A Change in TAC ... tics?

There were three new faces on the Taxi Advisory Council on Monday who are likely to mean a change in direction. Until now, the TAC has pretty much been an owner's council. But the addition of Rua Graffis, Tara Housman and Tone Lee seems certain to challenge that dynamic.


Ms Graffis (Left) is a leader of the United Taxicab Workers (UTW) and has spent over thirty years fighting for driver's rights. She replaces non-medallion holder not on the list, Timothy Ajaegbu, who regularly missed council meetings.





Mrs. Housman (Middle photo) is a medallion holder who also takes a driver's point of view. As she pointed out at the meeting, medallion holders can also be drivers. She replaces Laurie Graham who routinely gave Yellow Cab a second vote.

Tone Lee is a leader among the drivers at the airport. He replaces Dmitry Nazarov who was a lease driver at Luxor Cab and has bought his own medallion. Nazarov, who was supposed to be representing drivers on the list, voted with President John Lazar of Luxor Cab absolutely every time.


All three of the new councilors have regularly attended and spoken at TAC meetings so that they are already up to speed. 


When you add another recent addition, Richard Hybels (owner of Metro Cab who is well-known as a maverick that sometimes sides with drivers) to the mix, the council promises to be much more evenly balanced than it has been in the past.


Council Business


The council voted to have Chair Chris Sweis and Vice Chair Barry Korengold continue in their positions for another six months.


Driver's Fund


The main subject for discussion was, what to do with the drivers fund?


This was the first time that the council has seriously discussed the issue and it was primarily a brainstorming session. The councilors generally agreed that the sum of money (currently $1,462,500) was too small to pay for medical or retirement benefits. Some ideas put forward for the fund's use were:

• Scholarships for the children of drivers.
• Catastrophic insurance.
• Benefits for injured or traumatized drivers who needed time off from work.

Councilor Barry Korengold introduced a plan to use a 25 cent drop fee to build the fund more quickly but the drivers could not use their share unless they were vested for 5 years.

Christopher Fulkerson liked the idea in general but thought that the fund should be invested in an IRA that drivers could access whenever they wanted.


Tone Lee wanted to set up a lottery that would pay $100 to fifty drivers every two weeks on the provision that they showed up at TAC to collect it.

In the end, the council voted for a motion make by TAC member and general manager of Desoto Cab, Athan Rebelos, to make certain that the funds would be managed by the beneficiaries (i.e. the cab drivers) and not the MTA.

TAC Interm Medallion Sales Pilot Program Report

This report was put together by Taxi Advisory Council Chair Chris Sweis (Photo between councilors Richard Hybels and John Han). It summarizes and points out problems arising from the Medallion Sales Pilot Program as well as listing TAC's recommendations to the SFMTA Board.

The report focuses on the effects that Pilot Program has had on various groups in the Taxi industry. I'd like to highlight  (with of course my own views) a few things.

The Effect on Cab Companies.

• A movement away from Gate and Gas to Affiliate operations.
• A concern because Affiliates are less profitable for the cab companies.
• A tendency of Affiliates to hire new and inexperienced drivers.
• A concern about inexperienced drivers "negatively impacting" service - i.e. drivers deadheading downtown and to the airport instead of taking dispatched calls.

The Effect on Drivers.

• A loss of shifts for Gate and Gas drivers.
• Slower movement of the Medallion Waiting List.

The main, negative effect of the list slowing down has been felt on drivers closer to the top of the List. This is because medallions formerly became available to the List as older medallion holders died off. As many of the older medallion holders sell their medallions, the pool of medallions going to the list naturally becomes smaller.

The main, positive effect is that drivers on the list can now buy a medallion at a controlled price that allows the medallion to pay for itself.

The Effect on Medallion Holders.

Aging medallion holders are clearly the biggest winners of the Pilot Program. Medallions, that were worth nothing excect in terms of the monthly rental that they brought in, are now worth $250,000.

This has been a special boon to Post-K drivers who are either disabled or over the age of 70. Prior to the program, they either had to work 800 hours per year or face losing their medallions. Instead, these drivers now have a chance, as the phrase goes, "to retire with dignity."

