brendan culver rogers and then stephen noetzel. >> i believe we got an e-mail from mr. rogers -- supervisor kim: sorry, mr. rogers is currently deployed. there are so many applicants in front of us. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i currently serve as the recently elected secretary to the veterans affairs commission. i have been on the commission for almost two years now. i do not know if this committee recognizes that the veterans affairs commission is really currently under a renaissance. we have been operating in the past two years with new vigor, with new vision, and with a new focus on paying attention to the needs particularly of all the returning veterans coming back from deployments and coming back from our overseas commitments right now. so we have initiated under president varni this year a new group of goals. in particular, our biggest goal is to work in the high rate of unemployment among veterans, particularly younger veterans returning to the city. this report relates to homelessness as well because we have learned, for example, statistically that we are -

i wanted to point out that stephen noetzel was elected our secretary in january and robert varni was elected president. although i remember a decade ago, we had to go out and beat the bushes for candidates, i'm happy to say that now we have more applicants than we have seats, but i am supporting the five incumbents for the five open seats, and i strongly recommend -- we have had one major problem on the commission. the city administrative code says that we have to have three women veterans. we have always had a problem in that area. right now, we have two openings. the board has two openings for women veterans. the mayor has one opening. actually, the mayor has four openings right now, and you also have one opening here that has to be disabled. the mayor has a disable slot. my strong recommendation is that you do not appoint anyone to do the two women's lots, that you give us an opportunity -- we have a big campaign to get candidates for the women's slots. i hope that you will avoid the five -- a point the five incumbents and hold over the women slots to a future date when we can get