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• opposed to allowing the Council to be influenced or lobbied by different groups or special interests. I think having a separate Commission that could be responsible for that would be advantageous, and again, in keeping it over with this umbrella type of oversight, to taking the resource from the inception to its actual end use, I think, there's some advantages. And I think there can be some cost reduction in operations. That's the final advantage. When I explained this initially to some people in the Water Supply, there's two ways you can do a merger. You can basically take the two separate agencies, keep its same structure and just put a new person in charge that governs over both, or pick one of the existing heads and put them in charge over both. That's one way to do a merger. Another way of doing a merger is to totally integrate similar or like functions to where you can eliminate any duplication, such as in the laboratory function, or testing, clerical function, or administration. Those type of operations could be streamlined and some cost reduction could be achieved, so it's kind of like how do you envision the merger taking place. If both sides are so entrenched into I want to keep only my operation because that's how it's traditionally been handled, and they've got mechanics, but their mechanics not going to work on our stuff, so we've got to have our own mechanics. Well, there's similar systems, or efficiencies that could be achieved, I think, if you look outside of that and try to integrate, and if you were just to create something from scratch, there could be possibly cost reductions achieved that way. • The other thing 1'd like to say, in addition to those, there are municipalities in the mainland that have gone through this. We're not inventing the wheel here. In some of the research that I've done, even within the Water Association, there are different studies that have been done. I just haven't had a chance to get a hold of them to know whether they have achieved any of these cost reductions, or other advantages that were initially presented. I think it's healthy to even look at this, for the Commission to consider this possibly, and I'm sure there will be other spin offs or other issues that we can address, but anyway, Chairman Ray, that's basically all I wanted to present. RAY: Now, Mr. Souza, would you like to say anything on behalf of the Water Commission? I'd like to ask you directly, if the Water Commission concurs with Mr. Pavao's recommendations, or letter, or representations. I know you folks have been discussing this at the Commission level, so I'd like to get that on the record, how you feel about this. SOUZA: Thank you. Yes, we did discuss, and Commissioners do concur with the staff in the discussions that took place. The consensus is that they should remain separate. RAY: In terms of the billing, did you discuss that? SOUZA: Yes, and the Water Department will be able to accommodate in 10