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• IRVINE: I guess I'm a little disturbed. Mr. Takahashi had quite a few recommendations and then he says, really it sort of works the way it is. RAY: That's why I think we need to think about it a little bit and make another pass at it. That's what I'd be more comfortable doing. IRVINE: If he had said, this just has to go. Maybe it's not his style to say it has to go, but he seems to be getting into program budgeting without it being in the Charter that he's mandated to do it, and basically he needed - RAY: Well, let me ask Mr. Yuen one thing. In terms of we were talking about the number of amendments and not making it too confusing or too overwhelming, isn't there kind of a housekeeping section you do where it's just minor changes incorporated into one? I don't know what I'm thinking of, or I may be off base. YUEN: One possibility for the Commission is to lump things together. The Commission does have the power to put a number of different items under one ballot heading and have people vote up or down on the whole group of them. Actually, what happened last time, there was a little bit of conflict between the Charter Commission and the Clerk's Office because the Clerk's Office did not want the Commission to lump them together, and that was the reason why there were, in the end, eighteen different 111) ballot proposals. And as a result of that, one of the proposals made by the Charter Commission was to make it clear that the Commission did have the power to determine the final form of the ballot. Of course, if you have a lot, you could have a few that are separate items, the more important ones, and then a lot of housekeeping ones under one. There is still a possibility for confusion in that listing, people might misunderstand something and there's also the possibility that if there's one item in that group that becomes unpopular or controversial, it can bring down the whole bunch of them. But that's really a decision for the Commission to make when the time comes. BALOG: So, Mr. Chairman, are you saying specifically like Finance proposals together, or are you saying, in general, just housekeeping things? RAY: I was thinking more housekeeping things. If there were some things that Mr. Takahashi suggested that maybe kind of either/or or if they were just minor language changes,or whatever, maybe that's something that could be lumped together or not. BALOG: Something like, say, from Planning and Public Works, or just lumping all of Finance together and saying here's housekeeping things for Finance? RAY: I really haven't thought it through. It's depending on how it looked. I wanted to make sure that that's a possibility and then maybe we just try to come up 42