Preston Daniels, Mayor

Speaker:

Preston Daniels
Mayor

MR. BLOUIN: I'm Mike Blouin, the CEO and president of the Greater Des Moines Partnership and the CEO of the Greater Des Moines Area Chamber of Commerce. I want to welcome you here personally to Des Moines and hope the day is productive for you. We begin this morning with the presentation of flags and the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem, and I would ask Chet Culver, the Secretary of State, to lead us at the appropriate time of the pledge of allegiance followed by the singing of the national anthem led by Emily Chafa.

MR. CULVER: Good morning. Please present the colors. They will be presented by the Future Farmers of America. And please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I will now introduce Assistant County Attorney Emily Chafa to sing the national anthem. Please post the colors. You may now be seated. At this time it is my pleasure and honor to introduce the mayor of Des Moines, Preston Daniels.

MR. DANIELS: I will make one small correction while I'm here for Chet's benefit. Emily is an assistant city attorney. I try to take advantage of any good situation I can. Since she did do so well, she does work for the City of Des Moines.

And good morning, Mr. Secretary, Governor Vilsack, and good morning to all of you in the audience today. It's my pleasure to be here to welcome, to start off this WTO listening session today. I was, however, struck by the fact that the Des Moines metropolitan area has just come off of one of the most successful events in its history, and I do hope that some of you had an opportunity to get out and to visit the Senior Open as it was taking place. But at the same time I recognize that today we were going to be meeting here and that many of you are not sharing in that wonderful enthusiasm that took place this weekend and that you are faced with problems that are almost insurmountable. And so I would hope that today, that this is an opportunity at this listening session for many of those issues to be aired and to be heard by very receptive ears that can indeed go back and impact in a very positive way the outcome of this session. So I wish you a good session, and I hope you have a very good stay during your time here in the city of Des Moines. Thank you.