ms. jennifer johnson. who i should add is coming in from maternity leave just to present to us today. >> good afternoon, jennifer johnson, executive officer, the civil service commission. i'll start off with an overview of our departments and kind of clarify what it is that we do, and just briefly review our very humble budget. so, the purpose of the civil service commission is a charter mandated entity and it's charged with providing qualified persons for appointment to city service. essentially the commission's responsible for establishing, regulating, overseeing and serving as final arbiter of the city's merit system. so you understand the relation between the civil service system and dhr we are essentially the legislative judicial branch and dhr is responsible for undertaking the rules that the commission establishes for the merit system. and i would just like to note that our merit system was created in 1900. it is actually the oldest merit system west of the mississippi and it was essentially created