very similar guys with major Differences and it already got personal and LMS promo was great If you're not a hardcore wrestling fan or you don't like LA night that much This was a promo that probably resonated with most people. It's kind of wild man. Money like draw was not that bad We got a shinsuke heel turn Chad Gable finally getting a push and this promo which might end up being one of the best Promos of the year. It is kind of odd though that we got a rivalry between a raw and he smacked down I got just say it marking me just lights up and I want to complain about go for you Go for you e breaking the grass But I'm a little slight because this is exciting Yeah, things I liked about this episode of raw is the fact that we got new commentary My quick hole is the goat one of the guys that always had the reputation of being the worst commentator in Wwe history for whatever reason. I don't even know why I actually always liked Cole.  Yeah, I did not like that version. I think it was just It was it was I guess obviously Vince Barking orders on what he wanted him to say verbatim or whatnot on that kind of probably Messed up the flow for his commentary I wasn't a big fan of him during this period. He was unbearable for me, but After you know Vince retired and they kind of let kind of let him, you know, just go out there and have free reign He's in my opinion been pretty Pretty entertaining to like here and watch when they you know show him on camera especially his stuff his his back and forth with we're not back and forth, but his issues with Dominic and his issues with One of the members from top dollar Now I said one of the members of from top dollar one of the members from hit row top dollar with the whole flop over the top Robe and stuff like that like I like that back and forth It's commentary in my opinion has improved and is much better and I enjoy it Listening to him commentating. I'm glad they added him to Monday night Raw definitely freshens it up I think it was hilarious. It was so bad It was kind of good the show kicked off with the American Nightmare Cody Rhodes and he talked about his match against Brock less Mm-hmm different vibe it was like Cody respects Brock now He said he didn't understand what happened after the match, but his mother told him dummy Don't you get it? He acknowledged you and now Cody feels invincible. He feels like he can beat anyone. No Stop Cody this ain't the title. Yeah, this ain't the championship facts That's exactly what I feel as soon as Seth came out there. I was like, no No Just no They keep teasing this after he finishes up with a feud. No, I don't want to see this not no No, it's not the title. You should be going for Seth Rollins questions that point. He says you said you can beat anyone. Why don't we put it to the test? I kind of already did Three times. Yeah lost all of these. Yeah Don't you think of course we got the judgment day They were without Finn Balor pre says you do not run money. I draw we run raw You don't dictate title shots I do less nor may be done with Cody, but Dominic is not Dominic is the true workhorse of the WWE not I don't want to see this for you to gain either But we may end up seeing it again. I really don't Cody Finn Balor suddenly attacks Rollins and we got a Brawl we also got Sami Zayn with the save and it's clear. We're getting that sex man T-Maj with Seth Rollins does not want to tag with Cody Rhodes Which is nothing that WWE always used to forget.  You're good guys right now, right? Buddy come on So I'm glad that this is somewhat logical at least Raw Six minutes. Yeah, I'm excited to give these four men the opportunity to become the next Intercontinental champion when he put them in a fatal four-way number one contenders match everyone is excited and I Absolutely love this this picture alone makes me think wow the mid-card scene is looking really good That match was fantastic to the card may not sound like a very prestigious word. I get it But now since Gunther is the intercontinental champion I think right now becoming a mid-card champion is a bigger deal than ever before So we got the fatal four-way match the show was in Chad Gables hometown He got a huge pop and we know the rule in the WWE a match is happening in your hometown You are probably going to lose. Well, first of all the match was really really really really fun Yeah, I wish WWE would give us more triple threats fatal four ways instead of multi-man tag team matches Like I can't even explain how much more fun these are and thankfully Chad Gable actually won the match He's the number one contender. He even celebrated with his son and that's just Awesome wonderful man I know it's a bit early now But I feel like Chad Gable might be the one to dethrone Gunther and maybe he should it's either Chad Gable or Shameless, maybe in the future we'll get another guy that is going to get that over and we want you know him to win the Intercontinental champion, but for now I say Shameless or Chad Gable because okay, man, this guy is over and he absolutely Deserves it pretty much got the same way LA Knight did he was just good. He connected with the audience He's just that good Very charismatic Unbelievable in the ring people compare him to a court angle a lot And I think that comparison is more legit than ever before. Yes, they're both Olympic wrestlers I get that comparison, but court angle was unbelievable in the ring while also being very very Charismatic and Chad