 Hello everyone, I'm Seth Rose and I serve in the House of Representatives. I just want to welcome everybody here. Today is really an amazing day for this community. Obviously we have a lot of roadways that are areas of need in Columbia, but we can certainly scratch this one off the list. And to me this isn't just a ribbon cutting for a hawk traffic signal that's about to be put in to operation behind us, but also it is a signal, a ribbon cutting for things to come for this stretch of Millwood Avenue from Gervais down to Gladden. This has proven to be a deadly stretch of road. In the last four years there's been three pedestrians that have been killed, and I say pedestrians, multiple pedestrians. And I truly believe that the improvement with this hawk traffic signal, in addition the over half a million dollars investment that's going to come to this stretch of road behind me is going to save lives. And there's a lot of people to think. I'd like to start also by thinking city staff. I see Robert Anderson in the back. He's never one to come to the front, but I can tell you he is an amazing employee. And I would call him a public servant. He works very, very hard. So I want to thank Robert Anderson and city staff for all you do. We have our city councilman here. We have Howard DeVall, Moe Bajora, the mayor, Steve Benjamin's also present. And I'd like to also thank DOT staff. There's a lot of people with DOT that are responsible for this. But I want to say thank you to Lori Campbell who's present here today, who helped with the study. She's just been amazing. Tony Magwood, who's in the back from a DOT who does an amazing job. And Rob Perry, we have Rob Perry here today. We'll hear from him briefly in a little bit. But with that, we're going to have a list of speakers. As you know, we have the hawk traffic signal that is going to be put into operation. But the CTC board, which is a board that is appointed by the legislative delegation, is allocated close to a half a million dollars for improvements that are to come. We think those improvements, we believe they will be become implemented in the spring of next year. They'll first go to city council for vetting and public information. We'll have meetings, community meetings about what the community would like to see done based on the DOT plans for the improvements behind us. But with that, I want to welcome the CTC board chairman, Mr. James Brown. Good morning, everyone. Again, my name is James Brown. I'm chairperson of the Richland County Transportation Commission. The commission consists of 12 members appointed by the local legislative delegation. Our job is to look at the tax rebate that comes back to Richland County for road improvement projects. Normally we get requests from different entities from the city of Columbia, as well as the state, as well as Richland County. This particular project came us two months ago. Access to actually helping the project based on the fact that it's a safety issue. We brought it for the committee. The committee looked at it. At first, we had certainly not concerns, but we had to try to put some money in place because our fundings are limited. But after talking and hearing from the community, hearing from the city and everyone involved in the project, we saw need that we need to fund this project based on the nature of the safety issue. So again, we appreciate all that the rest of you all done in making sure this happened. We just played a part in putting funds in place for half a million dollars to the other portion of the project for this particular area. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Rose and Mr. Brown. And all of you who have come here to celebrate this quick action. I had the benefit of serving on the CTC committee 20 years ago, Mr. Brown. It's never acted this quickly before. This is a rapid response to an urgent need as we work and speak every day as the council meetings about ways in which we can not only be safer, but how we can encourage pedestrian activity, how we can become a more of a walking, biking community. And it's very difficult to do when you have major thoroughfares separating key neighborhoods in our city. So making this investment is essential to our overall strategy of making the city more livable. I mean, if you may know may not know that all of our community development block grand dollars that come to the city now are divided basically between only a handful of neighborhoods for neighborhoods. This is one of those neighborhoods that all the funds that we're using for facade redevelopment and enhancement in the city this year all comes to this neighborhood. We're focusing intently on the housing opportunities, making sure we have not only affordable housing, but the transitional housing for folks in this neighborhood. So it's a major point of emphasis for the people at the city and for your leaders at city council. Well, I obviously thank Mr. Duval and Mr. Maduro for their leadership, the rest of city council. Mr. McDowell couldn't be here right now. He's dealing with an ailing mother. So I know he'd be here if he could be. So I should keep his mother in your prayers. But we're here with you. We're here with you on the way. We're going to keep following with not just the leadership and word, but also, indeed, thank you to all of you for your working leadership. Thank you for having us here today. As most have mentioned, this is a collaborative effort. And first and foremost, I want to thank everybody to help make this happen, whether it be SCDOT or leadership from commission, like Commissioner McLaughorn or Secretary of Transportation Hall, who's always challenging our engineers to find ways to improve safety. Or the city of Columbia that has partnered with the DOT as well as the CTC. So it takes a village and we moved really quickly because it was important. Yeah, most folks don't know what a hawk signal is. It's high intensity activated crosswalk. So that's what a hawk is or some call it a pedestrian hyper beacon. But it really is to the pedestrian. It's no different than the other crosswalk. You just press that button and it allows you to safely cross the road. For the motorists, when you start to see that flashing yellow light, that's your warning that pedestrians are about to be entering the roadway. Once it turns solid yellow, the motorist needs to prepare to stop. And once it's solid red, that means pedestrians are going to be crossing this crosswalk. So the intent is to alert the motorists of all the pedestrians that will be crossing at this location. And why is that important here? You know, we've got as you've seen behind us, we've got 21,000 cars a day that travel down this section of Millwood Avenue. And we've had pedestrian fatalities and it's our goal to reduce those anyway possible. But like Representative Rose said, and some of the council members and the mayor and the chairman of the CTC, this is just phase one. Phase two will be to resurface this section roadway and add some additional improvements to again improve the safety of the pedestrians that traverse this section of roadway. So again, I thank all the elected officials and appointed officials that made this happen. And I also thank the district one staff, Lori Campbell and Robert Dickinson that they've really been trying everything they can to push the needle in improving safety in the city of Columbia. Thank you.