James M. Jeffords: “I would like my fellow Senators to learn of some of the tremendous advances we have been able to make under this bill in…”

“I would like my fellow Senators to learn of some of the tremendous advances we have been able to make under this bill in the past relative to the changing needs of our Nation. I am going to spend just a few minutes on the North Street Revitalization Project. This effort is an innovative transportation project in Vermont that demonstrates the value of the Transportation and Community and System Preservation Program, also know as the TCSP. When the TCSP was authorized in TEA-21, the city of Burlington quickly realized that this innovative program could be used to revitalize a blighted neighborhood called the Old North End. North Street is located in the heart of Burlington's Old North End. The North Street revitalization project was born of a need to reinvigorate one of Burlington's oldest and most densely populated neighborhoods, a neighborhood where nearly a third of the inhabitants fall below Federal poverty levels, where over 85 percent of elementary school children receive free and reduced price lunches. It has been a wonderful example of a community using transportation funds to fight sprawl by investing in an older urban neighborhood. I do not exaggerate when I say that efforts to revitalize the Old North End have been underway for over 20 years. The early TCSP Program grant for North Street has been the single most important factor in the success that the project is finally achieving.”