Okay, we are live and good morning everyone. It's the Senate transportation committee and it's Friday and we have a couple of items this morning and next week I understand we're going to get into the T bill. And I think the house is finished with it so we will start our overview of the bill. But this morning we have, we're going to talk about the Waterbury Main Street construction project which seemed to me, a very exciting project I've seen pictures of it but it was a major project and they tore up all kinds of utilities and it was a, I have not seen it since it's been completed or probably hasn't been completed but with that we'll have an update and who's with us this morning to give us that update. Ken, Ron or Ron with us? Who is going to give us some overview this morning? Senator Mazza, this is Ken Upma with the Vermont Agency of Transportation and I was acting project manager on this project. And also with me today is of my staff is Casey Leach, who's one of my senior engineers and he actually participated in the construction of this project so I was thinking that I would give you folks a brief overview of the project. Great. And then Casey would follow. Ken, this has nothing to do with the project but is Audrey Upma, are you related to Audrey Upma? Audrey, that was my mother. Okay. I was thinking that might be. I've worked with her a long time ago so I was thinking that perhaps it's not a common name. No, it's not. My mom's been gone for a while now. Yeah. Yeah, that's what you were asking. So, why don't I just start it. I didn't do anything really too formal here. I don't have a PowerPoint. I got some, I got a few illustrations I'd like to show you folks. And like I said, I'll do an introduction and kind of talk about the project as a whole. And then Casey Leach has sent some construction photographs and he can walk you guys through a few of the various construction aspects of the project. Okay. So, Waterbury Main Street. This was a what we call it the agency and FEG project. What that stands for is federal economic growth center. The project really wasn't about safety or mobility. It's about economic growth and vitality for not only the for the municipality but for the region so really that's that's where this project comes from. So it's a federal economic growth center. This project's been under development for, for years it's it's what we call it the agency one of our legacy projects. I manage a number of legacy projects I've been fortunate enough to deliver a bunch of them. And I have a few more before I step off. I worked on the very city project which is similar to this and us route seven and shallot was a legacy project. It's for Brandon corridor those are legacy projects and cabinet Danville so these are, these are large linear full depth reconstruction projects and that would that's what it represents. The project took an incredible amount of effort from an engineering standpoint to get it to construction. It actually had a construction cost of 26 million had a right away cost of about a million five. And spent almost three and a half million in preliminary engineering on the project for a total of about 331.2 million dollars so. I would say that it's probably the most expensive mile of highway in the state of Vermont. And that's all in center per selects district. Oh that's right. It seems to be a lot his district he's he's got enough for the next 10 years he shouldn't have anything so. Yeah but you've got that special bridge. Let's not go there okay. I'm not going to mention that. We're talking about Grand Isle here. Thanks. Thanks a lot Jane I appreciate that. Okay. And they all it's like Alice in Wonderland they all shall be winners and all shall have prizes right. Oh my buddy Jane okay. I'm going to add a little levity to our otherwise. Is the project done in Waterbury or I haven't been over there. It's practically done with all the all the base payments laid. We've got some minor cleanup this year and of course, for a project like this you let the you like the sub base and base payment to settle. We're going to be completing the job by July 1 with the final paving line striping, street lights, etc. Liz, could you please pull up that perspective of the are actually would you pull up the linear map of the project please. Can. Liz can you hear me. Yeah. Is that it. Well it's okay we'll do this one first. Oh wait I got it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's fine. No, that was the first, the first, the, the, the, the map that I sent you it was called. I had sent you to. I'll find it. I'll find it. Illustration. Yes. Yeah. Okay. But if you want Liz, we can leave this map here for a second. I'll just briefly go through this. It's going to take a minute. I thought, yep. Okay. Okay. So this right here is a perspective of the. What's the issue now? Do you see it? No. Oh, yeah, I hate that. Share it. Can you not share your screen Ken and show it yourself? Can you just leave that there for a second. That matter there. Yeah. And she can look for the other thing if she's sharing screen. And I got that too, but this, um, this is a perspective of the project. Just. I like the picture because it shows really what the stamp pavement is in this, in the bulb outs and the crosswalks. So you see, uh, what you got here is a. A downtown, um, cross section of the highway. So you've got, but you'll notice it's got, um, new sewer and new water. And he shows your sub basin, your underdrain and your new pavement.  So there's just a general perspective of a, of a cross section of the highway. Um, there we go. So, uh, Now, there was that other picture I had. Let me just, um, It's going to take a moment unless you can share it yourself, but I will look for it. That was called Waterbury map general. Yep. It's going to take a minute for me to find it. So. Do you not have it? Can you share it? I have it. Let me see. How do I share my screen here? Just click share screen and I'll look for it. Okay. Share screen. Yeah. Um, Just click share screen. Yeah. I'm going to find them. I'm going to find that. Yeah, I'll look too. How'd you ever manage a project like that with all the traffic going through town?  