 If you're okay waiting on us, please roll call. There we go. Okay, good evening, everyone. We're giving these to these new microphones. Tonight, I'm going to be first, but I'll be talking about one item in your agenda packet, and then I will be giving the annual state of the economy address. So the first item I'm going to be covering is resolution number 20, which is establishing a nine-month payment account for a lot of quality improvement projects of the Monsanto settlement funds. To give a brief history on how we got to this point, a number of communities from across the country found a transaction lawsuit against Monsanto, claiming that they had produced PCBs and had rights to them by local condemnation. And the Shibuya-Germit River meets the last definition of a contaminated watershed for their portion of the Tony was eligible to receive funds for this transaction asset. For we or the recipients, there's about $913,000, which is a significant amount of money that we were not anticipating, which is good news, of course. And the last sense to be later that these funds needed to be used for restitution and remuneration for stormwater, stormwater systems, and compliance with D&DLs, which are going to be the total amount of chemical compounds that can be released into your water, and then you can do the EPA. So we took this rare opportunity that we received nearly a million dollars that we weren't expecting. And finally, a similar and a clinical statement brought for coming up with the idea to create the same amount in account for the proposal, or that $932,000 that we received would go into the account. And the interest that we earned on that money would then be able to be used near to you for different waterfalls and different projects. So the resolution before you is to use about that amount in an absolute amount, and allow those funds to be used for a lot of quality improvement programs and many, many years to come. And then you'll probably wait for a small amount. Okay, so for some of our newest supervisors, and maybe some of the guests that we have this evening in the state of the county is the manual presentation, and it was a progressive one where the year and year begins. I will be going over a number of our key accomplishments and the big milestones from 2023. Of course, in any given year, the county is involved in so many different things I couldn't possibly touch on all of them or we'd be here all night. But I will cover some of the most significant things in the county in 2023. And these are in no particular order. Most of the construction of the use of the bulletin mesh dam, the picture that you can see here is from early on in the summer, while we're still under construction. For those of you who don't know, the mesh is approximately 14,000 acres. About 55% of that is publicly owned. The former dam was completed in 1938. And in 2018, the county, the DNR, and Ducson and the others started working on two diligence in the background on how we can replace all these key pieces of infrastructure. The construction started earlier this year and the potential completion was achieved in the summer. The project includes public access improvement, areas for launching products, better flood control, enhanced fishing access, and the ability to control water levels. And this will allow for wild ways to grow and other ecological and official vegetation for water level. Another major benefit of this project is the ability to control the captails. For those of you who have been on the board and may be involved in the full committee, you're aware that sometimes the captails build up and Irene has to call the highway department to help them come and be removed. And that's quite costly for us. So when you're doing the work, to control that they're reducing our costs for that. Here's some more recent pictures. You can tell by the personnel that accumulated. This project was a great example of a fun partnership. This wasn't a been possible without funding from a lot of different sources. So the major funders were the county and the state of contributing about a million and a half dollars. And we also have significant funding for the people limited in the Hubei County Preservation Association and their number 26 member clubs as well as the state of Great Lakes, the Fund for Lake Michigan and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The improvements to the national complex will not only benefit the taxpayers, but enhance the recreational opportunities that the spotting is reattracting to our visitors. It's based on greater services at the airport. As many of you know, the airport is a critical asset for the county and for visitors around the world. It's often their first impression of the community. We saw an opportunity to improve the services, provide fair prices and eliminate the tax for these subsidies for the airport. And so over the last year, there's been a lot of effort by many people who worked with the acquisition and this is also a change of providing a fair service to the airport such as air transport, fueling, de-ice, and parking, and doing that at the store. We are ready for operations. We'll just really begin in February first. And we're committed to continuing to facilitate a sense of community as we go forth and bringing those not only from the U.S. community, but others to the airport to realize what a great kind of partner has that is to the county. Also, I'll note in your agenda this evening, Revolution Number 23 is approved in the name and a logo that you see here in the bottom left-hand corner for the FBO, which is Lake Breeze Aviation. The FBO is the new camera assistance for law enforcement. The church department equipped every foreign officer with a body-worn