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can speak to this issue. SANTANGELO: At this time, I'd like to call on Sue Irvine. And I think what we were talking about, just to bring you up to speed, is there was a suggestion that there be a committee or a Commission, and that sparked some thought here of what about a Department. And so, just trying to address the environmental concerns of the island, we are in an infancy compared to a lot of mainland cities, and so we can really get ahead of the thing and Sue did a lot of work on this. IRVINE: very final. Unfortunately, 1 did a lot of work rather late so I don't have anything SANTANGELO: What you have is good. IRVINE: But, I did go out on the Internet and actually spoke with some people on the phone, as well. And Portland, Oregon seems to have one of the most progressive systems for dealing with their solid waste. They have a Bureau of Water which is separate from their Department of Environmental Services, but Environmental Services does cover water quality protection, sewage treatment, wastewater collection, sewer installation, solid waste collection, and recycling services. They franchise out, I think, the solid waste and recycling, but it's pretty much required, if you're in the city, I think, to partake of all of these services. One of the other places I looked was San Luis Obispo where they have a Utilities Department, which is separate from Public Works. Public Works does the sort of things like trees on the streets, and street resurfacing, capital improvements. But the Utilities Division does water, wastewater, and administers, also, the refuse and recycling franchises. I think we need to look for some places that are more rural, which of course, we are. I don't know anything about the statistics on our island, of how many people actually hire somebody to pick up their garbage vs. how many people bring in their own. I definitely feel we need to provide some kind of emphasis on global recycling before we get done with our Commission, but whether we can just assign a Commission to look into this, or whether we need to actually find a Division within our Public Works that would be headed by somebody from the professional environmental community, I'm not sure. RAY: Let me interject. We're talking about Charter recommendations here, and a lot of these things would really be administrative initiatives, if the Mayor wants to, and the Mayor already has that authority to appoint a Committee or - HERKES: A department? RAY: Well - HERKES: He can't create a department. 4