Wow. There we go. Okay. So, um, On the far left there of the, of that illustration, you can see the circle. That's the roundabout off the interchange. Oh yeah. No. Okay. And the, the project starts just beyond the brook, that little bridge on the right side, right there. And it extends. It actually sends Easterly. And, um, right there, you'll see it goes all the way down to a point. Um, Just past the old bean Chevrolet place. You can see the waterbury state office complex loop there as such. Now. Yeah. I've got a few things. Just one of the, one of the challenges of this project, of course, you know, the real challenge to these projects, I've always said, it's not the engineering, you know, engineers. We don't have a hard time doing our work with respect to the engineering, but it's always the right away in the utility and the environmental permits. I find those to be our greatest challenges. And then on the other side note, it had a hundred and twenty two separate parcels. Oh my God. So it was the largest right away undertaking that I've ever experienced at the agency. And so, you know, we had to meet with every one of those of Butters and discuss the project with them, listen to their needs and concerns. And incorporate that.   And then we did a pretty good job there because we only had one. One individual challenge us. You know, minor alterations. The utilities were, were a really big part of this project. It didn't really show the utility vaulting in that perspective. But because the town had a town ordinance prior to the projects. Programming. So it was eligible for federal participation to underground. All the utilities and remove them. And so from the beginning of the project or just by the ball field, the rec field. All the way to the north. North access to the loop of the Waterbury state office complex. Basically just a little more than half the project. All those utilities were put underground. And that was an incredible challenge for us. And then we maintained the polls from there. To the end of the project. So, um, So Ken, does that mean that all the, um, utility polls in Maine, uh, Main Street, Waterbury are, are gone. Okay. So there's it. There's the trick. Excuse me. Because I know that, you know, I don't know, I don't know. I'll go back to the dample project. It was incredibly expensive. They ended up just doing it for a segment of town. We've got huge boxes that, you know, the poor little library, I think hosts about four of them. Um, and so, um, uh, the desire to, uh, Put utilities underground was there, but it turned out. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. So I was wondering what you were doing here. Well, as I said, we're, we are, we have underground at all the utilities. We've. We've built the infrastructure underground for all the utilities. From the beginning of the project. To that northern access to the state office complex. And it was eligible for federal participation. But here was the trick. And this was one of our greatest challenges. From a constructability standpoint, um, You could have put all the infrastructure underground, but then it takes about a year and a half or even more. For all the utilities to run their stuff underground. I mean, we don't physically move their infrastructure from the polls. To the underground utility, um, Conduits involves that's their work. And of course you'd have them tripping over the contractor, which would be a real mess. And it was a real challenge. So what we came up with. After. About a year and a half of discussions was that we would. The existing polls were in a position such that we could leave them. Throughout the primary reconstruction of the roadway and the sidewalks. And then we build all the underground infrastructure to host those utilities. Excuse me. And now that the, uh, The vaults are in, I think green mountain power has moved most of their power underground. But now we have four or five other telecommunications. Utilities that need to move their work. And most importantly, fair point, who would be the last people to move their stuff underground and then connect it. And energize it all. So that's being done now as we speak. And when we get all done or when the, this project is scheduled to be built. And completed by July 1st. But you're going to see utility polls out there. That are in that area where they're supposed to be removed. And we're waiting for it. We will wait for the utilities. To transfer their aerial stuff to underground. And then they'll cut the polls and then we're going to come back next year. And. Do a second contract where we just patch the sidewalk where the polls were and clean up. So it was a real innovative approach to doing this project because. I don't know how we could have done it. In a linear fashion. With the utilities tripping over the contractor. That was probably our greatest challenge throughout the design and development of the project. Ken, what, what drives a project like this, Ken? I mean, who, who determines that you're going to do a mile of road in, in, in the middle of Waterbury? I mean, has this started the community level or does the state come in? And so what, what gets this project started? So projects back in this time. Are all really developed or initiated through the regional planning groups. You know, the regional planners are who instituted the program of projects like these are at least they did back then. This project was probably promoted. In the very early phases of my career and I've been with the state for 28 years. And then it gets programmed and it gets deemed eligible. And that's what we've got. We've got all these. We've got these legacy projects that have been around. In the roadway group. And we've knocked out a whole bunch of them. I'm looking up at my list right now. I've got, I've got four more or five more to complete. I'm not going to get them done in my career because I'm going to retire soon, but when they're done. You know, the agency doesn't have a whole, a whole basket more of these to do. I mean, there'll probably be some corridor. Programming, you know, I've. I know there's interest in certain corridors on the national highway system, but. You know, this was all done back in the 80s when they programmed this stuff and. And they take a lot of money and a lot of effort and a lot of time, you know, they're not something that you can knock out like we do in our accelerated bridge program. It's the