Town Hall Meetings: Final Speeches

With Matt Gonzales (standing in front of Mike Spain) making a surprise Monday appearance as a sub for Hansu Kim, the presentation of reform plans came to a close on Wednesday December 9, 2009.

Gonzales, Spain and Giuseppe Carvelli all spoke in favor of auctioning off taxicabs - though Gonzales said that he could accept fixed price sales. Their ideas are basically similar so I'll just mention a few points. Arguments in favor of auctioning cabs claim that auctions will:

• Allow older drivers to exit the business.
• Move the List or allow for a faster turnover of medallions.
• Allow drivers to build up equity.
• Allow for the possibility of making a profit off their investment.
• Give medallion holders the freedom to sell at any time.
• Raise revenue for the city.

In Spain's version, revenue would also be raised for a drivers fund.

There were two other ideas in their presentations that I found new and interesting.

Gonzales said there was no real reason why a loan for buying a medallion had to be for 15 years. It could just as easily be for 30 years like the mortgage on a home. In that way, the new medallion holders would have more money to spend on themselves than show up in some other projections. In other words if a loan only cost them $1,000 a month, they could live much better than they could if loan costed $1,800.

Spain, saying that he'd borrowed the idea from Hansu Kim, proposed a voucher system for drivers that could be used toward the purchase of a medallion at an auction. For instance if someone had been a working driver for 20 years he or she would get a voucher for $250,000. If a medallion sold for $400,000, the person would only have to come up $150,000 of his or her own money to compete.

Driver Peter Kirby, who is on the list, had a similar idea saying that drivers should be given credit or money for the time that they had spent on the list in event of an auction.

Driver Athan Rebelos introduced a plan that would create two classes of medallions: fleet medallions that would be prohibited from picking up at SFO and would be used primary for answering radio calls; and individual medallions that would operate much like medallions do now. Both classes could or would be auctioned off under various restricted conditions. The money raised from the auctions would go for taxicab regulation and enforcement, a general city fund and a medical and disability fund for cab drivers.

A great deal of thought and work went into preparation and presentation of all the various plans. I haven't had the space or time to do them justice here. You should be able to find copies of them from the Town Hall meetings archive at:

http://www.sfmta.com/cms/ctaxitownhall/ArchiveofMarchandApril2009TaxiTownHallmeetings.htm

or by contacting:

• Director of Taxis & Accessible Services
  One South Van Ness Avenue, Seventh Floor
  San Francisco, CA, 94103.
• Phone: 415.701.4400.

Chris Hayashi's New New Plan

Used to be that bureaucrats were predictably dull and boring. You could go to a meeting, take a seat and sleep behind a person with a weight challenge knowing that you wouldn't miss a thing.

Then along came Christiane Hayashi. Not satisfied with the new plan she presented on Friday, the Deputy Director came on yet another, more radical, one on Monday.

Did I say radical? In the long history of labor conflicts, there be may nothing quite like this.

What Ms Hayashi wants to do is negotiate an agreement between all the interested groups that would give something to everybody in such a way that what is taken away magically balances out. If that doesn't make any sense, it's because I don't fully understand everything that she is trying to do.

It'll take hours of discussion to begin to work this plan out. For the moment, all I can try to do is give you some highlights.

What Ms Hayashi proposes (if I understand this correctly) is a structured settlement agreement between the city and all other parties with a "recognized interest" in the taxi business to do the following things:

1. Suspend the lawsuits regarding the ADA and the Gates thus feeing up money that would be spent on legal fees by the city, the MHA, the UTW and others.
2. Raise $18 million for the City of San Francisco by selling 100 cabs to drivers on the list for $180,000 a piece.
3. Give another 100 cabs to people on The List without charge.
4. Qualified (10 years of driving + age 65) medallion holding drivers would be allowed to retire for the next three years. This retirement would be guaranteed regardless of whether the settlement continued or not.
5. There would be no permit fees for anybody during the next three years.
6. A driver's fund would be set up for non-medallion drivers.

There were also other features that would be traded in a Quid Pro Quo manner, such as:

• Taxi companies would be allowed to pass their credit card charges on to the drivers.
• But the drivers would pay the corporate rate of 2.5%
• In return, the Companies would reduce the Gates 5%.

And,

• Drivers on The List would have the choice of buying a medallion or taking one for no charge.
• It was assumed that most of them near the top would take pass on the buy option.
• But, at a certain point, people down on The List would opt to buy and could thus jump the people ahead of them. It was unclear whether there would be a fee charged for this or not.
• It was also unclear as to what guarantees the drivers buying the medallions would have that they would get their money back.

Many other points were also not clarified but we'll be discussing this plan for at least the next couple of weeks. Things should become clearer and clearer as we go along - or not?

Over the three year period $18 million would be dived thusly:

• $6 million would go to the MTA for no apparent reason.
• $6 million would go to the SFPD for enforcement of laws against phony taxis, illegal limos and other things.
• $6 million would go to the Taxi department to pay for staff, materials, driver training, etc etc.

The settlement would be binding as a legal contract, would last for three years and the signees would include:

• MTA
• Police
• Credit unions
• Taxicab companies
• Color schemes
• Litigants in related lawsuits
• MHA
• UTW
• Taxi coalition
• SFCDA

It would also include a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between different departments with the city, including:

• SFPD
• Treasurer
• SFMTA
• Department of Human Resources
• DA

A Request for Information (RFI) on rates of loaning money from credit companies would also be necessary in order to help finance the medallion purchases.

At the end of the three year period, the agreement could be renewed, modified or dumped.

There were a lot of questions asked and scenarios worked out. Most of the people were very interested. Some, including myself, were enthusiastic. The usual hardcore suspects, however, remained hardcore.

Mark Guberg of the UTW thought the plan too complicated and instead wanted to continue his vendetta against medallion holders by making these worthless freeloaders pay for the retirement of all drivers.

Barry Korengold of the SFCDA didn't like the idea of selling cabs for a fixed price because the buyers would lose money on the interest. He was also afraid that this would open the floodgates for future auctions which would unfair to the average driver.

Hansu Kim, who only last week was telling me that he could accept fixed price sales and wanted to maintain The List, reverted to form by singing a lengthy praise to auctions and saying that drivers not on The List should have a right to bid too.

Michael Spain claimed that everyone would think like him in 20 years so we should do the inevitable and start auctions now.

Deputy Director Hayashi said that what the final plan would consist of would be what everybody would agree to in writing.

"What if everybody won't sign the agreement?" a man asked.

"That's not an option," she told him. "We'll keep having meeting until we have an agreement."

Does she intend to take a page from Robert Kennedy Jr. and lock us all in a room until we all sign a settlement?