commissioner that is not here today that i would like to at leacknowledge and recognize, and that is our chris romero. i would like to thank chris. he is a friend of mine. i did not know him before i joined the commission, but when i joined, he was here already. we went through some rough times on the commission, but commissioner romero and i -- we talk and we smiled, and we knew when the tide turned. it was when we started moving the commission and the department to what it is today. i am great bull -- grateful that chris was there when i joined. i also wanted to mention commissioner mel murphy was absolutely a godsend when he came on to the commission. when he arrived six years ago, we really moved the commission and the department towards where it is today. it has been fairly rock steady since then. with a bpr, the business -- whatever bpr stands for. [laughter] so that broke the commissioners and city staff knows what they should be doing, how they should be acting towards the public, towards each other, and so on and so forth. we started the permanent processing, and we improved that. we got the

express not only my thanks, but also from the other commissioners, and adding the thank you to chris romero who has provided his valuable time and along with that his expertise in some of the issues that have come before the bic. thank you very much. looking forward to seeing you here in the city and also having coffee or some other beverage of choice in the near term. would also like to express that a couple of items -- there are some hong kong building officials that are here in the city that have undertaken to know more about how the best service for electrical and mechanical systems that the city has provided -- our fair city, with the help of that, they will be arranging sometime in march a briefing for how we do it our way and how they would like to do it our way also. last but not least, i would also like to express my thanks for the opportunity to have served the commission, as i will be stepping aside to undertake the category of the next step be on the commission. for years of service here has been wonderful and the opportunity has also been as great. i would like to also say that