logistics to advancing a project with the utilities right away and environmental permitting is quite a massive undertaking. Kind of wonder where sometimes we get the payback on some of these projects. It's not that the infrastructure doesn't need to have upgrades and, you know, we need to modernize and all of that stuff. But when you hear about when you go around the state and you hear about how retail is dead and everybody wants to still move out and all of that. I just wonder if we keep up with the times on some of these. So, you know, what was good in the 80s sometimes probably isn't good in the end of the late 2000s or early 2000s. But, you know, it's a beautiful project. No if and buts about it. It just it's just a stunning project. So I guess probably that's what it is. It keeps Vermont looking more like Vermont, but I hope that people can appreciate and businesses can appreciate and people can support a project like this by moving back into the downtown and wanting to be part of that. I hope that eventually that we see that. You know, I might add to that that. You know, this is a wonderful thing for the town of Waterbury because they replaced all their 100 year old sewer. It's all new sewer all new water. All that infrastructure has been replaced all that utility work.  But you know, this is, this is one of the remaining legacy projects that I've been fortunate enough to work on in advance. Similar to Barry. Perfect. Yeah, Ken on the wastewater reconstruction. So was that all eligible for the federal funds because it was under the state right away? No, what happens with the sewer? I work with, with federal highway administration and typically because of this, because of the proximity of the existing infrastructure to the bottom of excavation. If it's close enough to that, your construction activities will damage it. So I think that's why it's so important to be eligible for participation. And I work with federal highway and got federal highway to go along. I think we had. 65% of it that was close enough to it. And instead of making the town pay for the other 35 cent, 35% federal highway came in and decided to. To participate in the whole thing. So. Yeah. So that's an issue with a project in playing field. On the intersection there. Fortunately, I might create another stoplight for Senator Kitchell to go through on her way to Montpelier, but. That the cost of the, of the sewer lines and water lines. To the town is pretty astronomical, but it seems like some of these projects, they get federal and some of them, then they don't. So I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I would have to. I'd have to know. More of the details that all projects are different. I'm going to kind of try to wrap this up because I think Casey wants to show you some pictures, but I'll just say a few more things. You know, we coordinated our storm water with the development of the state office. State. Watering office complex. And ran part of our storm water out. Out to them around that north arrow. And they actually built a horseshoe receiving channel and they actually built that for us. So that was kind of neat. The construction phasing was interesting. The contractor, J. McDonald came through and used a different approach than we anticipated. And that just shows how contractors use their own innovative means and measures and perhaps do things a little different, but that worked out really good. I don't, I don't want to get into too much detail on that, but I think that's a good point. And of course. I'm not sure everybody's aware of, but one of our greatest challenges, we would have built this project a year earlier. We were ready to advertise and we had to deal with all the development soil issues. From the new. The new laws that were made related to those. And development soils being those soils and urban municipal environments. That have the potential for. Solid waste, whatever. So we actually, the soils were the towns and it would have cost them. Probably millions of dollars to dispose of that soil under those new guidelines and requirements. And so we came up with another innovative approach. And we kind of bypassed the need to go through that whole process by wasting those soils within the inner. State right of way. And if you drive around Waterbury drive between Berlin to my player. Casey's going to show you some photographs. We. We disposed or we, we. We place those materials in two separate. Or three separate areas within the interstate right of way. To. To accommodate those soils and, you know, the town of Waterbury didn't have three or $4 million to get rid of that soil. But we were allowed to put it within our right of way, because it's not going to be developed. So that was really interesting. So. You know, like I said, this has been a really incredible undertaking. I'm going to let Casey show you some photos. But just before I. Close out here on what I wanted to say. I got to give credit to people that really never get much credit. And I really got to give credit to, um, there's a gentleman who works for the agency of transportation. His name is Tom Mancini and he's the resident engineer on this job. And, uh, this guy goes out there and, and builds a project like this. Day in, day out, 14 hour days. It's incredible the commitment they have. And so I'm going to go ahead and give credit to the agency. And I'm going to go ahead and give credit to the agency. Casey. He's going to speak to you went out there and acted as the assistant resident. And worked out there for two years. Hundreds and hundreds of hours. And I got to really give credit to Jay McDonald and their superintendent. Matt Moran. To go out there and, and deal with the logistics and getting this project constructed is. Amazing. So I just wanted to give a little credit to those folks in this area. And I just wanted to give them a little bit of credit. And they do a really outstanding job. So with that, Casey, why don't you, uh, why don't you introduce yourself and, um, and give the folks a little. Uh, construction update. Hi, senators. Thank you for having us here. Um, so like Kenny said, I was lucky enough to work in the field for the past two construction seasons on this project. I did work, um, a little bit with him and stand tech, developing the final phase of the