Gable. It's like his son. So court. I say check that DNA test I mean anybody should have been a son. It should have been Chad, but you know, that's neither here nor there To your reasons actually Saffron's does not want to work with Cody, but Sami Zayn says let's focus on the match Let's try to get along because these men attacked Kevin Owens, which is your friend and your friend I completely forgot about the Saffron's and Kevin Owens friendship Now the thing is during that first segment you can see that Sami Zayn got injured my man got some soul elbow boner And the same thing happened to John Cena from what I understand It's not serious or possibly not serious or hopefully that's the case Yeah, got another one Sony de Villa's injured man. These championships cursed This is 100% cursed L.A. Matt is taking some photos and the miss is He doesn't get the hype. He feels like L.A. Knight is overpushed, which is kind of the story WWE are going with Love it more on that in a second. We got Bronson Reed versus Shinsuke Nakamura It seems like Shinsuke Nakamura is getting some kind of a career resurgence because well It's Bronson Reed someone that WWE, you know, don't really want to lose from what I understand They're really high on Bronson Reed But we got this match which was fine and Shinsuke Nakamura actually picked up Yeah, they didn't think much of it until I've seen Sami Zayn getting injured by JD McDonough and Shinsuke Nakamura replaced him But we got that smile and I was like, okay, maybe we're not getting a heel turn Maybe not right now, but it seems like Shinsuke is Interested in that world the heavyweight change for sure.  I know he is that I know that look of Yes Yes, I will help you By the way, JD might just join the judgment day, which is I'm not sold on it man. I I don't care I don't care. We saw Ludwig Kaiser hitting on Maxine I would never problem. It depends on how they book it and I like what they're doing with him now So we'll see what they do with JD going forward crap about Otis and she snapped He turns around now.  How come Otis gets every girl in the W Daddy Becky Lynch promo. We all know she's pissed at Triple H right now And I don't know WWE actually written it or she just came up with it herself, but Yeah, she was pissed. Well, first of all during her promo. She talked about, you know Her match against Trish Stratus how she wants to face her finally one-on-one She says Trish is the greatest of her generation and Becky is the greatest of this generation and the next one and the next After that we see Stark.  Stark said she's the baddest woman in WWE and that's when we got Shaina Bayes LaRusse Every big pop from the WWE audience when she said that she well basically retired round the Rousey She got her out of the WWE crowd erupts with thank you Shaina Chance He says I've heard you said you're the baddest woman on the planet and Shaina says that she is So Becky Lynch says Adam Pears come out here and make it official. We got the match It was fine very two similar gimmicks. I would say in your way. It was kind of exciting We saw Becky Lynch watching drinking lemonade now. Did you guys get that reference? Okay? Let's talk about it again. Becky Lynch was not a summer slam She was best she posted this picture of her, you know with lemons because WWE are handing her lemons and during the press conference Triple H said sometimes you just got to make lemonade and She listens to her boss Of course one of the match and Becky Lynch was well again taking shots I don't know. It's probably light-hearted. Maybe they talked about it. I don't know I honestly don't know maybe we're taking it because he was Definitely a part of the show. So he would know, you know, I'm saying they cut to the camera of her doing the Triple H things. I'm pretty sure they had that conversation. I'm gonna do this. He's a I'm pretty sure most likely there's no way he didn't know they cut to her Doing that they cut to her drinking lemonade multiple times. There's no way they don't know that if that's the case They don't cut to her doing that. They probably have somebody on the headset say a cut it out So seriously, but yes, Becky Lynch is probably pissed. I get that I also get where triple H is coming from The paper is way too long. Yeah, some matches should have been shorter, you know, China says one day I'll be coming for you and Becky says, you know where to find me man's restroom Yeah, I got it It seems like China Baszler is finally getting real rivalries appreciate that We got Ludwig Keiser versus Otis a bit of a filler but not that bad if I'm being honest You know, I'm a big fan of Otis Chad Gable. So I'll let it pass So while we got to distraction and Ludwig Keiser won the match Chad Gable is looking like a man right here Already seen that match. I didn't talk about it because I didn't make a review, but great, right? I think we can all agree these two are going to have another banger. Let's talk about the Miz and L.A. Night. Yeah, he rants about how people stopped showing respect to veterans He mentioned how the fans loved this L.A. night guy, but miss is a veteran any locker room leader He was thought to show respect Introduce yourself when you walk into a locker room shake hands. He's tired of being this respected from the so-called new talent We see L.A. Night big pop I might want to introduce himself, but the miss didn't shake his hand Miss says L.A. Night is what you get when you strip away all the good