victor olivieri. good morning. >> good morning supervisors. thank you for having us today. i wanted to remind you that we had severe attendance issues in the commission last month. we're incredibly grateful for bumping us forward to make sure we can fill the commission as soon as possible. i myself and along with the president has been on the commission fulfilling a two-year term that was left empty. this is a commission that's been in transition for years. we're transitioning from a vietnam war veteran to a post-9/11 veterans. some of our applicants are on the younger side. the commission is transitioningg from a counsel to a commission. we don't have a budget, a staff or a secretary. the things that we are trying to do as veteran affairs commissioners are advising the board, advising the mayor and making sure that we have appropriate policy prescriptions. lot of the thingsly talk about and lot of things we've been working on have been bottom-up. it's time to start working at a more top-down from here out. i've been one of the active commissioners by being able it bring in

of these excellent candidates in addition to myself and commissioner olivieri, we wanted to highlight george chewning, 17 martin-pinto as stand outs on the application today. >> supervisor ronen: i'm wondering since you served already one term on the commission, what are the avenues? i've been here for a while. i had a ton of opportunity to work directly with the veteran commission. when you have policy suggestions, how have you worked with members of the board of supervisors or the mayor's office to enact those policies? >> it's interesting. i done some lobbying around veteran issues d.c. before i came to san francisco. one of the things i like about the commission, you all know, there are lots of lobbyist for corporations and people who stand to make money. there are very rarely lobbyist for good policy. when you find those people they are kind of great. usually nonprofits. what i found is where we've been most effective is those and the commissioners who have personal relationship with supervisors and their staff and mayoral staff and you can say hey, here the thing we see. it migh