# Council Public Safety Committee - January 10, 2012 > Auto-transcribed civic record · January 10, 2012 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2331 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2331?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2012-01-10 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 16,291 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Public Safety Committee met on January 10, 2012, at 1:00 p.m., with Diane Lawless presiding. The committee addressed three agenda items during the meeting, taking one vote and hearing four public comments. The committee considered the Taxi Cab Ordinance (CM Lawless, i-31), which was deferred for further consideration. The Emergency Management Long-Range Strategic Plan with the Public Safety Link Recommendation for FY12 was approved by the committee. Additionally, the committee received an informational update on items referred to the committee. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on January 10, 2012: * Diane Lawless * Doug Martin * Chuck Ellinger * Chris Ford * Julian Beard * Bill Farmer * Kevin Stinnett * K.C. Crosbie * Jay McChord * Peggy Henson * Andrea James No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions **Motion to Defer Taxi Cab Ordinance** The body voted to postpone the Taxi Cab Ordinance for one month. [timestamp: 01:19:23] The motion was made by Julian Beard and seconded by Chuck Ellinger. The vote was conducted by voice vote and passed unanimously, with all members present voting in favor. The following members voted for the motion: - Diane Lawless - Doug Martin - Chuck Ellinger - Chris Ford - Julian Beard - Bill Farmer - Kevin Stinnett - K.C. Crosbie - Jay McChord - Peggy Henson No members voted against the motion, and there were no abstentions. The deferral was approved to allow time to incorporate additional provisions discussed during the meeting, including drug testing requirements, sex offender background checks, and enforcement of gypsy cab provisions. ## Public Comment Four speakers addressed the council regarding proposed changes to taxi fleet regulations. **Greg Kajalski** [timestamp: 00:26:11], owner of Mr. Taxi, opposed reducing the minimum cab fleet size from 25 to 10 vehicles. He argued that operating a full-service taxi company with fewer vehicles is not economically feasible, citing the necessity of maintaining 24/7 dispatch services, conducting weekly vehicle inspections, and supporting administrative staff. **Ray Shogun** [timestamp: 00:45:55], co-owner of Mr. Taxi, presented a University of Missouri study in opposition to the proposed fleet size reduction. He argued that lowering the minimum fleet size would undermine full-service operations and result in deteriorating service levels, emphasizing the economic and operational challenges involved in maintaining service quality with a smaller fleet. **Bob Babbage** [timestamp: 01:00:44], representing Yellow Cab, supported maintaining the current 25-cab minimum standard. He recommended implementing mandatory drug testing and sex offender registry checks for drivers. Babbage cited the University of Missouri study and referenced past regulatory failures in opposing the proposed changes. **Will McGinnis** [timestamp: 01:13:58], owner of Lex Taxi, supported lowering the minimum fleet size to 10 vehicles or potentially as low as 5. He criticized the current driver leasing fee structure, which he identified as $450 per week. McGinnis argued that increasing driver transfer and application fees would create additional financial hardship for drivers who are already struggling financially. The public comment period reflected significant disagreement within the taxi industry regarding fleet size requirements, with established operators arguing for maintaining higher minimums to ensure service quality and operational viability, while at least one operator advocated for lower barriers to entry and criticized existing fee structures as burdensome to drivers. ## Contested Items **Reduction of Minimum Fleet Size from 25 to 10** A significant point of contention during the meeting involved a proposal to reduce the minimum fleet size requirement from 25 vehicles to 10. This change sparked heated discussion among attendees. Cab company owners opposed the reduction, arguing that it would undermine their ability to maintain full-service operations and questioned the economic viability of smaller fleets. Conversely, supporters of the proposal emphasized that the reduction would increase competition in the market and create opportunities for small business operators to enter the industry. **Enforcement of Gypsy Cab Regulations** Another major area of dispute centered on the enforcement of gypsy cab regulations. Multiple speakers, including Greg Kajalski and Will McGinnis, voiced frustration regarding the current effectiveness of enforcement efforts against illegal gypsy cab operations. Despite the proposed ordinance including specific provisions designed to address violations of gypsy cab laws, these speakers expressed concern that existing enforcement mechanisms were insufficient and ineffective. This community opposition highlighted a gap between the regulatory framework and its practical implementation. ## Taxi Cab Ordinance — CM Lawless (i-31) [timestamp: 00:00:00] The committee discussed a proposed ordinance to amend existing taxi cab regulations. The ordinance included several substantive changes to current requirements: **Proposed Changes** - Reduction of minimum fleet size from 25 to 10 vehicles - Requirement for biannual independent mechanical inspections - Expansion of the definition of "taxicab" to include services involving non-monetary compensation - Enhancement of enforcement mechanisms **Key Participants** The discussion involved Rick Curtis, Greg Kajalski, Ray Shogun, Will McGinnis, and Bob Babbage. **Issues Discussed** The committee debated three primary concerns regarding the proposed amendments: - **Economic feasibility**: Questions were raised about whether the proposed changes were economically viable for taxi cab operators - **Public safety**: Concerns were expressed about how the amendments would affect public safety standards - **Fairness to existing companies**: Discussion focused on the impact of the proposed changes on currently operating taxi cab companies **Outcome** The ordinance was deferred, meaning the committee did not take final action at this meeting and postponed further consideration to a future date. ## Emergency Management Long-Range Strategic Plan — Public Safety Link Recommendation Pat Duggar, Director of Emergency Management, presented a five-year strategic plan for the jurisdiction's emergency management capabilities. [timestamp: 32:00-44:00] **Plan Focus Areas** The strategic plan addressed five core emergency management functions: - Planning - Preparedness - Response - Recovery - Mitigation **Key Initiatives** The presentation highlighted several priority needs and recommendations: - Modernization of the emergency operations center - Improved resource management systems - Enhanced public education and awareness programs - Addressing critical vulnerabilities, including nerve agent storage at the Bluegrass Army Depot **Outcome** The Emergency Management Long-Range Strategic Plan with the Public Safety Link recommendation was approved. ## Update on Items Referred to Committee (45) During this agenda item, the committee provided an informational update regarding items that had been referred to the committee. However, no specific update was provided on the referred items at this time. The committee acknowledged the need to follow up on pending matters but did not discuss any individual item in detail during this meeting. The outcome of this agenda item was informational in nature, with no substantive action taken or decisions made regarding the referred items. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — postponed: Motion to defer the Taxi Cab Ordinance for one month to incorporate additional provisions discussed during the meeting --- ## Full transcript CCAB ordinance, and I believe Mr. Curtis is here to present on that. And I also have some comments along the way. Good afternoon. basically the ordinance before you is not exactly but similar to what was presented back in june reference to changes that were requested after a two-year period where we saw needed changes within the taxicab ordinance itself the taxicab ordinance itself as i alluded to before went into In fact, in 2002, after the state of Kentucky passed a law allowing the two largest counties in Fayette County, that being us and Jefferson County, to actually administratively control the taxi cab services within our counties. And the urban county government was given that authority by the state of Kentucky back in early 2002. or 2001, excuse me, in 2002, the ordinance as it exists right now was passed. The changes that have been requested are basically changes that have been seen that have been needed over the last, since 2002, now nine and a half years, of actually dealing with the taxicab services under the current ordinance itself. There are some things that obviously we have found that needed to be changed in so much as the inspection of those cabs, the actual administration of the permitting of those cabs, the hearing for permit, whether it be driver or company permit revocations or suspension, the hearings themselves and the actual administration of all that permitting for both drivers and cabs themselves. Additionally, it was requested that the number of cabs, which was established at 25, to establish a company itself in Fayette County back in 2002, that it was requested that it actually be taken down to 10 from the council itself. And as such, we put that in there as well, that we've taken it down from 25 cabs to start a company, down to 10 to start a company. And with the exception, there really hasn't been that many, there hasn't been any changes other than what we presented to you. There's been some additions through discussions with the cab companies itself that they wanted within the orders itself that have occurred since the June 18th meeting, I think it was, relative to one thing in particular that was discussed was the markings on taxi cabs. and actually have a taxicab light on top of the taxicab itself, and that's been added within the ordinance itself. There has been a lot of talk about the parameters of insurance, about what's required relative to denomination of money that's required. Most of your taxicab companies, in fact all of them, they have much, much more than is required by state law. State law requires $25,000 in liability insurance, whereas all of the cab companies have half a million dollars in liability insurance just to cover themselves, their drivers, and their companies. So they go way above that as it is. It's hard for us to enact an ordinance which would supersede state law. And state law, as far as commercial vehicles, is very emphatic. We can ask to have more insurance from a liability standard. as far as that's concerned, and I assure you that the cab companies, for the most part, will not have a problem with an elevated liability type of insurance because it protects them. And as you all well know, liability insurance isn't that expensive as far as that goes. We are clearing up some language, the old ordinance itself, basically everything that was in there that were proper names and titles. You'll see the strikethroughs like the Commissioner of Public Safety and the Department of Public Safety have been capitalized. And you'll see that throughout the remake of the ordinance itself. Taxicab, the definition of taxicab has been revamped, which is number six on the first page of the revision itself. Basically, it's any motor vehicle that accepts compensation, including not limited to per time or distance, for donation money fuel or exchange for goods and services that wasn't in the original ordinance and we had some people who skirted the issue relative to our ordinance by taking payments for gas or taking tips or taking they said they weren't being paid they were just being compensated well in actuality if you offer yourself