The program has also reduced the stress level for younger Post-K drivers like myself (a kid of 66) because we now know that we won't be forced to drive (or pretend to drive) for the rest of our lives.

Perhaps the biggest winners, though are the Pre-K medallion holders. Having already made from between $800,000 to $1,000,000 from leasing their cabs over the last 33 years, they can now collect an additional $250,000 for exiting the taxi business.

The Driver's Fund.

The drivers fund was originally intended for non-medallion holders. It was to be a Quid Pro Quo (i.e. something that is given or taken in return for something else.)

The medallion holders were to get $250,000 and the non-medallion holders would get the Driver's Fund - now totaling over $1,000,000 with great potential depending upon how it may be fed in the future.

This intent, however, was wiped out by one of the first TAC votes.

Barry Korengold had called for a motion that would insure that the fund's money would go to non-medallion holders.

President and General Manager of Luxor Cab John Lazar, on the other hand, argued that "medallion holders are drivers too" and that the fund should therefore go to all drivers. This carried the day by an 11 to 4 margin despite the fact that some medallion holders are actually not drivers and a few, like John Lazar, have never driven a cab for a living.

What's going to happen to the Driver's Fund, as well as who will benefit from it, will be decided at future TAC meetings.

One possible use of the Driver's Fund that has been discussed would be using the money as an investment fund for drivers.

Recommendations.

The TAC has made several recommendations that it will urge the SFMTA Board to adopt. 

1. To merge the taxi wrap fund and any new income into the Driver's Fund.
2. To move the Driver's Fund into a managed account that allows the money to grow.
3. To have the Key Personnel Exemption apply to people on the Waiting List. (See Below.)
4. To have the down payment assistance program be made available only to buyers who operate their permits as Gates and Gas cabs.
5. To monitor Affiliate run medallions more closely and to have all medallions issued to the Waiting List be run as Gates and Gas taxis for the first 3 years.
6. Preliminary recommendation that the sales program continue after the Medallion Sales Program is complete. (See below.)

Not Recommended.

There were also several motions that the TAC either failed to pass or refused to even discuss in addition to the vote not to give the Driver's Fund to non-medallion holding drivers.

1. Failed to pass a motion by Councilor Barry Korengold to limit the number of medallions that the MTA could sell outright to the sixty agreed upon in Pilot Plan.
2. Failed to pass a motion by Councilor William Mounsey that would have changed the ratio of medallions sold outright by the MTA to medallion give to the Waiting List from 1:1 to 1:2. In other words, 2 medallions would given to the Waiting List for every medallion sold by the MTA. 
3. Failed to discuss a plan by Councilor Barry Korengold that would preserve the Waiting List by allowing medallion holders to retire and give the medallions back to the City when they died.
4. Refused to even discuss discussing replacing the current leasing system with a split meter (along with employee rights) despite the high probability that such a change would drastically improve service to the neighborhoods.

A closer look at two recommendations.

6. The explanation written in the report says that "many members of the council are pleased with ... Sales Pilot Program and would like to see it continue ... "

Possibly but, if this is true why did it take the better part of three TAC meetings to pass the recommendation? The truth is that Dan Hinds kept on bringing the motion up over and over again until he bludgeoned it though. He basically paralyzed the proceedings by constantly calling for a vote about medallion sales no matter what other subject was being discussed. In effect, Hinds filibustered the TAC making it impossible for the council to do any other business until the voted on his measure.

In my opinion, the vote was taken more to shut Hinds up than for any other reason.

3. I'm amazed that TAC Chair Chris Sweis had the temerity to include extending the Key Personnel Exemption to people on the Waiting List in his report after being told that such a vote was inappropriate and would probably have been illegal if TAC actually had the power to put the recommendation into effect.

To put it simply - Chair Chris Sweis, Councilor Athan Rebelos and Councilor John Lazar are all on the Waiting List and thus voted to make it easier on themselves to get medallions worth $250,000 than it would be for other people on the list. In addition, Councilor John Lazar has two sons working for him who are on the Waiting List and would thus qualify for the Key Personnel Exemption.