contract plans and going through the advertisement process. So luckily I was familiar with it beforehand. Uh, and I just have a few photos here that show kind of interesting, uh, measures we took to help alleviate the issues. That kind of arise with these big construction projects that are located right next to. Residences and businesses and, uh, uh, a massive corridor where, you know, thousands of people are driving through every day. Uh, so this one just kind of shows. The phasing that we use during the paving operations. Um, and the. Kind of this is an all hands on deck operation. So basically right before we pave, we do fine grading where we bring the sub base to the correct level. And make sure it has the correct slopes with it. The super elevations are correct and everything. Okay. Okay. So the next sign is that, um, one that, um, how that, um, um, The MUTC D, um, would like. That is not, um, I believe that one. The messages on the other side. Um, it hopefully they weren't using it for the bump aspect of that, but no, it would probably not be MUTC D compliant. Um, good. And as Kenny mentioned before, this kind of shows the utility poles. Uh, the older ones are still there as well as the newer ones. So in this area, these poles are staying. So the kind of, um, lighter brown are the newer ones where most the utilities that already switched over to, and then the darker kind of gray ones. Um, we removed when we did the reconstruction of the sidewalk through this area. Uh, Kenny also mentioned the, uh, the dry utilities. Uh, so the electric and communication. We had the electric company and then four different communication companies that, um, That we had to run either the communication pedestals, which would be where, what these are doing, each color is a different, um, communication company. And then these larger boxes are what the, uh, the electric transformers, um, Sit on, and I believe Senator Kitchell mentioned earlier, those kind of that are throughout Danville already. Um, so Waterbury will have something similar. Most of these we were able to kind of push off to the side a little bit more. And once the landscaping is in there, most of them will be somewhat concealed. Um, and they are kind of a dollar green. So hopefully they kind of blend in as well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, talk about coordinating things. Oh my God. I can't even imagine sitting down and figure this all out. Yeah. The, the conduit was probably one of the trickier things, uh, to sit and go down through, especially in the areas with, uh, light pole based foundations or busy intersections where there's just a bunch of stuff going on. We had to do quite a few field changes, um, just to make everything work. But luckily that Kenny said McDonald was really good and they were on top of it. And you get it all, all filled up and buried up and you forgot to put one in. Hopefully not knock on wood. Oh my God. Luckily part of it is, uh, they run the strings through them, the pole strings for the actual utilities before they progressed too far. Um, so not that it didn't happen, but luckily we, we caught any errors, um, before they were in concrete. Um, these are just some more kind of, um, Riser poles for their conduit. So this is right where the conduit would start coming up. So you can see these metal sleeves here. So these would all bend here and come up the pole. And then they would start heading down toward, um, Waittsfield. And, um, you can see some of the issues we had with driveways because of course we have to maintain access to driveways that only have one entry or exit point. Um, so between digging the conduit trench, laying the conduit, and then these are all concrete encased. So you have to encase them in concrete and then let the concrete set before you can backfill. So that takes more. We're all the business is shut down during that time. The business on main street, or they were able to stay open. Uh, they were able to stay open mostly. Um, wow. We, so if they were open, then we made accommodations, um, either with ramps or walk temporary walkways to make sure that pedestrians could get in. Uh, some of them that only have limited access. They might have changed their hours a little bit. And as terrible as COVID was, um, or is, um, a lot of businesses were either reduced because the state office complex wasn't really at capacity. Um, so there was a lot of kind of downtime with the businesses. Yeah, right. Um, but here you can see we have metal plates with temporary driveways, uh, to maintain access to all these residences and businesses.  Uh, you just kind of have to do that in phases. So you have to phase everything out. This was primarily what the, uh, contractor submitted for their traffic control plan. Uh, we had a lot of stipulations in our contract plans about when they could do lane closures, uh, for how long, uh, one of the stipulations we had was they could only do kind of one lane closures from like nine to three, because we really didn't want to jam up school buses or the traffic. Um, so we had to get off as complex, which is a huge generator of traffic. Um, so during those really busy areas before nine and after three, we wanted two lanes open, um, at all times. So they were, had more freeing movement there. Um, but you can see the top one, this was primarily our sewer, which was on the right hand side of the road. And the bottom one was, uh, mostly the sewer on the left. And then you can see we maintain two way traffic, two way traffic, and then they could just, um, move the barrels because we typically use barrels or movable barricades. Um, during the daytime hours. And then if we had to, we would put concrete barriers up at night, but the goal was to have everything backfilled by the evening, um, primarily by three PM. So we could have the two way traffic moving freely without having concrete barricades throughout the entirety of the project. Uh, these just kind of show some, um, innovative traffic control when we got down toward, luckily, the work by the roundabout was the second year.  