camera and all of them marked patrol vehicles with the new CNDS camera system. That included 48 body-worn cameras and 20 in-car videos that can be used to replace the outdated system. The church department was the first agency to implement any squad cameras, however, we weren't the only law enforcement agency in the county that didn't have the body-worn cameras until now. The project also included a loud story for the videos to allow for more efficient means to share the video with prosecutors of the law enforcement agencies and the public. And the tonal cost of that project was about $432 and that was a combination of grant from the Department of Justice and American Rescue Plan Actors, which included a reduction in the stroke of our highest-med human services. Due to high levels of referrals, NCHSF bolstered some of their most intensive treatment services, which includes the birth-to-three program, non-conversive community services, and programs of long-time support units. In addition, the Public Health Division of Health and Human Services, their community outreach workers, continued to expand their activities with both the mom and their speaking community. And children in protection out-of-home care, we had the fourth consecutive year with fewer children in out-of-home care, which was an outstanding opportunity to continue year after year to increase those numbers. In addition, we hired community physicians, which are funded from the opioid epidemic litigation, and that is a great, fair transition plan and a youth therapist. We also had two open human services initiatives that are funded by the American Rescue Plan Act, which is the Mobile Crisis Call Response Program, and the Family and Neighbors Together Program, and was both launched in 2023. We continue to adjust our service delivery to meet the needs of the community, and thankfully, we have a lot of support resources that allow us to do so. This is a long-time comment. The transportation department maintains about 450 miles of road and 152 bridges, and the asphalt plant allows us to produce that in its narrow, effectively, and for an open, cost-effective price to not only help the economy with their road work, but also the work that we do by local municipalities. The follow-up asphalt plant that we currently have is open for 27 years old, and needed to be replaced because of the inability to get parts for it. The construction started in 2023, and we had a few sub-docs from different supply chain issues from main doctors, however, it was officially completed, and we are running testing to make sure that it will be fully operational and spring. The new plant will be more efficient, have higher capacity, nearly twice as much storage, use up to 40% more recycled materials, have a more reliable power system, and be cost-effective. The project in total was just over $60 million, with funding coming from funding, the transportation fund found in that investment, a proceeds from selling the old plant. There has been a number of solar renovations that are acting all over the past couple of years. That coupled with putting the pandemic finally in the rearview mirror, we've been able to strongly increase our census at Rockingall, which is fantastic news. Since August, the census has been at or above the budgeted census of 116 for tonight, 2023, and we've peaked at 126. Rockingall also opened a new milestone for their nurse aid training program, which will continue to have curators to the workforce and our community, and we also brought our funding synthesis back in-house in 2023 to improve the overall food quality and service for presidents. And due to all of the new hard work that are suffered in Rockingall, we once again met some of the five-step of quality rating, which is a great accomplishment, something we're very careful. Enhancements for facilities, Building Services Department was very busy. They maintained our buildings and grounds, and accomplished a number of different projects in 2023, including this significant exterior renovation and project to the killer house of the Suburban Museum, which is over $100,000. They also replaced inmate quarrying at the Tensing Center, and there were a number of different roof replacement projects that occurred in different county buildings, including its long-forces center and Rockingall. One of the other larger projects that exploded in 2023, but isn't quite finished, is the addition to the Northside Highway Shed, which is the picture to the far right. Rock was a five-houses-foot-foot addition to the building that was originally constructed in 1994. Similar to the challenges that we faced at the public shed, the equipment keeps getting larger, but the building stops. We needed to add some additional storage for equipment, and the renovations also included updates to the fuel island, upgraded site power, new furniture, new technology, security plans, things that was all said and done in the early 2020s, so a lot happened in the Northside Highway Shed. All in place on it. We had our first all-in-place on it, but we had since 2019. We held it at the theater at the UWU Shilting campus. We had two press sessions one in the morning and one in the afternoon, so that employees could all attend. We just entered on our task accomplishments since 2019, as well as key initiatives in the HR department with the benefit information opportunities and to send her an arbitrary safety information. We also found a friend, Bill McClellan, who works for Employee Humanities. He is on the area if you listen to him, and he spoke on public leadership. On your desks this evening, you'll see him as a poster, as well as a personalized calendar. And the poster is something that we handed out to all the employees at the