my name is ron wydel. i'm the human resources director for the health department. i have been here a year. i arrived may 1st of 2013. i came from seattle king county where i had been the director for 10 years. so, i heard the same things that you did, supervisor, regarding hiring. as soon as i got here, i started to hear, why does it take a year and a half to hire a position? and that wasn't a one-time thing. it was sort of a frequent theme. and then i would hear varying stories on the length of time to hire. so, i wanted to understand that a little bit. so, the first thing i did was look at some of the reasons and these are some of the those reasons. as sue kern mentioned, there was a budget deficit. so, they slowed down hiring last spring. there was, in my own merit section, that allowed the exam team to get down to a very few people, down to one. and if you don't do your exams -- we have 236 classifications. in order to have a referral list you have to do an exam. if you get backlogged with your exams, the hiring will come to a halt, which it did. so, i've added