And that's one of the reasons McDonald plan their, uh, traffic control that way or their, their work sequencing that way. They didn't want to start in what they called phase one or two, which is primarily the downtown corridor because it would be so busy. And so the, with the roundabout, we did, um, require a separate traffic control plan. They had flaggers on every leg to kind of prevent gridlock from happening. And, uh, the picture on the left is just, uh, a waterline install. This is the new waterman that's going in. You can see traffic moving on an alternating one way basis. So this van is actually part of the life line of traffic. And then the dump trucks would park next to the trench, um, to take all the backfill and to bring backfill back when they were filling the trench. And then of course the equipment is above the waterline. And the one on the right is a live tap. When we got to the live, um, water main that we were tying into on both ends of the project and some of the intersections that use live taps. So we didn't have to shut down large portions of the water system for an entire day. Uh, these really show the proximity of what we were doing to these businesses. Um, as you can see, this is a really deep sewer install.  Um, VSECU, I think did close down temporarily a few days. Um, just because you can see it's very difficult to get people in and out of there safely. Um, and we were lucky enough to have separate entrances down on this left hand picture. Um, McGillicuddy's had a second door right here in this walkway goes to a, a stairway that, um, empties out on downstreet. So we were able to maintain traffic and go through there. We also use pedestrian flaggers. Um, this is one of them right here. So they would, their job was to move pedestrians throughout the work zone. Uh, they would be in hard hats and safety vests. They had all the safety, uh, precautions with them, but they would be looking. Um, uh, Casey, is the light still there where Stowe street comes on to Main Street then? This light. Yes. Uh, the new lights are in. So there is a new traffic signal there. Yes. Oh, okay. But there's still, um, um, that's still a, um, a lighted, there's still, it's still a signalized intersection. Yep. It's still a signalized intersection. They don't have the span wires anymore. It's their actual mass poles. Um, so they look a lot better, I think. Um, but yes, this one is still in a signalized intersection and then, um, Down at the next intersection as well, not Elm street. Um, not Randall street either. Um, but it's still a signalized intersection. By the state office complex. That one is still signalized as well. That's a four way signalized intersection. Um, I should tell the committee I worked at the state complex from 1978 to 2002. Um, so I'm pretty. Spent a lot of time in downtown Waterbury and I can tell you. Must have been 12 years old then. Wow. Um, the city of Waterbury is, um, uh, compared to one, uh, light seventies. The, um, it is just a beautiful village and, uh, the houses are in much better condition and, uh, on the commercial district. So it's, um, it's been an interesting evolution to see, but that's a lot of time. Um, and that was back when the complex was not what it is anymore. So it's, um, it's pretty, um, pretty transformative. Uh, we did do a lot of work very close to buildings. As you can see here, this is the funeral, uh, home that's right on Founder street. Um, this is, we're doing a water investigation. Right. I'm a gillicuddies. We had a leak somewhere. So they were receiving water in their basement. So we were trying to figure out if it was an old corporation stop. Um, because typically what the town would do when they had switched services, they would, uh, either just crimp the copper.  Uh, so we, there was a lot of interesting live water services that were unknown when we were digging, which made it interesting. Um, but they actually had customers here who were eating out there and they were very fascinated with the work that we were doing. And then these are just some of the ramps that we kept, uh, to have people gain access to their driveways. Um, so we had a lot of, um, we had a lot of, um, we had a lot of, um, we had a lot of, um, we had a lot of people either at their neighbors or over at the, um, the town office complex. And we worked with the town really closely. We had meetings with them every week with our public information officer with the, um, town public works director. So we were very, um, they worked very well to get the word out to let people know when we would be impacting their driveways or their water service. Um, things like that. And especially for the driveways, um, um, they worked out systems like that between themselves, which worked really well. And then these are some of the, the new utility poles that were still kind of in the way. Um, as Kenny said, we couldn't really relocate them, uh, and they are newer. So we just had, um, an item in the contract for bracing them. So that was either with excavators as you can see on the picture on the left, uh, that was typically, that was used a lot to make sure that they wouldn't wiggle around too much during the excavation. And then the picture on the right, uh, was a lot of the other things that were used in the, um, the, um, the excavator and the damper.   For the more robust poles that had. Much more on them would come and hold them themselves just to make sure that there wouldn't be any issues with them. And then we do have a sand filter that's right outside of the, uh, town office. It's buried down in the ground. It goes down about 15, 16 feet. Um, And they had to come up with this bracing system. We had originally thought it would be precast. Um, We had to ship a precasted item like that. Uh, so they did do cast in place. Uh, they came up with this bracing system. So they could, uh, pound those sheets down to the ground as our excavating. So they can just keep going deeper and deeper without having it collapsed in. I can see some cars up here kind of for scale. And then there's a guy standing down there who's roughly six feet tall. So it was very deep down into the ground. And then with all the underground, um, you know, there's a lot of unknowns. The center picture is a drainage structure that they found, right? Uh, kind of, it was right across from the town office building actually took them about 45 minutes to dig it out of the ground. Um, we didn't know it was there. And the concrete was actually too hard. They couldn't break it with an excavator. So they had to dig all the way around it and take it out full, which was pretty interesting. We do find a lot of pipes that we're not really sure what they're coming from. We try to figure out what they are if they're still active, and then we would tie them into drainage structures as needed. And then the photo on the right just kind of shows an active water main. This was right at the end of the projects. Um, the town had told us it would had, it had been shot off years ago, so we started to remove it and, uh, the valves weren't turned completely. Um, and then it just kind of erupted. And this was actually one of the first, um, days that we were working with the water, which was very interesting because the town didn't exactly know where the water was coming from.  