end, and you'll see on there, we'll remind them to get your words matter, your big movies matter, and your leadership matters. So this is something that we want our employees to take with them, so that they can remember the message that they received at the event. I personally very much enjoy these events. It's nice to spend all of our employees together after the time is saying, show up for when they do their job and they go home and they don't get to interact with employees in other departments. That's why we're great to see hundreds of them doing together all the things that I mean, something in the kind of outreach. We have a lot of new leadership in 2023. So pictures here are of our new department heads and elected officials that joined us in 2023. So we welcome a science director, and transportation director, a human resources director, a building services director, a UW expansion area director, as well as our elected clerk, of course, and two new second-party judges. So a lot of new faces are on the pony in 2023 and everyone is doing a great job. So we're welcome to have all of these new leaders aboard. As you very well know, in November, we adopted the budget for 2024. It included a 1.69% property tax-loving increase. It also included a decrease to the tax rate. So I won't go into that in the great detail because I know it feels like just yesterday that we approved the budget. But believe it or not, we've already said we're talking about the 2025 budget in 2021, so I've got something to analyze. In addition to approving the budget, we received the clean audit report for 2022. We are projecting to have a surplus in 2023, and we successfully bonded with 1.99 million dollars after our projects. And we reaffirmed our credit rating at a double AQ. In addition, the finance department was going to receive the certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting. So we're very proud of the work that we continue to do. We have financial support for the pony. In addition to that, the budget, which is $190 million dollars, a couple of the key components for 2024 include the utilization of the new set of revenue, which is just about $1 million dollars that will be invested in the show department for staffing, a 3% increase on average for waiters, a four and a half percent increase for health insurance, and then continue to use some of the output colors. One of our plans for peace is the pony sales tax that continues to perform very well. And as you can see here, this is a quick summary since 2017 of not only how much we collected as accounting sales tax, but then also how much we've distributed the local municipalities for their own work. So we are in teams with the performance of the sales tax, even when we were a little unsure about how COVID would affect it, to continue to pay them strongly. We are very appreciative that only for the funding we spend an hour on road work, generally with municipalities, but then also the burden that it takes off of all of the other departments, since they don't rely on the tax quality for the transportation fund. Looking at how 2020 is going to be much faster at this point, I don't want to spoil it for next year's state of accounting. So just to touch on a couple of the initiatives that are on the horizon that we're looking for and see this year, we will be new crop planting and replacing all of the windows in this building, building a multi-purpose bus bus in this space building. So remember to put parking lot replacements and various buildings that are not open for accounting. As I touched on earlier, we will continue to increase our staffing and country services and HHS through some of the little funded community-based services. We'll be making investments in our IT and our campus structure and software. We are planning 50 miles of roadway improvements and reconstructing attacks away with the airport. And we are also making investments in staffing into our most difficult area to fill in our 20-plus-7 operations and that's a special support link as well as working all. And we'll be doing all of that, also maintaining all of the other 20-plus-7 programs and services that we offer. So 2024 is sure to be another big year. And in conclusion, I just want to end by saying one of these things, of course, to be possible without the big violation that we have with accounting. It's internally with our accountants and their staffing, but also with all of our community partners. And of course, I'm very appreciative of all of our staff and their dedication throughout the year to make these things possible. And of course, on behalf of all the staff, I want to thank the county department for their continued support throughout the year. And so I want to just end by saying thank you to all of you for your support and working hard to make a successful year in 2024. Thank you. I just want to pass the period to the committee report, to the executive committee for the first number 21, the new provision for our plan for the past six months, that's number 22, the Supervisor of the Supervisory Bureau, Supervisor Geary, Supervisor Lerner, Passive Team Resolution Number 23, Supervisor Geary, and the Worship Specialist, Supervisor Geary. But you know, I can hear you now, So I ask for a break. I have made resolution number 20. This is Supervisor Gehring, this is Professor Gehring. Supervisor Gehring, resolution of the introduced receiving resolution of our 24th and 25th committee, that in carry on our plan is set in time to complete the committee. This will continue to be referred to the executive committee, or it means to bring into this a plan that will be used for transportation, so we are going to be able to ensure to executive committee. One second, this is Rebecca.