for a ride and at the end of that ride you demand some sort of compensation monetarily whatever form it may be in that's that's a vehicle for hire and under our ordinance it needs to be included as a taxicab and regulated for the public's safety the other thing that is that was extremely critical two things in particular was the dual inspections per year by an ase certified mechanic or master mechanic that can actually do the inspections that's a non-partisan mechanic who's not associated with us or with the taxicab companies that would turn in those inspections twice a year. And those inspections will be turned in to us so that at least we know that twice a year, everything that is for hire that's out there is being inspected by a master mechanic and is safe to be on the road itself. I haven't heard any concerns from the cab companies themselves relative to that, other than a couple of them wish to use their own mechanics that they have for hire. Now, I would implore you that it has to be somebody who's nonpartisan, who's not associated with us or them specifically, so that we have somebody who's nonbiased who's doing it based upon a fee, and obviously they would get paid to do it, and whoever the owner of the vehicle would have to incur the expense of the fee. But the end result would be is that in a timely manner, at least twice a year, we would be assured that we have mechanically sound vehicles out there picking up members of our public. And in my estimation, that is a public safety issue that we're not doing with the current ordinance as it exists. The other thing was random inspections. The way that it is right now, we have mandated inspections by two detectives, and that's the only ones that do inspections. They do not do mechanical inspections. They do inspections for aesthetics to ensure that the vehicles themselves are clean, that the drivers themselves are up to par, that licenses are up to par, and that basically is the inspection that they do now. We do those random inspections now include one mechanical inspection, and we do. As of June of last year, and I don't know what the number is now, we were only able to do 11 inspections for over 200 cabs that exist in Fayette County, which is a travesty as far as the mechanical safety of those vehicles is concerned. And it's not when you consider that we only have two people that are assigned to do those inspections that are within public safety, and we have to use one of our own certified master mechanics from fleet services to actually do those inspections. The problem with that is it's just like anything else that's in government. There are only so many people and so many man hours to go around. It was taking us upwards of six to eight weeks just to schedule two to three hours to do inspections. Hence the reason that we could get a master mechanic available to actually do those inspections at fleet service. Hence the reason why there were so few inspections that were being performed. It's not a knock on them because they do an excellent job, as far as that goes, out at fleet services. It's just that they only have so many master mechanics that are available, and they're out there to work on urban county government vehicles, not to take time day after day to do the inspections of taxi cabs. So with that in mind, Ms. Lawless, I don't know if there's anything that I've missed as far as this goes. I think you hit the high points. I personally talked to the owners of each of the local taxi cab companies, and one of the issues was in our ordinance it said they had to have insurance but it didn't state amount and they said they wanted a level playing field and I agreed. At the airport you have to have $500,000. Yes, ma'am. So I also have in your packet a letter from the Convention and Visitors Bureau endorsing lowering the number of cabs. they were very surprised. They thought three to five cabs would be plenty and had not ever really been somewhere where the threshold was so high and felt like it would be good for business and for the community. um also there's a letter from mr frankel who is the director as you know of the airport um endorsing this saying that you know basically they're in a position where they have to police the cabs themselves yes um so um one of the cab companies wanted uh lights on the top and i said Okay, that's fine with me. I put that in there, even though I found out it's illegal to hail a cab in Lexington. So we might want to look at that later, but we won't get into that today. and you know so there was one of the cab companies had suggested that there were multiple sexual assaults by gypsy cab drivers or cab drivers and I did research on that I was the director of the Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center for nearly 30 years and that entire time I never once remember anybody coming to our agency. I followed up with the people that are there now and said, has there been any since then? And I also followed up with the police department, and they said that there was a young woman who was raped, but it was not a gypsy cab or a taxi cab driver. It was not at all. So I feel like this is a fair ordinance. It took into account the concerns of the cab companies. Some of the concerns they expressed were certainly that we couldn't have Coke trolleys that gave free rides because it impaired their business, et cetera. But we talked through that, and they were fine. So I think it's in the best interest of the impression people have of our community. of, you know, competition generally brings a better product and sometimes a better price. And I think it's a worthwhile ordinance. But I did want people to know that I spoke to every single cab company. Yes, ma'am. council member martin thank you chair thanks for coming down rick so how much do we charge for inspections we don't charge for inspections here we never have that might be something we consider if we don't have enough well if we can't afford the inspectors to do the inspections so i mean that might be something to to take a look at it's it's for that and then we are They're incurring a cost to allow them to be in business and to ensure their safety. I think they should have the option or opportunity to reimburse the sum for that, and that might be a way to help make a mechanic available to do that. That's an idea, Mr. Scherr. So how often do we have inspections under the new ordinance? Well, the new ordinance doesn't exist. You mean as far as 2002 goes? The proposed new ordinance that we're looking at today. The proposed new ordinance, the mechanical inspections will be twice a year per car. And as it's proposed now, it would be with an independent master mechanic. We're asking for two inspections per year mechanically. Well, I might tell you that two per year is semi-annual. Okay, semi-annual. And every two years is biannual, and this is written as biannual. Is that right? I think I'm right. I always get them confused. We did notice that when we were working on it, and it was going to get changed, and it just didn't. Okay. Christmas break was not a good time to try to put this together. No, that's okay. But I was confused by what was here and what I was – I saw the six months and things like that. So that's great. So that's going to get fixed. The chair mentioned a no-free-ride policy. I'm not sure I understood the – because I was writing some things down when you said that. Is there a no-free-ride policy in this proposed ordinance? No. Not that I know of. I mean, if I can speak for Councilman Lawless, what they effectively are talking about was the free rides that the trolleys give. Can I say it again? The free rides that the trolleys give. And the trolleys themselves. There was a report several months ago, actually about a year ago in actuality, that if the trolleys were taking people off the beaten path that is established for the trolleys to different locations at the request of the people coming out of bars, I don't have any personal knowledge that that happened, but there were so many reports from cab drivers that have got to believe that some of that was going on. And I actually contacted LexTran and informed them of what was going on, and it was stopped immediately. And that's appropriate. That was very inappropriate that they would do that. So this proposed ordinance that we're looking at today doesn't interfere with the program of taking folks home from bars for free at night. I don't know what the program was, but I don't know if it's even still active or not because I don't keep it through the canvas. It depends. It depends on we do have services that exist in Fayette County that are certified by the state to actually do that, one in particular that I can think of. And the bars themselves have taken it upon themselves to establish free rides for their patrons that have gotten to intoxicate it. In the very distant past, when I was old enough to stay out until bars closed, they used to have stuff like that but I think it's some ungodly hour now, 4am or 2.30 or something like that. I haven't been up that late since I was 20 or something but this doesn't interfere with the very desirable program that a cab company, if it wished could have a program to take drinkers home at night Cab company could do that, yes That would be similar to like the 231 safe program on New Year's Eve. Right. Right. And that's going to be okay under this. Sure. Thank you. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Chair. Just want a clarification of what we're really discussing today. Is it pages 1 through 14? Is that the ordinance, Mr. Curtis, that has been drafted by the administration and brought forward today? I have to look at the numbers, yes. And that's the most current draft? Yes, that's the most current draft. And what's the difference between this one and the one we saw? Well, the insurance itself has been designated by the car as the fact of the light on top of the cab to designate the cars as cabs themselves. Insurance, I mean, it designated as insurance. I don't know that there is any other difference other than those two. Okay. And then, Chair, I think you talked about some changes to the ordinance, or are you speaking about just the way it is written in our packet? The way it is written in your packet, there were changes made after talking to the cab companies. Okay. And then last but not least, did we talk about any type of random drug testing for cab drivers or the ability to do so in our local ordinances by either the cap companies or ourselves asking the cap companies to do it? We've discussed it. We haven't actually requested it. I'm not so sure that that's a bad thing, and I think that that's something that there is a portion of the ordinance that allows the public safety commissioner to actually establish rules and regulations based upon day-to-day operations of cap companies. And I'd have to check with law, but that may be very well something that if we want to do, that we can actually put in the administrative rules and regulations to require that to happen. I know they do it in some other cities across the country. Yes. And, again, it's an opportunity to keep the public safer, making sure people are not intoxicated or under the influence behind the wheel. I agree. They're showing up at our airports, at our bars, different places, and transporting the public. So I just was curious what that conversation has been, and have you talked to the law department? I have mentioned it. I haven't discussed it at length, but I mean, there's something I have to discuss with Linda at length and see specifically where it needs to be, if it needs to be an amendment to the actual ordinance or if it can be part of the rules and regulations. And Mr. Curtis has been out with surgery. Yes, unfortunately. And lots of folks have been. And I want to do a shout-out to David Barbary, who at the last minute people were gone, and at the last minute without much pick this up and put it together for us very quickly. But Mr. Curtis and I did talk about could we do some kind of random drug testing administratively so we could always amend this ordinance to include that. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. Thank you. You done? Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. I really like the idea that council members did and talked about the drug testing, but there's already something in here. I was trying to find it, a criminal background. There is a criminal background. It's pretty strict, isn't it? It's very strict. And I think probably the taxi companies are already doing something, I would think, as far as drug testing. As a commercial transportation entity, I would hope so. Yes. That they would, in fact, have to do that. Part of the medical, is that part of it, drug testing? No. I was curious about where it says add to. It's on page 26 of the packet. It's got to create a section to include that no Lexington, Fayette, Urban County employee or their relative. Is that going to be or proposed to be in the ordinance? That was... Yeah, where did this come from? I believe that was Mr. Taxi sent in their list of requests and said that they thought that we shouldn't reduce the number to 25 cabs because Diane Lawless's significant other was trying to start a taxi company. I can only speak to point A. I assure you, me or none of my family are trying to start a taxi cab. Mine either. I don't know anyone who is trying to start a cab company. But I guess I think we probably could consider no employee. But then, you know, I'm like my relatives, if they truly wanted to start a company, you know, I'd say, well, you can't because I'm employed by the Urban County government. And that just doesn't seem fair. It seemed a little out there. I'm not so sure that a check of the ethics code would probably prohibit that anyway. It would be hard for me to administer anything with a taxicab company that was run by one of my relatives. I think that would be a definitive. Well, that would be a conflict, definitely. A conflict of interest, and that's not something that I've wanted to do anyway. Right. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you. It's not in the ordinance because it's, I think, covered by the ethics, but we can add it if certainly nobody I am related to is in any way interested in starting a cab company. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. Rick, this is Section 17 of the proposed ordinance, and I think that's on page 12. Thank you. It references existing language that they shall maintain a central place of business in the urban county for two-way communication and dispatch of taxi cabs in compliance with the zoning ordinances of the urban county. The zoning ordinances actually are vague about when a cab company is allowed to operate and to what extent. Is there anything we can do with this provision to make it a little bit more clear about when they're allowed to dispatch and operate? Excuse me, could you say what number that is? Section 17 on page 12. It's right before the strikeout portion. i had some folks in some disagreement between a company and some folks in my district recently about that they went to the board of adjustments and i think discussions with staff and i understand the what the board adjustments did were sort of all over the board and is there anything we can do in this section just to bring a little bit more clarity to that so the so folks can know what our ordinances are and be able to rely on that when they go out and rent space and that kind of stuff. If I can ask a question just for clarification. Yeah. Wasn't the problem specifically because the taxi cabs were parking around the business location? Yes. And I would seem to think that we could add that the vehicles would not be parked at the place of business unless it's acceptable. Well, the question was whether you could dispatch in a professional office zone. Okay. And there was parking there as well. And so I just think that issue itself needs maybe some clarification because it's not fair that this company, rented space and then found out later that they could not dispatch or keep. So at a minimum, it would help folks make that issue a bit more clear to everybody involved, both the folks who operate their businesses there outside the company, but also the companies themselves, about where they can go and where they're going to be allowed to dispatch. Sure. I'd be more than willing to talk to Chris and his people and see what we can do to add to it so they come in compliance. Yeah, I'd like to see Section 17 address that in some way so folks can get clarity on that. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Farrell. Thank you, Madam Chair. I realize a lot of work, a lot of conversation and communications has gone into the ordinance that's placed before us today, but I feel like there are members of this business community that are here in the room who may like to address or give commentary about, since we're talking about them, and they're in the same room. So I was going to ask if any of those folks had comments they wanted to bring to the committee. Oh, absolutely. We actually sent them emails to ask them to be here. Then are there? Please, sir. Or sir? Sir? I guess I'm just interested in your spin on what we're talking about, about your business. My name is Greg Kajalski. I'm one of the owners of Mr. Taxi. And we are obviously opposed to the change to reduce the number of cabs from 25 to 10. Part of this is obviously a self-preservation. and I don't think there's any question about that. But if you're interested in the customer service aspect of it, I've seen a lot of people come up here and speak from the last council session saying they researched this on the Internet. They looked at comparable markets. I've been involved in it. Besides being an attorney here in town, I've been involved with the cab business for 10 years. And there's a couple of standard facts that if you're going to operate a full-service cab company, You cannot operate a full-service cab company with 10 cabs. And when I say full-service, what I'm talking about is having 24-hour, 7-day-a-week dispatch. When someone calls, there's somebody always answering the phone. Number two, having a physical address. Number three, having a person that's on staff that inspects the vehicles every week, not twice a year. The other thing I would bring up is you need an accounting person and you need someone in administration. And to do that, you cannot do that with 10 cabs. It's not feasible economically. And the other main point I would make is, and I imagine most of the council people have been here for some years. You guys have already done this experiment. You've had four other cab companies that didn't meet the 25 cab requirements. I'm talking about, or they were definitely the smallest companies. You had American Taxi, you had All-American Taxi, you had 24-7 Taxi, and you had Discount Taxi. And if any of you know anything about those cab companies, I would ask, did they have higher quality standards? Absolutely not. Did they have better vehicles? No. Did they have better facilities? Absolutely not. You guys have already done this before. And Discount right now, I believe, is operating with about 11 vehicles. I don't think they come anywhere close to the current 25 minimum. and by far they are the least full-service company that we have here in town. If I could jump back to what Rick said earlier, too. He said that the vehicles don't currently have an ASC certification every year. In order to get our permits every year, you have to have an ASC-certified mechanic go through a long list of vehicle safety checks. And anyways, after they sign off, they either say it's okay or they say these things need to be repaired. When you get the permit for the vehicle, you have to turn that in with the insurance card for the vehicle. So us, along with Yellow Cab, United Transportation, along with even Discount Cab, do already have to provide that once a year to get your permit for your vehicle. And then further, Detective Russell and Detective Beaver do have random inspections on the year. And the way I think it usually works is they usually look to the oldest cars of the fleet are the ones that get inspected. So that's already done, too. And Rick did say one other thing that kind of caught my attention when he said that the liability insurance for the cabs isn't expensive. It's extremely expensive. I would say it's got to be four to five times what you would expect to pay for normal insurance. It's way harder than just a commercial vehicle. The taxi insurance is very, very expensive. I think we're the only ones in town right now that provide PIP coverage for our drivers, too. If they're hurt, their medical needs are taken care of through the PIP coverage, personal injury protection, I'm sorry. And the other thing I'd like to bring up, too, they talked about drug testing. We drug test all of our – I think we're the only company that does this, too, but we drug test all of our employees when they first start, all our drivers. So summing up, the 25-cab provision change is the one you have the most umbrage over, I guess? No, no. We're in favor of keeping it the same. It takes 30 cabs to break even right now. If you're going to provide a full-service cab company, when I'm talking about 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week dispatch, you've got to have someone there 24-hour, 7-days-a-week answering the phones. Even if you're paying them $10 an hour, you've got to understand the cost involved with that. You've got to have somebody look at the vehicles each week. You've got to have somebody that are 40 hours a week for that. You have to have somebody in your accounting department. You have to have somebody in administration. If you had a 10-cab company, you're looking at the amount of money that they would generate wouldn't be enough to provide these kind of services. And that's why I'm completely opposed to reducing it to 10. In fact, if we lost out and we had drivers start their own, we would have to decrease services because we couldn't afford to provide having someone look at those vehicles every week to having an accounting department, to having an administrative department. It wouldn't be economically feasible. And I should bring this to you from a service standpoint, and I think, Ray's the one that printed it out, he's one of the other owners that's going to speak. Oh, and he has a study that shows that when you lower your standards and lower the amount, it lowers the service to your vehicles. And I think, is that presented to everyone? And I know it's kind of voluminous, so you may take some time to review later. But it kind of goes, it's a very lengthy report. It's almost the opposite of what's being said here today, that it will increase service to the community. This will definitely, and like I said, you guys have already done this four times before with American Taxi, All-American Taxi, 24-7 Taxi, and now Discount. And I think anyone that's intimately knows the cab business here in town or these companies know that they didn't have better service. They don't have better quality vehicles. So that was one specific suggestion or change for this potential legislation. Were there any others? Well, you know, the one thing I was disappointed when me and Rick had, Curtis, I'm sorry, had talked about this before, I was under the impression that the change was going to come to increase the standards towards enforcing the gypsy cabs that are downtown a lot on the weekends. And there was no change in that. And I was under the impression that when we had talked before that it was going to be along the lines of if you're caught gypsy cabbing, your vehicle's impounded, you're going to get arrested, and that the fines and penalties were going to be a lot higher. Right now we have so many guys that are gypsy cabs that they don't care. It's a $250 fine. They pay it. They get busted in months every four or five months, and then they move on. But obviously it's a lot cheaper for them because they don't have to pay for taxi insurance. They don't have to pay for the meter. They don't have to pay for the license, the taxi permit. And that's the other thing. I think you guys are already aware that for a taxi driver, we already, you know, to renew my bar license to be a lawyer is about ten times easier than to get a taxi permit in the city. The taxi permit, you have to have a DOT card and a physical every year. You have to have your criminal background checked each year. You have to have a new updated driving record. You can't have any misdemeanors that are less than a year old. You can't have any felonies within a five-year period. You can't have any DUIs that are five years old. There already are really strict standards for getting a taxi permit in the city. Okay, so that was one addition and one subtraction is what I got from your comment. I would hope that if you were going to make any change, that it would be more in the enforcement area of gypsy cabs. Because very little is being, in fact, I don't think hardly anything is being done. And it hasn't been addressed here at all in the change in the ordinance that I can see. So I would ask that the 25 be kept in place, that the 25 minimum be kept in place. but if they were going to change something to maybe do something more on the end of the gypsy cabs. Thank you for summing up. Okay. Council Member Martin. Yeah, I just had a quick weigh-in. The research department for my council office, Jonathan Hollinger, tells me that biannual is synonymous with semi-annual, but biannual is every two years. And so perhaps we could put every two years in the document, so folks like me can read it. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Chair. Sir, I appreciate the information that you provided. I have a question for Rick. Then I'll come back to the economic standpoint that you provided, sir. Yes, sir. You may have mentioned it in your report already. Briefly describe what the administrative cost and burden perhaps would be on the government to enact some of the things that we want to do in the ordinance. I agree with some of the inspections, the other things we may need to do, but are we prepared to go ahead and implement that? How much would that cost us? How much more work would that be? What we've asked for is independent inspections, not governmental inspections. by ASC certified master mechanics, of which there's 14 that are located around Fayette County. We've asked for inspections by independent mechanics. Now, the owner-operators of the vehicles would pay for those inspections. It wouldn't be a cost to us, per se. But there would be some administrative responsibility on our part to ensure that they would. I would get those inspections and make sure that they were kept on file for each and every vehicle. And the sticker would be placed on the windshield with the date of the inspection, so anybody can see that. Oh, and I appreciate what qualifies for me. How much more work, how much there's going to be an increase in the administrative responsibility. It's well worth it in order to ensure that the patrons and the passengers in our cab citywide are safe. But I just want us to have a sense of how. I wish I could answer that question. I mean, I don't know how to answer that question without saying that anything that we can do to bolster the public safety, the administrative cost is minimal based upon the results that we'll get to ensure that there's mechanically sound vehicles on the road. And that we know, as members of public safety, whether it be the public safety department or the police department, whoever comes in contact with those vehicles, including the public and especially the public, that they know for a fact that those vehicles have been inspected mechanically. And I agree with you, Rick, and members of the committee. I don't minimize that at all. Of course, we want to do that. I just want us to be sure that we accurately assess. To me, it sounds like a lot of work, and I don't know if it's going to require us to administratively ramp up to address it. And if that's the case, I would be supportive of that as well. Well, the one thing, if I can interject in reference to inspections, included in the ordinance is something that's never been before, and that's random inspections by police officers, where if there is not a fare in the vehicle itself, this ordinance would give them the authority to stop a taxi cab and inspect that taxi cab to ensure that its mechanical inspection was up to par, that his driver's permit and his company permit and his insurance was up to par. And also, two, to Greg's point, we can start stopping cars randomly that we haven't been able to do before. And we're going to catch some of those gypsy calves that he's talking about. And I appreciate that in your response to my first question. And I'm supportive of that. You do what you have to do. And I think this is one of the things that if we pass that section of the ordinance, we do what we have to do for the public safety. And administratively, we'll go ahead and incorporate those responsibilities. The information that the gentleman just shared in regards to the economic feasibility of this, he indicated that it takes about 30 calves to pencil out for a company to provide full service. And I would say, from my opinion, that full service goes a long ways towards our comfort that they're going to provide the best customer service and public safety for the passengers of the cars. So it's not just a taxi cab per se, but we want a full service operation. And so if that's the case, that it takes 25 to 30 cabs to help cover all the other costs associated with running such a full service company, What thought or how, describe to me then how there is a positive impact based upon the reduction of the number of cars in a cab company that's going to improve public safety or the cost reasonableness for the customer? Speaking to that, and I'm not a marketing person by any stretch of the imagination, I haven't seen their reports, so I can't really comment on it, or I haven't delved into it and analyzed it and see if I can find any information relative to that that would, in fact, verify that you need 25 to 30 cabs to have full service. I can only say that I've talked to other people who wanted to start cab companies with less than 25 that said that they would be able to handle full service. Now, given that, if you'll notice in the orders itself, it takes away the 24-hour service requirement of the taxi cab company, which basically would allow people to operate companies part-time with less vehicles. And it's being done in other areas where you don't just mandate that if you get a license, you have to operate 24-7. And I know that that's an encumbrance upon the companies themselves because they will only be out in the peak times when cabs themselves are in fact wanted or desired. But to allow the free flow of people who can't afford 25 cars and can't afford to start something of this size, that, if I'm correct, is the reason why the numbers were taken down to encourage the smaller business owner as opposed to somebody who has to have a great deal amount of money. Well, I appreciate that. And as we continue to consider this, I kind of understand how the reduction in the required number could perhaps have an impact on cost. That is, if you agree to the premise that more folks providing the service in the market will render greater competition, which will reduce the cost. May or may not be true in this case, but I understand that as a basic premise. However, I don't at this point understand how the number itself correlates to improve public safety for the taxicab service. So I'll continue to hear the conversation that goes around the horseshoe, and I'll keep that in my mind as one of the things I would like to have addressed. Thank you. Thanks, Rick. It's okay. I'd like to address, I don't think reducing the number of cabs, Council Member Ford, would provide more safety. The things in this ordinance that would provide more safety are the independent inspections that are required twice a year. That's one thing. And, sir, you addressed there was nothing in here that addressed gypsy cabs. And, in fact, there is. Section 1, number 6, it says, Taxi cab means any motor vehicle providing transportation within Fayette County, and the underlying part, that accepts any form of compensation, including but not limited to per time or per distance, rates, tips, donations, money for fuel, or exchange for goods and services. And that is to prevent someone from being a gypsy cab. I also know that if you are caught more than twice as a gypsy cab, the fines are pretty stiff and you're out of business. But that was put in there specifically to keep gypsy cabs because they could say, oh, I'm not a cab. I don't charge anything. They just gave me money. So that was put in there for that reason. Generally, I just took a quick glance at that, but that doesn't look a lot different than what was there before. And also the main thing is the enforcement aspect of it. any of our drivers know all the gypsy caps. You see the same ones downtown on Friday and Saturday nights, every Friday and Saturday nights, and they've been doing it for years. And what's currently on the books, and it's not much different than what's already written here, and it's very close to what's already written here, really hasn't been enforced. And I've been in front of this council several times before complaining about that. And I even mentioned it before when the World Equestrian Games were coming. I thought there's going to be not only our normal people here, but then many people from out of the country that I thought could really get taken advantage of by these gypsy cabs. And I was hoping something, I think I came like three months before the games were going to be here, and nothing was done then either. That's what's so disappointing about this. Yeah, and I think. What we have on the books right now isn't even enforced. It's getting the license plate number of the suspected gypsy cab. would probably help the police track them down. Yeah, we've done that. I've reported that to Detective Russell and Detective Beaver, where you get the make, model, plate number, and then they give it to patrol. But then there does seem to be some gap when it gets to the county attorney that a lot of times they seem like they're consistently dismissed. And I'm not exactly sure why. Well, and we have no control over the county attorney and how they plan to prosecute. But I did want you to know that that was put in there specifically to address the gypsy cabs. Okay. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just going to follow up since time ran out earlier to see if there were other members of the business community about which we're talking about regulating who had comments about this regulation. Yes, sir. Thanks, Ray. Hi, my name is Ray Shogun. I'm also a co-owner of Mr. Taxi. And what I've provided today was an actual study by the University of Missouri that addresses a lot of the issues that everybody just talked about today. And it'll show you, it'll discredit everything that's being presented to you, especially with some of the economic impact that it's going to have on all taxicab companies. And I went ahead and highlighted some areas for you just as, of course, I would like for you guys to read it sometime before you really make a decision about reducing cabs and take a look at the ordinances because, in my opinion, the ordinances don't cover enough. They left a lot of things out, and you'll see from this report done by the University of Missouri that they're really missing it. And I just ask that if you're going to do it, please do it right this time, you know, to cover everybody. We're for fair competition, and we're for the regulations. It will help everybody, but there's some things in here that I'd like to read to you if that's okay. You can see in the executive summary it sums up most of it, and I went ahead and highlighted supporting evidence that's in, well, not my supporting evidence, but done by the University of Missouri. And it says that the objective of this paper is to provide guidance in developing a regulatory framework that supports the best taxicab service model, the full-service taxicab company model. Then it says the vast majority of local taxicab regulatory ordinances fail to support or in many cases even allow for the development of full-service taxicab operations. And then over on the next column, you'll see deteriorating service levels and customer dissatisfaction, among others, anything that's less than a full-service cab company. And if you turn to the next page, which is page 5, they did a little chart so you can see what citizens and people coming to Lexington are actually going to see. And you can see number one is the full-service taxicab company. And then it moves on to page six. What are the problems in the regulatory structure of the taxicab industry? And it says the systematic problem encompasses all the agents and the principles in the taxicab market structures in the U.S. arise due to the fractionalization of the taxicab market. This fractionalization gives rise to the varied business models. Minimal control over market entry and several smaller firms and individual drivers or operators, each trying to make a profitable venture. However, such market expansion does not result in an efficient operating environment, especially when quality of service and price levels are taken into consideration. To each of these individual or smaller firms, the economic model may seem profitable, driven by such expectations and the relatively low cost of market entry. They start taxicab-related business activities by either acquiring taxicabs or obtaining leases. Such a process, unless checked, creates far more taxi cabs than are needed to the service to demand, with the result that all drivers suffer as service declines and per taxi cab income levels shrink. This, in turn, forces regulators to raise the taxi cab fares, ultimately opening the door to competitors, operators of Anis and Answers, who gain a significant share of the traditional but more lucrative taxi cab markets. To further illustrate problems that arise due to the deregulatory environment, the next section provides a comparative analysis, blah, blah, blah. Okay. If you look on page 9, it talks about the components of a modern regulatory system. If I start a round of time, let me know. But I want to read this to everybody, too. The modern taxicab industry technology that includes computer dispatching, GPS-based monitoring of vehicle location, quick and secure credit card processing, and greater driver security is possible only if it can be supported through the revenue generated by a substantial number of vehicles. Substantial. However, this new technology, especially computerized dispatching, is critical to the management of independent contractor drivers if greater productivity and revenue per vehicle are to be achieved in the taxicab industry. This increased productivity reduces the pressure for rate increases and assist taxicab firms to maintain or, in some cases, adequately provide services to the elderly and transit dependent as well. The first step for regulators is the recognition that management of the driver workforce must be through the individual firms vested with permits. It is up to the taxicab firms to add value to their taxicab permits, and that value includes managing the drivers and compliance with local regulations. In order to do this, however, firms must be of sufficient size in a balanced market, proper number of taxi permits to serve taxicab passengers, to afford modern vehicles and taxicab technology. Regulations need to be written to require the use of such technology to manage the independent contractor driver. If the supply of taxicab is in balance with the taxicab market demand, everyone wins, the driver, the firms, the community, and most of all, customers. You can be briefer if you want. I'm sorry? You can be briefer if you want. Yeah, I know. Your minutes are up, so. I'm sure you'll like that. Was there something you wanted to conclude with? Yeah, essentially long-run, it's going to really hurt everybody. I'm sorry, essentially what? It's going to hurt everybody, the firms, the drivers, even passengers and people visiting here. You were talking specifically about? reducing the number from 25. Thank you. Yeah. It's going to hurt existing drivers. Right now we have companies that don't have the number of drivers to operate their quote-unquote 25 cabs. What they're doing is they're flooding the airport, and what they're doing is they're not doing full service. They're not servicing area-wide in the county. And it's just not fair. It's just not fair. I noticed a line in this where it said, for example, city ordinances will affix the number of taxi cab permits as one permit per 1,500 population. So 150,000 would have 100 cabs. We have 300,000 people in Fayette County, and we certainly do not have 300 cabs on the street. So according to your report, we have less cabs than this study recommends. That wasn't highlighted, but I did note it. And that we are the only community in Kentucky or most anywhere else that has a threshold of 25 cabs to start a cab company. So as far as waiting for cabs, I have an eye disease, and there are times when I cannot drive. And so I call cabs a lot, and I use cabs a lot. And sometimes you can wait an hour or an hour and a half to get a cab in non-peak hours. And so there is a need for cabs, and that was also my experience at the Rape Crisis Center. we'd have clients that would call a cab and sit there for an hour and a half waiting for the cab to come. May I, briefly? Yes, sir, Council Member Farmer, would you please? I might just suggest personally when you call for a cab, you use another name. You may have a point because I've been calling saying I'm Council Member Bill Farmer. I would just like to ask him one last question. You made reference several times that this was done by the University of Missouri. Two things. I noticed, actually, in my mind, it looks like it was paid for by the Taxi Cab, Limousine, and Paratransit Foundation. It would be what I take from the cover page. Yeah, that's right. And this organization represents all size taxicab companies. I appreciate that. And just one other one. I noticed it's dated from May of 2006. There's nothing any newer than that. I'm just asking just to know. Not that I can find. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. I have a few questions. At what point, how many taxis do you have to have to make a break-even point? It's right around 25 to 30 cabs, Mayor. So in order to actually have a profit, you provide security for your drivers with the GPS and so forth. Yes. And as far as using that for dispatch, you make it more efficient. So how many taxis does Mr. Taxi have? Approximately 45 to 50 at any given time. So the break-even point to cover all of your expenses would be 30 taxis. Yes, ma'am. So would you think that would be a business decision? You know, I guess I'm looking at it from a small business standpoint. I mean, it's like we don't regulate, for instance, dry cleaning companies and say you have to have so many customers or banks or anything like that. So don't you think that would just be a business decision and not necessarily be legislated? No, ma'am, I don't. I think it's going to have an economic impact on all existing companies, drivers, and our community. And if you have time, please read this report. It supports what I'm saying. I guess I think competition is good. It is, but it could be fatal, and it describes that in there, making exceptions for people to make an entry into a cab company as an example by lowering or deregulating the standard that your predecessor is already set at 25. Right. It's very good. It's not long, and it was done by a third-party independent university. It would be very helpful. Okay. Well, I know I have a great deal of respect for both of the companies represented here today. I know that you do provide a good service, but yet I'm thinking a small business person that wants to start out small and grow should have that opportunity. That would create unfair competition, ma'am. If you read through here, you'll see it. It specifically talks about competition, and by doing that and deregulating, by reducing that number that everybody else has had to have that standard, is creating an unfair competition, and it has a serious impact not on just the companies, but all the drivers of all companies. What's that line in here? I'll certainly keep an open mind about it. I do think driver safety is very important. And I know those systems to operate them can be expensive and having 24-hour service, really, and that could be costly. But I've got some questions for Rick, and I will keep an open mind about it, and I'll read your material. Thank you, ma'am. You're welcome. Thank you, everyone. Yes, ma'am. I think Council Member Lawless answered one of my questions as far as what's the average number for most cities, our size. I really don't know. I'd have to go through the Department of Transportation or through the Department of Labor or something to that effect to find out. And if we went to, I was curious about the inspections and how we would control cost for, if we went to an independent contractor, and how would we prevent that contractor from, or inspector, I mean, from overcharging the companies? They would have to tell us that they were being overcharged. I mean, we would set the fee or what we would allow them to charge based upon an analysis of the master mechanics that exist out there, what their fee would be. And if it was too absorbent, I mean, we're thinking $75 probably for the inspection, and that's a guesstimate without actually going and talking to them. And they wouldn't have to get that person to repair the vehicle if they need repairs or become incompliant. But those reports would actually be turned over to the company and to us as well. I mean, we would get those reports on all those because we would designate who would be able to do those inspections. And then one last question. Is full service required of taxi companies? It is now. 24 hours, seven days a week it is by our ordinance. So if you're going to start a business, you have to provide full service? Based upon our current ordinance, yes. Okay. Because I don't see, you know, I agree with these gentlemen really as far as how is that possible for 10 taxis to provide full service and not, you know, they wouldn't be able to turn a profit. it so and i know council member ford i think this was similar questions he had so i mean i agree i i don't know i just know that we've had people that wanted to start a cab company that could not afford 20 25 cars at one time and the suggestion came from council that we take the number down and that that's what we requested right and we took it down to 10 with with specifics as As you all well know, back in June, there was an actual request for five, and it would just be almost tentamount to impossible for us to administer if it got down to just five cabs. There would just be too many companies out there to try and administer. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else from the audience that would like to speak? And then. I'll be very brief, Madam Chair, members of the Council, Commissioner, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Barber, and others involved, including our colleagues. I'm Bob Babbage. I'm with Babbage Co-Founder. I represent Yellow Cab along with Amy Wycliffe of McCarthy Strategic Solutions. Don Daugherty, our senior manager, is here today. Were there to be more time to consider this, we would just have several suggestions. One would be the insurance. We do insure at the half-million-dollar level. We believe that appropriate for everybody. As for inspections, Yellow Cab has two ASE master certified folks in-house. So they do real good inspections real often and would like to continue to do that and not be prevented from having in-house work. As for the drug test, please write it in. Add it in. Make it mandatory. Also, we do this and would ask that you include it, and that is check employment against the sex offender list. You have the University of Missouri study, which we appreciate our colleagues sharing with you. We believe that is extremely informative, very helpful. At the same time, we have another document from the TLPA. Although it's a bit older, it was shared with you back years ago when the council considered this before. It is certainly relevant for now. I've asked for any other studies we might be able to get and provide that would make our point. E-regulation for calves failed in the 80s in the country. We believe that the 25 standard is appropriate and should be continued. And if we can offer other suggestions for you to form any kind of working group or any kind of further consideration, we've made these suggestions before. We will continue to and hope that you might be able to take them under advisement and include them as appropriate. Thank you very much. Yes, Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. You listed four things, insurance and house inspection, drug testing. I didn't catch the fourth one. The background check should include a check of the sex offender registry. Thank you, Council Member. I think the drug tests and the background check on the sex offender registry is very appropriate. But the matter of it being there's no business that we legislate that a smaller or a larger business can't open in competition. You know, locally owned businesses really hurt when Walmarts showed up. Now there's a big push for buy local. This is a free market. And, you know, I'm baffled that, not at you, but I'm hearing that people are saying it's not fair to us to let somebody have a smaller cab company or that their investment, you know. Now, God forbid, I certainly wish we had a city ordinance that would have prohibited me from making some of the investments I've made in my life that I lost a lot of money on. But that's my choice to do so. But I do have a question. I mean, Louisville, the requirement is one cab. You can start a company with one cab in Louisville, Kentucky. Well, it doesn't matter if there's one or two or 100. But I agree with you, the drug testing, and Rick and I talked about can that be done administratively. And nobody's saying that the mechanics can't do the work on the cabs. They just can't do the inspections. How much do you charge a driver to rent a cab for a week? Either one of you. Any of you. It depends. About $450, ma'am. So $450. I'm sorry. It depends. There's a weekend lease. There's an airport lease. And then there's a full standard lease. And if it's a full standard lease, it's $450 a week. Okay. Which includes the insurance. Okay. So for $450 a week per cab, you all are balking at having to pay $75 twice a year on that cab to get it inspected independently? No, ma'am. You know, as I said in the beginning, we already do that, and all the cab companies do that. When you get your permits at the beginning of the year, they go through a very— That's your personal—but you— No, no, each vehicle has to go through an ASE certification, and there's a long checklist that's already provided by the city. When you buy the permit for each vehicle, this is already done once a year when you get the vehicles, when you get your permit. ASE certified mechanic, you have to have one. That is hired by whom? By the company. That's my point. I mean, not that I'm accusing any of them of being illegal, but that would be like restaurants hiring their own food inspectors. You know, they may be above board, and they can do the work if they break down. But if you're making $450 a week on each cab to balk at $150 a year to pay for an outside independent is a little stunning to me. Can I say this? That what we do right now, it is an independent third party. We have one mechanic at S&S, Tires, that does some of our inspections, some that does at Powers. We already pay them a fee. They don't work for us personally. And I would say from a liability standpoint, we're not going to put any car on the road that's going to be a detriment. We want to know if there's any issues with any of these cars. And we already have somebody looking. We have our vehicles inspected every week from somebody in-house. And besides doing an inspection, we also ask the driver, hey, is there any issues with the car or whatever, and we get everything taken care of. But our vehicles are looked at every week. and then to meet the city requirements, each vehicle already has an ASC certification that's done once a year or two. I'm sorry, Ms. Henson's gone. There's one issue I wanted to bring up on the current ordinance, the one that you want to pass, that does get rid of the requirement for being 24 hours, seven days a week, which I think is a giant mistake. That is not providing better service to not have somebody answering the phone 24 hours, seven days a week. and providing 24-hour, seven-a-day dispatch. The main synopsis of that report you have, too, shows that when you have a smaller cab company, they don't. Right now, we're with a better business bureau, we're with a chamber of commerce. We want to provide good service to everybody, whether you're the little $5 grocery run at Walmart or the $30 call from a hotel to the airport. But that report says, in a very short, to tie it together, that the smaller cab companies that are independently, that aren't answering their phones, The only thing they're really interested in are the big runs. The little runs get pushed aside. And if you're really interested in providing better customer service and keeping the service at what it is, you would want the standards to be the same as they are now. Reducing the number, and that's what that report basically says, those type of calls, taking grandma to get her prescription filled at the pharmacy, picking somebody up and taking the grocery, those aren't big runs. And that's what gets hurt the most when you go to smaller cab companies. And if that's your intent or you're fully aware of it and you want to do that, then I guess you're fully informed. Unfortunately, I don't have the report from the Better Business Bureau. But I do have one quick question for Mr. Curtis, if you all will indulge me. I've spent, it'll be two years in February, working on this and researching this. You said at the last meeting that you pulled in 11 cabs that knew they were coming in for an inspection, and eight of them were not roadworthy and two had to be put off completely. One second. This is one of the detectives that does those inspections. Yes, ma'am. Can you tell us what cab companies those were? Well, predominantly, back when we were doing this, discount cab was not in business, so the companies that we were inspecting were Mr. Taxi and United. I know for a fact that one of the cabs that was taken out of service completely was Mr. Taxi. I don't recall what the other ones were. Okay. If you would get that information, I would really appreciate it. Yes, ma'am. We can do that for you. I've got that as well. I can send it to you electronically. It's on my computer. Okay, thank you. I'll do that. And Council Member Crosby. Thank you. I have a question. When safe rides, it's probably for maybe the taxi companies. When you all do the safe rides, like on New Year's Eve and things, are your drivers allowed to accept tips? United Transportation is the service that provides that through the Department of Transportation and LEX18. It's called 231 Safe. It is a free ride that's provided through Safe and Sober. The way that works is that we get a call into the 231 Safe line. We will dispatch a cab to go pick that person up and take them inside a 30-mile radius for free. The cab driver is allowed to accept tips for that, but the meter is not run and there is no charge to the passenger. Thank you. And then, Ms. George, can you tell me with some of these courtesy, like some of the restaurants or establishments that might offer courtesy, transportation, would their liability not fall under the place of business? Can you repeat that, please? If you have an establishment that is offering a courtesy ride, a free ride, a safe ride, if something were to happen, would it be their liability as a place of business? And they should have insurance to cover providing the transportation. Okay. Thank you. I will say I do have a problem with us letting courtesy rides take place, and they're able to take tips for their rides when we have establishments that are offering safe rides for their patrons from their place of business, not gypsy cabs, in that they can't accept a tip. But I know it's costing some of these business upwards of $30,000, $40,000 a year to have to pay because their drivers aren't allowed to take tips, and it makes no sense to me that we can do it one or two nights out of the year. I guess my point is I feel like with this ordinance, we are just really stringing things apart to make it fit what we want it to fit. And I will say, oh, I had another question about Louisville. It was mentioned that there's only two cab companies in Louisville. Do they go through one cab? I understand they have to have one cab, but my question didn't relate to how many cabs they had to have. My question had to relate. How are they certified to go into business? Do they get a certificate of need from the state, or do they get certified by the local government? They have companies in Louisville, and we are both. So Don could speak to that because he actually is the manager of both companies. Okay. Maybe if he could answer that question for me. There is currently roughly probably 10 cab companies in Louisville. I'm not going to list them all, but there's somewhere between 8 and 10. You are required to get a certificate of need from the state of Kentucky before Louisville will issue your permit. So there is a requirement that you can start a cab company with just one cab, but it's just not that easy. You have to go to Frankfurt, you have a hearing in front of the state transportation cabinet, and you have to prove that there's a need for your cab. So it's much different than what we're proposing here, the fact that they have eight companies and they can have one cab. It's a much different process, I guess. Much different. Okay, thank you. Hi. My name is Will McGinnis. I own Lex Taxi. We only have one taxi. I've talked to you all several times, and I wanted to address a couple things. I think the main two things that are important to me. One is the gypsy cabs. And Yellow Cab had a really good proposal I read, and that included impounding the car and a night in jail. I think they'll nip it in the bud. I really do. I think that you ought to consider that. But as far as the number, I've been supporting five. And I told you before, ten is fine with me, too. But there's been a lot of people saying that that won't work or that won't be good for business. Well, that's going to be up to the customer, I guess. If they don't get enough customers, they'll go out of business. So it's really, I don't think, an issue that you should regulate. Basically, you have restricted me from growing. Not you, not the council. Actually, the council has been in support of me growing my company one at a time. I came before you. You allowed me to do it. But the law department stopped it. And I believe the law department stopped it wrongly. David Holmes basically said that it would be special legislation. You didn't ask them to draft an ordinance that would be special legislation. If they would have used the wording, all cab companies can increase their fleet, all existing cab companies can increase their fleet one at a time, it wouldn't be considered special legislation, but they refuse to do that. But anyway, I hope you do lower it down. I think it should be. I encourage you to lower it to five, but, you know, 10, it's better than 25. And then I think there's been some fees proposed for the drivers of cab drivers to increase their transferring fees from, like, $5 or from 10 to 15 and 20 to 25. I wouldn't increase the drivers right now. I mean, the drivers are struggling out there as it is. You just heard how much money Mr. Taxi charges a driver to drive a week, $450. It's ridiculous. These drivers, to make any money, they have to work 80 hours a week. I mean, being a cab driver, I mean, it's not a great job in the sense that, I mean, having any job right now is a good job. But, I mean, it's not, it's really not. It's not the greatest job. So I wouldn't increase fees for cab drivers. In fact, I mean, if you were going to do anything, you should be paying cab drivers to do this job. I'm serious. You should take, you're not going to do that, but I'm just saying, you know, that should be the other way around. You should be giving them money, not taking money from them. They do a great service. Anyway, thank you. Thank you, Mr. McGinnis. Mr. Farmer. Madam Chair, I was just wondering, it seemed like there's a couple of provisions that both council and some of the community feels should be added to this legislation, would it be proper for us to take a month to incorporate those potential changes before we have any legislative action on this? Well, we've taken two years. I guess another month isn't going to kill anybody. Yes, ma'am. I'm just asking you as the chair since I think there have been some substantive. I don't know if we could move this forward and place an amendment on it or if it's the wish of the committee to hear it next month, we can certainly do that also. I wasn't making a motion. I was just making an observation. Thank you, ma'am. No, I appreciate your observation, and I agree with the drug test and the sex offender background thing completely. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. I've forgotten exactly who it was. It said something about a $30 cab ride to the airport. Is that correct and is that fixed or was that just an example? That was just an example. I was just stating that from some of the hotels that are from a further distance like Hamburg or around Newtown Pike, those would be the more desired fares of a cab driver. and that the report basically states that those are the calls that the small cab companies will only concentrate on that and doing the bar runs at bar time and that they have no need. They're not part of a bigger company. They don't have the need to do those little runs, the grocery runs, that are less desirable. But there are cheaper ways. If you're more adjacent to the airport, it would not be $30. Oh, no. No, if you were living in... Well, that's all I wanted to get clarified. It sounded like you had one fixed price for the airport, whether you were in Greenbrier out at Winchester Road or whether you were at the Colony, which is a driver and a nine-iron from the airport. No, it's always based on distance. If you live in Beaumont, it's probably going to be $7 to $10, depending on where you are in Beaumont. Okay, fine. That's about all I had. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Do I hear a motion? Yes, sir. I've got to turn it on somehow. I think I'd like another month, to tell you the truth. Okay. I think we're a little disjointed at this point. So your motion is that we... It would be my motion that we defer it to... To a later... I have to look at what's already on the agenda. to a later meeting. Right, exactly. Okay, all in favor? How about a second? Chuck Ellinger seconded. Casey thirded it. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Aye. And I live downtown, and it costs me anywhere from $25 to $30 from the airport to a downtown location. Thank you. Okay. The next item on the agenda is the Emergency Management Long-Range Strategic Plan Public Safety Link recommendation. Chair, before we go there, can we ask along with that motion that we can incorporate the issues that we had talked about? Absolutely. To bring those back in. Mr. Curtis, if you would look at those issues that we had discussed. Exactly. Thank you. I'll just get with Andre afterwards, if that's okay, to find out what those exact issues were and we'll wrap them all together. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Pat Duggar, Director of Emergency Management. I'm glad to be here today. And when it's January and you have weather like this and you're in my job, you're really happy because we're not in ice storms or snow storms. So I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. And I want to say a little bit before we actually get into the strategic plan itself, just to give you an idea of the numerous laws and guidance documents that any emergency management agency has to be aware of and follow. There's the National Response Plan, the National Response Framework, the National Recovery Framework, the guidance document that FEMA puts out to do planning by, KRS-39, numerous presidential directives, the Stafford Act, and many professional standards from the professional organizations. So we utilize all of those in doing our planning and our strategy. And typically what we do is every November the staff gets together and we try to look at what we've accomplished and where we are in the different phases and what we want to do for the next year. So this time we try to take it a little further and actually have a five-year outlook and see, you know, trying to put it together as a whole. Because one of the new guidelines that FEMA is looking at is called the Whole Communities Approach. So that's one of the things we did. But if you're not familiar, the five components that all emergency management programs look at are planning preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. And so that's the five primary programmatic areas that we work under and that everything falls under, whether it's operating the EOC, which is a response, the alert and warning system, the sirens can be response, but it's also part of preparedness, to the plan we're working on now that identifies ways that we can mitigate the effects of hazards and disasters, which is a mitigation plan. So this is our primary tenets of what we work under and how we go about our business. The next thing that we try to look at is the vision statement. And just a couple things, I'm not going to read this to you, but a couple of the key things I do want to point out in the vision statement is that our office and our job is certainly that of a coordinating agency. We have some missions, but we're not like some of the other public safety agencies where we have a real specific mission of law enforcement or fires or maintaining correctional inmates. We are very broad, and we're an umbrella agency, basically, that just makes sure that all parts of something are being coordinated, and we work with the private sector, the public sector, nonprofits. So really, the whole community is part of the organization that we look at. And one of the other primary things I want to mention is that our goal is to make sure that Fayette County as a whole is resilient. We want to make sure that we are in a position as a community as a whole that we can recover from disruptions and make sure things go back to normal or better than normal as quickly as possible. We do have a mission statement that we've had for quite some time, and it's basically to enhance public safety of Lexington residents and businesses through the major tenets that we have, which is planning, preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. And again, the desired outcome that we have of everything that we do when you put it all together is to make sure that we are a resilient city that significantly reduces social, economic, and environmental losses and that we have strategic investment in land use planning, environmental protection, partnerships and community preparedness. That's the goal, the ultimate goal that we're trying to achieve and get to every day and every year. Some of the mission summaries that we have and our goals in planning, we've been planning ever since I've been the director in 1988, and it started out very small. We started internal with the other divisions of government and kind of got that part together and made sure we were working as a whole. Then we reached out to some of the other primary response agencies like the Sheriff and the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and some of those folks and kept building on that until we had a whole. And what we've tried to do is create a culture of preparedness for everyone. So it's an everyday way of thinking and every way of doing things. And so now one of the things that is required by KRS-39 is called a local disaster and emergency service organization. And that's a group of people from all the different response agencies that get together quarterly to look at strategic planning, to look at how we can enhance our planning efforts, our response efforts, and our recovery efforts. In preparedness, what you're trying to do there is get the community educated and ready to know what to do when a disaster happens. And also to test the preparedness of the response agency through exercises, which we do several times a year. in response we want to develop and implement a plan that is workable and we need to have an emergency operation center that is workable i don't know how many of you have been to ours but it's like 409 square feet and it's really not very operational friendly when you have 15 or 20 agencies in there trying to coordinate a disaster we want to continue to improve our alert notification system. We keep building on that between the AM radio system and the sirens and the computerized alerting and the beacon alerting. So we want to try to improve that and continue to improve the cooperation and coordination with partner agencies. One of the things that has become a lot more important on the federal scale and everyone else with the numerous disasters that we've had of large scale across the country from Katrina to the Rita, now the Alabama and the Missouri tornadoes, is the recovery process. A lot of people have focused over the years on response and what are we going to do to respond. But once that initial immediate response is over, how do you get your community, how do you have that resilient community? So one of our major goals in recovery is to develop a partnership and a plan with all the agencies out there that it would take to recover, sort of like we did with the tornado that we had at Masterson Station. We had to amend some building inspection rules. We had to do some things different. So rather than just kind of figuring that out at the time, we want to literally have a recovery plan in place and involve all those agencies that it's going to take if something major happened in our community so we would know exactly what we need to do, whether we need to change laws, temporarily suspend laws, or do things to immediately start allowing our community to get back on their feet very quickly. In mitigation, we are required every five years to complete a mitigation plan, and that allows the community to be eligible for certain types of grant funding. And we are right now in the process of updating that mitigation plan, and we'll have that finished this year in 2012. The other thing that we're in the process of working on is most of you are familiar with the nerve agent that's stored in Richmond down in the Bluegrass Army Depot. Well, we now understand through some recent modeling and some changes of things that if the right accident or the wrong accident, I should say, were to occur, the wind directions were just right. Some of Fayette County could potentially be at risk from some of that. So we're working with many consultants and our response agencies and the Army to figure out exactly what those impacts could be and where so we can come up with a plan to try to help mitigate what those impacts may be. Most of you know all this, but in a good strategic plan, you have to recognize what your community is made of. So we've done some research and pulled some of this out of the census, and you can read these demographics in your packet there. You also have to look at the hazards and the risks that you have. And some of the things that we have are two rail lines, two interstate highways, several natural gas pipelines and petroleum pipelines. Many major transportation routes, pipelines that carry 6 to 36 inches of natural gas and petroleum, hazardous materials with the two interstates. There are also many, there's like 54 fixed facilities in Fayette County that have extremely hazardous substances, and then the waterways. And then just the typical hazards of urban fires, transportation accidents, hazardous materials releases, flash floodings, winter storms, power outages, tornadoes. So you have to factor all that when you do your planning is what is your population, what is your demographics, what does your community look like, and then what risks do you actually face. And I'm not going to read the next part, but you can look in your packet and see how we've broken these risks and hazards down from high to moderate and low. So we've kind of categorized these for probability and also potential impact. We have very low risk for earthquakes. We do do some earthquake preparedness, but it's only anticipated that we would have minor impact here from direct damage. The real impact from an earthquake would be more like how we would get commodities into Fayette County because a lot of the road lines would be impacted. So there would be a lot of risk that way. So, again, our actual goals for planning is to adopt an ongoing strategic planning process. And what we want to do with the document before you is actually take each and every one of the goals and add objectives underneath. So for every year, we have specific objectives that we want to try to achieve or to task out to make that happen. We're all required to be in compliance with the National Incident Management System. So how can we ensure that that happens and improve that process? There's many mandates, like I said, with the planning documents, with the presidential directives. So making sure that we stay in compliance with all those mandates. Develop and enhance our culture of preparedness. I think when I talked to the committee earlier, one of the things that we feel like we need to truly work on is getting the community as a whole prepared. We did a survey back in November of 2010, and basically it showed us that about 43% of the community indicated in that survey that they were not prepared at all for a disaster or an emergency. About 26% were somewhat prepared. 