There was actually an old valve. That they had kind of forgotten about. There was off all of the latest plans. Talked away behind a building.  But it made us well aware that we really need to know where valves are and make sure that they're accessible at all times when you're digging so close to live utilities. And that is all that I have. Um, I don't know where is it way on the other end or. Um, there's, I believe it's right by the roundabout. Oh, that's right. It's not too far from the roundabout. Yeah. There's a couple of pump stations in between two. I know there's a pump station down by the hockey rink, but all the sewer that we were dealing with is gravity. And it was all kind of, it goes down Elm street and then goes kind of behind the houses, um, toward the roundabout. Yeah. Yeah. So. Questions this morning. Great project. Wow. Really. Some product to do right downtown. To get a hundred and twenty two. People to, to work with you with all the homeowners. And that must have been a challenge right there just to, uh, because I'm sure you had to dig up a lot of front yards and, you know, convince them that it was the right thing to do. Yes. Go ahead. I should know the answer to this, but all the. Granted curbing we see like, and there's some in this project and a lot of projects we see that. Is it a dumb question to ask if it's all coming from Barry or is it, because I, there was another granite project and I was, I found out that it's cheaper to import it than it is to, to get it, but I wondered if the thing we're still getting locally. I don't think that's a dumb question at all because that's, kind of what I had figured before I started working. Um, and I'm not sure if it's, I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do with these projects there. I'm. I don't want to. Be wrong with us, but I'm 99% sure it does not come from Barry. Um, I believe. That there's a different type that they do, or they don't manufacture that type of curbing. Or I think there's kind of a logistics reason why. Um, not just that it's cheaper because I'm, they're going to go with the cheapest option, obviously. I think Barry kind of produces something different than what they need for the curbing. Right. Could you find out where it does come from? Like, does it come from India or does it come from my Pennsylvania? Yeah, I can look into that. Um, I want to say New Hampshire. I know the curbing company is from New Hampshire. Um, that we're using in there. I know they did the waterbury stove project as well. They're. I think they do most of the Vermont projects. Um, but yeah, I can look into that for sure. Thank you. Thank you. I haven't seen, I haven't seen any sign that says, Senator Perch look project or anything like that. So, uh, I just, you know, I was looking for personally kind of looks like that bump sign. Yeah. I was looking for personally clean. I couldn't see. I haven't seen him anywhere in the pictures at all. Yeah. I'm sorry. It was very, it was very disruptive to politicians during the election because there's usually a lot of, uh, I don't know, I don't know. It's hard to do with all the trucks and beeping and. He probably will be there for the ribbon cutting when it's open. I'm sure. I don't blame him. I don't blame him. I think of 31 million reasons why I would be. Well, that's an interesting project. And I thank you very much. It was, uh, I often wondered about, I got to go drag through there someday and see what it's like now. It is, it is a nice project. It looks really great. Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I thank you folks for a great job and, uh, constructing that, putting all the pieces together. I just can't even imagine. With so many, uh, issues and businesses and homes to be involved and do a project like that. It's got to be really challenging. And, uh, Congratulations to everybody that all had a part in it because it's not easy when you do utilities and sewer. And homeowners and lawns and gardens and everything you think about. So, uh, thank you very much. Well, thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Good job. Good job. Thank you.


We won't connect people anywhere, anytime. The development path is very important in Huawei. We have 80,000 development paths in our company. Huawei's culture is custom-focused. So as a development, we should improve for our inversions and develop our product more quickly. I think Visual Studio 20 and 17 is the most powerful IDE in the world. Huawei has the largest codebase that Microsoft has ever seen, which is about one GB and 24,000 source files. Because we're just based on C++ in Huawei company, but in the past, we have to install some other components that we don't need. But now we can just choose components we wanted to use. So now we can use Visual Studio to do continuous integration and deployment. Very convenient. The improvement of intelligences and the developer assistant tools makes the development more productive. Huawei is an open company. We cooperate with Huawei's partners. We also cooperate with open source. Visual Studio 20 and 17 can develop a Linux software and debug against Linux. This feature is very important for us. I like this feature very much. It's cool. It makes cross-platform development easier. And Microsoft is a developer-centric company. And Huawei, we are beginning to build engineering counter. So we want to cooperate with Microsoft to improve Huawei's developer productivity. Happy Birthday, Visual Studio! Happy Birthday, Visual Studio! Happy Birthday, Visual Studio!


Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy. My name is David and this is a deck review. Hey, today we're gonna look at Sisterhood of the Blood from 52 Ravens. Now, what is this deck? It started off as a Kickstarter project. Okay, and you might remember I actually did the review for this a while back. I'll put the link for that below. I don't know how much different the prototype review was from this one. The two are very similar, almost identical. This is a custom-designed deck of poker-sized cards that all centers around vampires, specifically female vampires. This was designed by 52 Ravens and printed from the expert playing card company. The theme of this deck is based on London vampires from the Victorian era. You might remember 52 Ravens had a previous deck called the Coven, and so this deck features an all-female cast of court cards that each of them have a different story to tell, but when they come together, they are the Sisterhood of Blood. The front of the tech case is very ornate, very gothic. Lots of Christian iconography, lots of cathedral-looking artwork as well as a very scripty font. It does say the Sisterhood of the Blood and Volume 1 underneath that. Both of the sides of the tuck case say the Sisterhood of the Blood. The bottom has some ad copy about 52 Ravens, and the top has some ornamentation and original tuck seal. The tongue flap is nice and thick, and it does have some ornamentation. And then if you look inside, there's a whole bunch of red blood spatter, which is pretty darn cool. The back design of the tuck is the back design of the cards, and that is pretty much it for the tuck case. Let's take a look at these cards. These cards are printed from the expert playing card company, and they have a nice snap to them, they have a nice feel to them, but they are not as thick as they feel. If I take the caliper and measure 10 cards, I use 10 cards as my base, so I measure all my decks with 10 cards just to get an idea of how thick they would be and what kind of deck they would feel like if you wanted a measurement. These come out to 2.82. 2.82 is about middle grade stock. The Sons of Liberty were the same thickness, the knock cards, and the auto bike reprint that United States playing card company put out. As you can see, the back design is very ornate. You've got a super, super, super thin border there, which makes for great fans. And then you just have all kinds of just gothic and just old Christian iconography surrounding this. It's really cool. You have these two striking colors of the kind of burnt umber brown and the blood red. Coming together on this like parchment background. There's no white on this deck. Even the faces of the cards aren't white on the face. It's that burnt parchment to make this look really old, gothic, and vampiric.  Like I said earlier, the court cards, they're all female vampires and each one of them has a different name and backstory. You're going to see their name printed along the side and I heard that backers would even get a little PDF that would kind of let them in on who these girls were and what their stories were even while they were alive and now that they're dead. So, alongside of this, each of the groups also have a theme. So the jacks in this deck, they've all just been fed. The queens are reveling in their malice and the king's immortality is coming to an end. So even though this is a custom deck, when 52 Ravens was designing this, they still wanted to make this usable and easy to read. So a lot of the things that are familiar for you in a standard deck of courts, you're going to have in this as well. So you'll still have one eye jacks and you'll still have the Suicide King. Each one of the aces has a unique look in that it has a larger and more custom designed pip in the center. Also, you'll see from the pips and indices, they are all completely custom. They have an original layout, original font in the corner and then there's this beautiful watermark just hiding behind the center layout. The tweaked pips follow a standard position but are slightly smaller and the layout is condensed compared to a standard deck of cards. Other than that, you will get one gaff card, which is a double backer, which is great for magic. Alright, so that is my review of the Sisterhood of the Blood deck from 52 Ravens. As always, we ask that you like this video just so other people can find it faster. We also recommend that you subscribe to this channel just to stay up to date on the latest in cards and card magic. If you want to follow me on social media, you can. I'm at facebook.com slash magicorthodoxy twitter.com slash magicorthodoxy instagram.com slash magic underscore orthodoxy. And if you need more content, you can always find it at magicorthodoxy.com. Thanks, bye.


