mr. gollinger's suggestion, that if you drop out, you return funds dollar for dollar to the program? >> yeah, this's something we can take a look at. i'm not sure what's there now, but i think that's something -- i'm sorry? [inaudible] >> i'm being told that they would become surplus funds. yeah, so i think that's a concern, but i think as mr. gollinger pointed out, that's a concern in every race, not just if we changed the rules here. >> chair chiu: commissioner -- >> commissioner ambrose: i just have one question for staff. >> chair chiu: yeah. >> commissioner ambrose: so involving funds that a candidate can receive, i'm assuming you just picked those as brackets. i think i heard miss marks say 255, but it could be any -- there's no particular reason why you have those two thresholds, right? it could be any number in between those? >> sure. i think the way we chose the number based on what we've seen. you know, we didn't want any odd numbers with respect to the matching ratios. and i think that's part peshlly driving it, but -- personally driving it, but i would think the number is

mr. gollinger, i wanted to call you back. >> supervisor mar's office is on his way. >> chair chiu: okay. commissioners, did you have any questions? >> commissioner ambrose: yes. i don't believe you raised the point about moving it up to the 240th -- >> oh, yes, that was one of the reasons that i wanted to touch on. i think for reasons laid out in the staff proposal i think it's good to make available the matching grant. i would make available the matching funds. in my experience, the more -- you know, it's both to make grassroots campaigns more viable and effective, the ability to hire a person or people to go knock on doors or to organize town hall meetings. to be able to do that with enough of a window that you're not in the heat of the campaign when you're just bringing someone on board makes a huge difference, and i think that's what the candidates who are really going to care about the time difference between getting the 60,000 or what-have-you in the summer and at the beginning of the year, it will make a huge difference to them. i also think -- i was talking about this earlier wit