Let me expand on this last point. Lazar's sons have never driven a taxicab. Lazar is thus trying to use a public office to try to give his children medallions worth $250,000 without the two of them ever having to drive a cab for a living.

Taxi Advisory Council - Two

At the Taxi Advisory Council meeting on August 30, 2010 Chris Sweis of Royal Taxi and Big Dog City was elected as the Chair and Barry Korengold of the San Francisco Cab Driver's Association as the Vice Chair.
 
The primary emphasis of the meeting was how to decide what to study as well as how to limit the study so that they could finish a report to the SFMTA by 12-31-2010

Studying the Pilot Plan

John Lazar of Luxor Cab pointed out that the process of selling medallions was already causing problems because the companies were being given no advance warning as to when a new medallion holder might take over a taxicab. He added that many of the buyers were choosing to run their cabs as "long term" leases instead of "gates and gas"  and this was causing regular drivers to lose their shifts.

Another potential problem could be what would happen to someone who had bought a cab under a long term leasing arrangement only to have the medallion sold out from underneath him or her.

It was agreed by the council that they should deal with the above problems in future meetings as well as the more general problems of the "long term" lease vs the "gates and gas" lease.

Athan Rebelos said that they should study what effects the Pilot Plan had on:

1. Buyers
2. Sellers
3. The Riding Public

Dan Hinds thought that they should create "accountability" from future medallion holders by setting high standards for people on the list.

Jane Bolig thought that the the possibility of raising the Fixed Price might have to be explored if potential sellers held on to their medallions because they thought that the price was not high enough.

Director Chris Hayahsi said that the Pilot Plan ends when you "transition through all the buyers and sellers. Watch what happens and make recommendations."

One of Hayashi's famous visual aids (see photo) summarizes some of the things that the council will be studying.

During the public comments Mark Gruberg said that he was worried that the Driver's Fund hadn't been defined. He also said that the was offended by being left off the council. "The UTW is the oldest driver's organization," he said. "The MHA and the SFCDA both have representatives. The UTW should have one too."

MTA Board member Bruce Oka gave a short talk saying, "If the Pilot Plan fails, we're in a lot of trouble. We can't afford for that to happen ... the more input (from the Taxi Advisory Council) the better," he added, "we are listening."

Elections

For me, this was the most interesting aspect of the afternoon. After watching the last meeting, I posited the theory that TAC appeared to be controlled by an "old boys' and girls' network" of owners, stockholders and managers that outnumbered everyone else by an 8 to 7 margin.

This week my idea did not cut the mustard.

The 8 to 7 margin did hold for the election of the Chair but Chris Sweis was elected instead of one of the "old boys" like Jim Gillespie or Dan Hinds.  The real surprise, however, was that Barry Korengold was elected as Vice Chair when Athan Rebelos and Laurie Graham voted for Barry instead of Carl Macmurdo.

These people think for themselves. In fact, during the various ballots, at least five or six council members cast votes contrary to what my theory predicted. Well ... that's what trash cans are for.

Bill Mounsey said that there were a lot of talented, intelligent people on the council with contrary opinions and that, instead of belonging to one group or another, they needed to work together to evaluate the Pilot Plan and improve the industry.

Indeed, Chris Hayashi has put together a dynamic, talented and knowledgeable group of people. If they do end up working to improve the business instead of just serving themselves, no one would be happier than I.

On the Agenda

In his first real test as Chair, Chris Swies showed a little uncertainty as to how to proceed.

Athan Rebelos wanted to add the Driver's Fund to the agenda for the next meeting. Swies clearly did not want to do so. Under the rules that the council had established the week before, the TAC sets the agenda, not the Chair.  I think that Swies should have either asked Rebelos for a motion or opened the subject up for discussion. Instead he said that the Driver's Fund was something to be studied later and acted as if the matter was tabled.

However, Swies did acknowledge Barry Korengold, who also wanted to discuss the Driver's Fund, and said that they needed to determine on whom the monies in the fund were supposed to be spent. Korengold made a motion to add the matter to the agenda, it was seconded by Rebelos and the motion was overwhelming passed by the council.

TAC will also look at the new credit card plan and take on the question of whether or not a 5% charge should be passed on the drivers.