After going over the house rules, the first official meeting for the Mayors Council of Guam commenced on Thursday. Looking out from where he sat, president of the MCOG and Piti mayor Jesse Alig saw some familiar faces and new faces as Thursday's meeting was the first official gathering since being sworn-in.

After brief house rules and procedures, the council got right into it with a hot topic: grass maintenance with the Guam Department of Education, which has been a longstanding issue.

"As a council we have to standing front of the situation, especially for the new ones. If you haven't been called by a principal or a school, you be prepared. They're going to call you...if they don't call you now, they are gonna call you in July when hell is freezing over and in August, they are gonna blame all of us because we're not helping the children. And it's all about the children," he said.

Alig adding, "What we should do is we should go arrest all of them because they should have been thinking about our children since October 1. The beginning of the fiscal year. And this is the part I get very frustrated and I know a lot of my colleagues don't agree with me, but I'm telling you, it is not our problem. Because they are an agency that gets funded for it. So with all the brains over there, they need to work harder at maintaining their maintenance over there. Why are you going to own a house and not maintain a house?"

Mayor of MTM, Rudy Paco chiming in, "DOE should just hire their that way we can alleviate all these issues, about grass cutting, who is going to cut it, our hands are full. We are also behind times in cutting our grass around the community."

Thinking outside the box, Paco suggested that if inmates in Southern California are being paid to fight the ongoing fires, then why can't GDOE do the same with the inmates here at Department of Corrections.

Alig said the ongoing discussion is important as he just wants the MCOG to work to solve the problem now and have a primary plan as well as a contingency plan in place.