Thank you.

Take care.

Good afternoon.

Chairman Daly, Vice Chairman Larry, members of the board.

Steve would need to turn me up a little bit.

I am Brandy Smith, Deputy Secretary to the Board, and on behalf of Lynn Turner, I'm pleased to present Office of Secretary to the boards meeting your budget summary.

Before I begin, I would like to recognize the exceptional team that keeps our office operating each and every day.

Some of those individuals are sitting behind me now.

Next to me, I have Victoria Sockwell, manager of archives to the right.

Gil, our newest employee, is our legal counsel.

We also have Rose Ortiz, Pandra Mohammed, Palestine Sarrell, Kane Washington, Diana Czar, who is in the back, Joe Vallicat, Yolanda Glass, both of our ledge coordinators.

We also have contractors who I do not see in the room, but Nazir Faulkner and Ms.

Janet, as everybody knows.

I like to recognize our partners throughout the county who also support each and every board and committee meeting.

That's Eric Batoy, Ryan Gleason, Cody Davis, who are our BOA video production team, our BLT team, Karen Walker, Danny Morillo, Joelle Baratsk, Steve Stampley and our facilities team for providing audio support, and our Cook County Sheriffs for ensuring the safety and security of everyone attending our meetings.

These are all the professionals working behind the scenes whose dedication allows every meeting to run efficiently and successfully.

Throughout 2026, our focus has been on maintaining operational efficiencies while continuing to provide exceptional service to the Board of Commissioners, County Departments, and the public.

Despite increasing demands and growing workflow, our staff has remained committed to transparency, accuracy, and timely legislative support.

Looking ahead to 2027, we remain committed to delivering that same high level of service while modernizing the board's legislative operations.

Our proposed 2027 budget presents some challenges.

The primary drivers are increased costs associated with our granitist legislative management platform and the technology enhancements being incorporated into the new boardroom.

These investments will significantly improve the public's experience and abort's operational efficiencies.

Those new capabilities will include swagging technology, which will allow for accurate video indexing and timestamping of all our committee and board meetings, multilingual closed captioning to enhance accessibility, searchable meeting videos, which will allow users to locate discussions by spoken word, further supporting our ADA accessibility and public transparency goals.

Electronic voting, which will streamline board operations and improve the efficiency of our meetings.

While these improvements represent an important investment in modernizing our legislative process, they also contribute to a budget target that currently leaves us about 250,000 short.

As part of our organizational planning, the vacant legislative services director position will be reclassed, reclassified to better align with evolving technological and operational needs.

At this time, I'd like to invite our manager of archives, Victoria Sockwell, to provide an update on our accomplishment and future initiatives of CARA.

Good afternoon, everybody, or good evening almost.

My name is Victoria Sakwell, manager of archives for Cook County.

I would like to highlight some of the accomplishments we've achieved so far this year and discuss a few challenges we're facing and share where we're headed for the remainder of the year.

One of our most significant accomplishments has been continuing to build the operational foundation for the archives, keeping us at standard with state laws as well as archivists uh standard as well that's made by the American Archivist Association.

Over the past several months, we've worked closely with Iron Mountain to complete a comprehensive inventory and assessment of archival materials housed across multiple storage locations.

This project has given us our clearest picture of what our archives and historical assets look like, where they're located, and what condition they're in.

These uh exhibitions celebrate important milestones not only in our county's history, but in our United States history.

We will continue to do archived um exhibitions throughout the next coming year, um, hopefully one per quarter.

Um we're gonna be using the lobby floor, fifth floor, as well as historic reading room when it's ready and available.

Um, another area we're seeing tremendous assess in is our educational outreach.

Um this year we've welcomed University of Chicago students studying archive theory, um, artists, librarians, culture professionals, and fellow county employees into the archives for small group tours.

One of my favorite moments is from a units University of Chicago student who said this had been the best tour that they had been on all semester.

Um we have also continued expanding our partnerships.

Um we are providing historical research, archival photographs, and institutional context for uh different projects around the county.

Looking ahead as we move into the second half of the year, we're focused on continuing that momentum.

Uh we're actively growing our social media programs uh while also developing an internal and external newsletter that will keep not only the public abris of what we're up to, but also county employees.

Um a couple of our challenges.

Um I am really proud of the stuff that we've done and the excellent ways that we've been able to be flexible throughout these challenges.

Our greatest challenge is space.

While the growth reflects the success of our program, we are able to collect over 2,000 um individual artifacts throughout Cook County's history.

Um but as we're growing, we're also reaching a limit on space.

As of recent, we have received a notice from facilities related to our space uh utilization.

While we have addressed these concerns, the notice also reflects a larger reality.

We're outgrowing our space.

As we are continuing to expand our programming, accepting new collections, and preparing for relocation that's dedicated for our archival survival and preservation infrastructure.

We find this to be increasingly important and hope that uh the rest of the county will as well.

And I'm open to any questions if Brandy is ready.

Alrighty, that concludes our presentation, Commissioners.

Well, let me begin by thanking you every single day.

Your hard work and covering the meet board meetings, the committee meetings, uh, and individual requests.

And as you outlined, you thank your entire staff, the sheriff.

Um I also want to thank you for uh participating in the interview for the historical view of as a member of this board.

It was very great honor for me to participate and give my perspective on what's occurred in Cook County in the past and what hopefully will occur in the future.