CLEARLAKE, Calif. – At its Thursday meeting the Clearlake City Council will consider final approval of a new ordinance to regulate taxis and other for-hire vehicles in the city, a move the city manager said is needed but which has met with continued objections from a city taxi operator.
The council will meet beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in the council chambers at Clearlake City Hall, 14050 Olympic Drive.
The 16-page document sets out new guidelines and conditions for how taxis and for-hire vehicles can operate in the city, with new requirements for insurance, permits, garaging and drug testing, and an allowance for the council to set maximum rates by resolution.
While City Manager Joan Phillipe said the document is needed to update an outdated and and rarely followed existing ordinance, one of the city’s three taxi companies has continued to object to its provisions, calling them burdensome and unnecessary.
“This is not just an ordinance, this is what’s called a regulatory structure,” Clearlake Cab driver Dante DeAmicis told the council at its March 28 meeting.
According to Joan Phillipe, getting a final draft of the ordinance completed and before the council has been an ongoing effort.
By the time the latest proposed draft appeared before the council at its March 28 meeting, at which time it was approved on its first reading, it was the sixth time that the ordinance had come before them in one shape or form, Phillipe said.
Phillipe told Lake County News this week that the city has a taxi cab ordinance that has been in effect since 1983.
In addition to that ordinance largely not being followed, “It it so dated that there are things in there that don’t make sense anymore,” she said.
A new taxi provider had approached the city about a business license, and at that point Phillipe said she and city staff began to review what already was on the books, which they determined needed updating.
Last year city staff had brought forward a different version of the ordinance that was the result of work by city staff in 2009 and 2010 – prior to Phillipe’s 2011 arrival – and was based on another small city’s ordinance, Phillipe said.
Clearlake’s attorney reviewed that earlier draft ordinance, determined it was out of date and then did the work to update it, Phillipe reported.
So far, the city has gotten significant pushback on its drafts from Clearlake Cab, with DeAmicis submitting several documents outlining his concerns to the city on the previous drafts and the most current one up for final approval.
Among the chief items of dispute is insurance requirements of $250,000 per person for bodily injury and $1 million per incident occurrence, with combined single limits of $1 million per occurrence.
Margie Huit, owner and operator of Clearlake Cab, told the council last month that the new insurance requirement is excessive, considering her small business’ already narrow profit margin.
Huit, who holds two jobs outside of her cab business, said Clearlake Cab made only $32,500 in 2012.
Currently, Huit’s insurance costs her about $7,500 annually, an expense that she said would rise to about $13,000 annually under the new regulations.
New permitting for drivers and vehicles would cost her another $700 annually. She added that doesn’t cover the cost for driver drug testing, which – along with fingerprinting – is a provision for issuing driver permits.
Huit also questioned if her company – one of three operating in Clearlake – would have to build a garage or pay to garage its vehicles, based on the ordinance’s language.
At the March 28 meeting, several city residents supported Huit’s point of view.
“This is a classic case of bureaucratic nonsense,” said city resident Pete Gascoigne, who urged the council not to pass the ordinance.
Another city resident, Estelle Creel, suggested that the increased requirements and costs ultimately could hurt the city’s seniors, who use the taxi services.
While the $1 million insurance requirement sounded high, council members said other businesses have similar requirements.
Councilmember Joyce Overton suggested that umbrella coverage could be more affordable for Huit.
DeAmicis’ criticisms of the document – and the process to create it – have continued. He’s alleged that Huit did not receive emails the city sent out about the ordinance’s development or an invitation to a Feb. 5 meeting for officials to meet with taxi companies. City officials said no one appeared at that meeting.
He’s asked city officials to change the language that would bar permitting drivers who have had previous felony convictions, suggesting instead a felony exclusion period of 10 years with a spotless record, and said that in reviewing a driver’s record it should be based on “points” or at fault collisions.
He also believes the ordinance will result in higher fares and impacts – including long waiting times – for seniors and the businesses and organizations that serve them, as taxis have to pass on the “artificially mandated overhead” by raising fares for customers.
Another objection he’s raised is that the city, in its new ordinance, is treating taxi companies like vendors, even though they are under no government contract and don’t receive any material benefit from the city.
DeAmicis has dismissed the document as a “recycled boilerplate,” a criticism that Phillipe responded to by pointing out that it’s based on language that has been reviewed and meets legal requirements.
She said the $1 million insurance requirement is “pretty standard,” pointing to Public Agency Risk Sharing Authority of California guidelines.
Phillipe said she knows Clearlake Cab is quite concerned, but said other cab companies in the city have not shown up to discussions about the matter.
“They have not said to us that they were not intending to comply,” she said of the other taxi companies.
For comparison, across the lake in Lakeport, City Manager Margaret Silveira told Lake County News that Lakeport does not have a taxi cab ordinance currently; there had been one that was repealed in 1993.
However, although they don’t have an ordinance now, “We’ve been talking about revisiting that,” she said.
She hasn’t reviewed Clearlake’s ordinance, but added, “It’s important to have some type of ordinance for taxi cabs,” with safety being one of the concerns.
As such, the Lakeport City Council may soon be looking at its own taxi ordinance, she said.
“We would like to bring this issue to the council at some time in the near future,” Silveira said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
041113 Clearlake City Council - Second Reading Taxi Ordinance by LakeCoNews
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