. >> my name is michael minton. >> story. >> no worries. it happens all the time. and i don't want to bore you, but just a little built of background -- >> this is budget committee. >> okay. we want to hear -- >> the kids are gone. we're okay. >> tell us the details. >> back in 1979 and revised about 10 years later, and they put in what is often called the gam limit and this is the son of proposition 13 which was to try to stop from raising taxes and the gam limit was to stop you from spending it if you actually managed to raise taxes. the way this worked is you have a base year. for now this is 86-87. and you take all the proceeds of taxes and then you deduct from that certain appropriations, federal mandates, capital outlays, and voter approved debt are the main ones. once you get there, is your gam limit for the base year. from that base year, that limit is then inflate ed each year by population growth in the city as well as a cost of living measure, which can be either a measure of growth and state of california's income growth. effectively it is the state of