25% or 24% thought that they might be prepared. So I think we have one of our primary focuses and goals is to really reach out in many ways as we can and explain to the public what it means to be prepared. Because one of the things that was also indicated in that survey was one of the reasons that they weren't prepared is because they didn't really feel like they knew what to do or how to become prepared. So we need to really focus on some public education and some information that will give them the tools they need on how do they become prepared, what do they prepare for, and how do they go about that. So preparedness is definitely going to be one of our focuses for this calendar year, and depending on, we will do another survey probably at either the end of this calendar year or early spring of 2013 to determine if we have made any impact at all in the preparedness level of the community. In the response, as I indicated, we really do need to establish a modern emergency operation center with a backup power. The facility that we're in currently does not have backup power, so if we had to leave the existing facility, if we had lost power, we would have to leave the existing facility and go to another location. We have a lot of partner agencies when it comes to response and a lot of partnering going on with our emergency notifications, and we want to continue to grow that. One of the things that we need to work on is our fatality management. We are working with the coroners, not only locally but regionally, to come up with a mass fatality plan. The air crash that we had, everything went absolutely wonderfully as possibly as it could in a response of that nature, but we also need to have a formal plan, and we've been able to work with the coroners to adapt that and also hopefully identify some funding through one of our grant processes to help for some equipment. One of the other things that we need to continue to enhance and develop is our resource management system. There are resources everywhere, but knowing where they are, how you access them, and what capabilities they have is critical in a disaster. So we're working on developing a system where we can get a better handle on, not only in Fayette County, but regionally and statewide, a better way to manage and know what those resources are. And again, as I said, in recovery, we want to develop a continuity of operations plan. We started that in the previous administration for the urban county government, but it didn't totally get finished. But one of the things we need to do as a government as a whole is to have everyone look at, you know, how do we continue functioning as a government if something were to happen to City Hall or some other places? So we really do need to have a continuity of operations plan. We need to look at creating some wind-resistant structures and teaching architects and engineers and other folks on how to do that. It was shown in Alabama and both in Missouri that some of the facilities that had built the wind-resistant structures and the tornado shelters to the standards that have been developed really do work. And since we do seem to have more and more high wind events and the potential of tornadoes, we really think that that's something that we need to address and look at here. And then we need to address the needs of responders during a long-term recovery process. As everyone has downsized and things have gotten less, We need to think of our responders in that recovery process as well as just the citizens. And then we need to establish a means to deliver reliable information to all community members. I know there's been a lot of discussion about smartphones and those types of things, and I think we are heading that way, but even in our community when we did the survey, Okay, only 40% of people that answered the survey only have a simple cell phone with basic features. Only 25% of those that answered the survey that had a cell phone had smartphones. So it's maybe not quite as big as you think. There's a lot of the community out there that still have the basic services. So it certainly is a tool that we want to utilize, but we have to remember that there are folks that don't have even Internet in our community, and we need to figure out ways to continue to get information to those folks. A lot of non-English speaking folks and other types of folks that we don't, we certainly want to include in our whole community process. And again, we're going to continue to identify funding sources for mitigation projects, whether that's house buyouts or generators or other things that we can do to help minimize processes. Through the local emergency planning committee, we have done a survey of the highways to try to assess the type of cargos that go through there, different hours and times of days, so we can start working on some things to help mitigate the potential of traffic accidents with cargo and those types of things. Some of the strengths that we've identified is our staff is pretty much experienced. I've been here quite a while. Some of the other staff has been here. Most of the staff have been here 10 to 12, 15 years. They're very experienced. And because we are small, there's just 10 of us, we are very cross-trained and have a lot of ability. We take great pride in trying to maximize the use of state and federal funding. We have three grants that support our office, and they have meetings pretty continuously to figure out how we can leverage those grants in planning, not only for Fayette County but regionally and how we can make the most of that. We have done a lot with social media and social media planning. We do training regularly once a month with the coordinators, and we feel like we have a really positive working relationship with all of our partners. Some of the weaknesses that we've identified is sometimes because a lot of people are downsizing, it is getting more difficult for people to come to training and to come to meetings because they have so many other things that take them away from what is not their focus but is our focus, which is emergency management. It's always a challenge and something we work towards training the current administration and staff council members on emergency management processes on recovery and disaster situations. Inadequate facilities, such as the EOC, and that we do rely a lot on volunteers, which is not necessarily a weakness in the volunteer themselves, but like anyone, they may be out of town or somewhere else when the emergency happens. So we do have to rely on volunteers a lot. Opportunities, we know that the chemical stockpile program for the nerve agent enrichment will be here through 2021 at least. So we do know that we have some potential for funding for additional resources there. We are pursuing and looking at federal funding or at least some federal funding dollars for the EOC offices. And we currently always have outreach activities. And it's always nice to know we did a very specialized activity at one of the mobile home parks. And we had, when we counted it up and worked with the owner to find out the number of mobile homes in that park versus the people that actually attended our outreach where we actually had people come, we sat down with them, helped them develop a disaster plan. If they came and sat down with us, we gave them a weather radio. We had about 86% of that mobile home park come those two days. That's a real positive effect and a real positive outcome, but a lot of people now at least have the ability to be warned. They have some part of a plan in how to respond. There is some perception with some employees and people that preparedness and training isn't necessary any longer because we've been doing it for so many years. And as soon as you get complacent, that's when something happens, and then you try to reengage and get back together. So we're trying to reinvigorate folks and get them excited again about something that they've been doing for a while. There's a lot of disruption in public information channels, And what I mean by that is a lot of the stations are automated now. You know, it's hard sometimes after hours or the middle of the night to find somebody to get your message out. So we're trying to grow and figure out ways to continue to be able to use the typical media when a lot of times there's no one at home when you call. And then just the continuing challenges to find funding, programs and projects and personnel at all levels. We have utilized grant dollars as much as we can. The one thing that is a little scary to me is that in one of our emergency management grants, $33,000 of that grant goes simply to pay our daily bills. I think that's kind of risky business. I would prefer that we had a more reliable funding stream. But with the budget cuts, we've had to divert some of the grant money into daily bills. And so getting back to the place where the local government can at least handle the daily bills of the operation and hopefully allow the grants to be more enhancing and programmatic growing. Excuse me. Thank you very much. Your time's up and we're about to adjourn for the Committee of the Whole. and I wanted to make sure if there were any council members that might have a question or comment. You do a great job. I have a lot of admiration for you, and I know you work hard to keep us safe. Thank you. Oh. Councilmember Henson. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to say that I'm very impressed with the work that you do, and it seems like your division is just so in-depth and cover all the bases. And I think you and I have talked about this. As our population ages, we have maybe more folks that are immobile, certainly individuals with disabilities. So I just wanted to make a comment to remember those folks and not free. We certainly do, and I want to say thank you for your comments, and I have a wonderful staff and team. And just for those of you who may not know, we do have a special needs registry that we can mail you, or it's on the website, and it is for people like that that may have some additional needs during a disaster. And what we try to do is use that proactively so that if we know where they are, then we can get in touch with them and say, are you okay? Do you need anything? I'm not showing anyone else. Thank you. All in favor? Bye. Okay, see you all at 3. Thank you. Thank you.