The Secretary-General of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities Nassu-Pitta-DMI says non-teaching personnel and support staff in the nation's public primary and post-primary schools are not left out of the approved 60-65% years retirement age for public servants. A-DMI announced this during the union's regular meeting held at the International Conference Centre of the University of Ibadu in Oyo State. In the same vein, Labour leader Kayo Dey Martins challenged the Oyo State Governor Shea Makinde to maintain his status as worker-friendly as the union will stand against any anti-Labour policy. There is no need for segmentation and whatever is good for the Giza, we say is good for the Ganda. It's been our provenation why Nassu-Pitta-DMI shouldn't be left outside the whole team. Both the teaching and the non-teaching complement themselves in the schools and in the academic institutions. And we say that what is good for the Goose is also good for the Ganda. But you see, it is not possible for everybody to teach. There must be some people that will also do the administrative work. And that's why we say, look, if you are proving these 65 years for the teachers, you should essentially also approve that retirement to the non-teaching staff. You can see that even the federal government that mutated there is yet to implement it. In fact, to me, it is a misnomer. How many secondary schools does the federal government have for them to be making policy on secondary schools? The entire secondary schools of the federal government has cannot be up to the secondary schools in the Badon Land alone in New York State. Because they only have federal government colleges and what have you. But in New York State, we have over 600 secondary schools, 650 secondary schools. When we begin to educate our young ones and they have the knowledge, they will be able to drive a kind of economy that we believe that we want a new state to have. So I want them to also be part and to be committed to that vision, not to sabotage or to frustrate the efforts of the government. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


The people of Obibio-Tara community in Oweri local north local government area of Imo-State have been thrown into confusion as two traditional rulers have imagined one community. This came to be when the governor of Imo-State, Hopu-Zodema, issued a staff of office to benefit our Ibi of Obibio-Tara autonomous community as traditional ruler reacting to the development at his palace, the traditional ruler of Obibio-Tara autonomous community of Royal Majesty Eze Amobi Walike, described the report of Eze, new Eze as bizarre, saying that there was no letter indicating that he's been disposed. He said he remains the recognized traditional ruler of the community which his letter of recognition from the government of Imo-State since the culture's administration is not true. This is my staff of office. This is my staff of office. This is my letter of recognition that makes me an Eze. He's still with me. The staff is still with me. So how can somebody now come and say removed? Do I have any letter of removal? No. Somebody who carries a staff? A staff is not an instrument of office. It's not an instrument for Eze-ship. The instruments of Eze-ship is one, the certificate of capping and cramming by Onurara Supreme Council and then letter of recognition. It is the letter of recognition that makes an Eze. This staff you are looking now, is there anywhere the road by name? Is there anywhere you can see Obibiorara? Is there anywhere you can see description? No. No. But look at this, look at this, look at this. Read it. Look at it. We are the King Mephas and we are the Orhan. Supreme Council of the whole Orhara in general. We are the people who crown him as Iurie Orhara in center. We are here, arrived there. The whole Orhan, from Ormari, from Orhara, from Orhulu, the whole areas gathered there and crowned him. Orhan, Orhara, the Supreme Council of the general. We are the final to say what is going to happen. Boniface Arrivi, who was among 351 traditional rulers presented with the staff of office by the emo state government, says he's the authentic traditional ruler of the community, noting that Eze or Lique was never recognized as the traditional ruler of the community. Residents of the community are, however, hoping that both parties will resolve their differences in the interests of peace.


Baw, what's up everybody, once again, it's Brand Man Sean and today, I gotta do a video that's been on my mind for a minute. I want to debunk the rest strategy and the way this came about is, a lot of times I've just been talking to people or running to people and they'll say something like, yo man I'm using the rest strategy and then I would say, what are you doing? And basically they would say, I'm posting a song a week. That's the rest strategy. I don't even want to make this long video so I'm going to try to make this as simple as possible. I get the idea of the song a week representing the rest strategy because that's the easiest thing to remember, but there's a lot of other things that just had to come into play. The way SoundCloud, especially SoundCloud, when people would say they're dropping a song a week on SoundCloud, the way SoundCloud is set up, the algorithms don't really allow discovery to happen like that. They just don't. So if I create a SoundCloud tomorrow and I just start dropping a song a week, a song a week for a whole year, I wouldn't be surprised if I had zero subscribers after a year. I don't care how dope the music is. SoundCloud, just like Spotify and Apple in many ways, you really need to push people into the discovery, whether that's through repost or just getting on other playlists. You really have to have some way that other people from the outside find out about your music. Now, somebody told me that, Russ mentioned in some interview, I didn't take time to look at for it, but like he said, he did some kind of collaboration with somebody and that brought in fans. Many at this point know that he had Kara Lewis as a bicking agency eventually. There's a lot of pieces to the come up that came to play. I don't know what just happened. Someone's screaming. I'm going to figure that out after this video. This all leads back to the system that I've spoken of before. Yes, you can have dropping a song a week, dropping content consistently a part of your plan. That's a great part and centerpiece to your system, but you have to figure out a way to consistently bring in new people, even if it's not having an ad running every day like some people have done, even if it's not getting posted on influencers' pages every day or just hustling and getting in front of people, whatever, you still have to say maybe just once a month or just whenever the opportunities arise, I'm pushing people to this stuff. But it's not just going to happen from you posting into the abyss of all the content that's being dropped on the internet. So what's the point of this video? You got to figure out ways other than just dropping music again and again on SoundCloud. Even when you consider the fact that Russ had a lot of music on YouTube, YouTube was better for discovery and finding songs on the side and all those things, so just being on that platform alone was helpful. Remember the way these platforms are set up, unless it's YouTube specifically, SoundCloud, Spotify, they don't really get you any more views like that. Spotify has already said they have millions of songs, just all kind of content that has zero views, zero, zero listens. There's artists out there that have their artwork on this platform with no listens. That's because you have to create the push at first. You have to figure out how to get people to look at you. Don't think you'll just keep posting it and it'll happen. That's it for this video.  I could go in deeper detail, but I'm just going to speak at that level. If you liked this video, go ahead, hit that like button. If you like it, you might as well share it. And if you're not subscribed, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button.