from the miss Just a flavor of the month L.A. Night is nothing but an attitude era fanboy playing cosplay in his ring People chant tiny balls L.A. Night says I don't have a problem with you Which you don't want to make this personal and then the miss goes on another rant He talks about his history in the WWE all of his accomplishments He made himself indestructible to anyone in the locker room. He's been out here for 20 years. What has L.A. Night done? Already a very good promo, you know making it personal. This is where the miss is at his best Just ranting about shit, but this is where it got good L.A. Night says so personal it is all these years. He's been making himself a dangerous man He's been scratching and clawing looking in from the outside while this plays bet on all the wrong horses Including the miss He was just waiting for the right opening.  He said you're worth the safe bet They knew they can kick you out the locker room because what are you going to do about it?  He doesn't take too many risks. Some can say that's good Some can say that's uh a little bit, you know on the safe side, but This was just a good back and forth. I'm I'm invested. I'm ready to see what happens Even though once again, it doesn't make sense part of the brand split, but I'm still here for it Not about that. He's a dangerous man. He's not a pushover. He's not to be messed with and that's the difference L.A. Night said that miss's career doesn't matter anymore because it's down the toilet He doesn't mind making miss a stepping stone and walk into the main event scene and miss is angry I'm not a stepping stone. I'm a main eventer. L. Night says chill.  Maybe it is I don't know, but this is where I felt like okay.  I'm very excited about this right a lot of times wwe would put someone against the miss or dove ziggler It doesn't always work and it doesn't work not because the miss or ziggler are bad It's because people don't care about their opponents. Well, they do care about l.A. Night The miss is very good at what he does. It's gonna be really really awesome Also, the new day made the return against the viking raiders and of course they picked up the w got a huge Crowd pop as well good the tag team division needs them I believe since chat gable is now going to focus on his singles career. I believe Uh, I'm okay with it. You know, I didn't necessarily miss the new day that much I think we've seen the same gimmick for what like 10 years now. I get it. You know, they sell a lot of merch people love them. I love them They're great. I'm just saying they need something different But I think we need to save that until big e, you know returns to the wwe Finally, we got the main event six man tag I never have a lot to say about these matches. They're fun, but they're kind of meaningless in any way What I don't like about it is that it almost feels like especially with one And I try that it ends the same way It feels like I'm watching at the end of raw every raw I'm watching the same six man tag team match with One different wrestler most of the time, but at least we got something special in the end So, of course, we got a lot of interferences But sammy zane came back so he held them out cool finish and the babyface team wins all of a sudden Shinsuke Nakamura turns on south ralands. My man snapped seems like this is a rivalry We're going to get right now. So I guess fin baller is not focusing on the world hairway championship anymore I'm not sure. I believe south versus shinsuke is going to be a great match We've already seen it at survivor series like 2019 or 18. I don't necessarily remember It was a banger. So I know the match is going to be good is shinsuke nakamura right now in 2023 a credible opponent He could be but he's someone that I don't see winning the world hairway championship You know, he's not the guy to beat south ralands. It's obvious. That was your money. I try pretty decent show I'm just interested in what's going on with LA night or the miss is l l night so over the wwe You want to use him on both ryan smackdown or is he moving to ralands? But I do have a question for you guys Are you excited about shinsuke versus south ralands? Or did you kind of lost interest in shinsuke nakamura over the years? Let me know in the comments below. Thank you for watching this video. My peeps like subscribe Hey, man, I'm gonna go ahead and give the homie a like and y'all should too go to this video Give him a like man. Dude always puts on make some great content or whatnot, man. Uh, yeah I'm with them. I'm excited la night the miss. Let's get this going Don't know if he's gonna be on both shows. We'll see. I don't want them to overdo it But with this few with the miss Sign me up as I say Also, I am somewhat interested in what they do with shinsuke. I am Uh, interested what they do with shinsuke and sef. I do think they'll have a good match It'll be interesting to see his approach going forward how sef feels about it. I am interested So they they have some storylines that they can really pick up I'm looking forward to seeing how things play out. But comment down below and let me know are you guys just excited For la night in the miss because I know I am Promos should be good. And I think the match itself should be a good one as well But I appreciate all of them for our support rolls on 50k And I'm still gonna speak to youtube wrestling champion the world. Appreciate y'all kidding with me. See y'all next one. Peace