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everybody had thought it was going to take place, or start, in the next election, but there was no language in regard to that, so actually, the clock started ticking on the 4 two-year terms in November, whatever, 1996. But anyway, trying to accommodate all those types of things, a similar discussion we had was you could create that one exception. Maybe that's a fair way to do it so if somebody had been in office for six years, it wouldn't preclude them from running for one at -large term. So that way, then if that happened, then they would be able to serve ten years vs. eight years. SANTANGELO: That happened anyway, when they set up the eight-year, because there was some people already on it. RAY: You know you can't make it work out perfectly, but I'm just throwing that out there as a possible suggestion. HERKES: Can I ask Chris a question? Chris, has there ever been an enterprising legal challenge to term limits because voters have been disenfranchised? You're taking away my opportunity to vote for a candidate that I want. YUEN: Term limits are legal on a State level down. The congressional. term limits are unconstitutional, when States have passed limits on how many times you can re-elect your own Congress member, but on the local level, it's legal. HERKES: Nobody's challenged it? YUEN: Oh, I'm sure there's been challenges, but the public has the right to create term limits unless there is some overriding law that says you can't, and it's not prohibited by the Federal Constitution, which has a term limit for the President. It's not prohibited by the State Constitution in this State, at least. Probably not in any state. And so, at the Charter level, the voters are free to put in whatever term limits they want because the individual who's in office - their right to stay in office is at the end of every term, so they don't have a right to stay in a particular office forever, and the public doesn't have the right to keep voting for somebody that they like, if the public, in the past, made a decision that they were going to impose term limits across the board, they didn't put any exceptions. If they want to keep the people in, they may have to change that Charter provision. RAY: George. MARTIN: On what you were saying, John, I agree that an individual would not have his or her opportunity on the at -large if, in fact, we do go with it, and the public accepts it, and it's a four-year situation. But I believe we can write into the Charter, and because there's only, I believe, six individuals that this would pertain to, those individuals that would have that opportunity, once they're out of office, it would no longer be an issue. • RAY: We did have six new people come in in '96 so all those six, if 24