getting a medallion is the pinnacle of driving a job and right now there are hundreds of us at the peak and you deny us and take for yourself. this can't be right. you can't be serious. how can you ignore the plight of hundreds of cab drivers who have worked a lifetime, altered their lives and sacrificed and refused other opportunity in order to earn their medallion. it's so wrong and cruel. you have stolen my future and my family's future. in case you're not aware of it cabbies have families too. right now i suffer from terment of this justice and it's severe and the first thing i think of in the morning and last thing at night. it's the epitome of being used and abused. prop k kept us in this business with promises and hope and so did prop a by

the way at the start, and i looked at this as security for my family and pension and retirement plan and now i'm looking at nothing, a complete dead end. this is a shame, and there's an sf little pamphlet that these guys put out in march of 09 and promised to get to everybody on that list, so they chipped away and chipped away and it's come to this, a dead end. there has to be an incentive otherwise getting into a cab is like getting into a tunnel of perpetual darkness. there has to be compensation for this lifetime of hard work. there has to be hope. don't stamp out our hope which is what you're doing. we live on hope. the list has got to stay and go to professional working career drivers. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker please.

>> hi. my name is barry corngold and president of the san francisco cab drivings soarz and one of the councilmembers that resigned because we weren't being listened to and i would like to point out that many if not most of the drivers that are here are missing work. many having to pay to be here as well as the hundreds of hours of meetings that we're required to go to that we don't get paid for. ed riskin argues that the transportation system is one thing and part of the entire transportation system. however, muni or mta pays for the buses, the vehicles. they pay the drivers. they don't pay cab drivers or buy the vehicles or insurance. cab drivers are doing this work for very little money, and unfortunately the

criteria has been what is going to make the sf mta the most money. they could have issued these 150-200 medallions a year ago but they wanted to see how to make money off of it. they could be issued to these drivers and instead they lease them to companies and these are medallions that won't go on the road. none of this $14 million a year they intend to get is going back into cracking on illegal taxi operations that are picking up the public, limos -- you know doormen are putting people into strange town cars that don't have commercial license plates. there's no -- not enough inspectors to crack down on this and none of the millions of dollars is going toward this. we pay to regulate this. this is more than regulation. this is

profiteering off of the industry. they are regulating us but the main criteria is making a profit. so and about proposition a. voters weren't even aware this involved the taxi industry. it was billed as making muni cleaner and parking and at the last minute they slipped in a nine page legal ease explanation of the prop and little paragraph and yeah taxis would go under the mta and the taxi commission would be dissolved so we need this oversight and we need this avenue of appeal. thanks. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> hi. my day started at 3:30 a.m. this morning and shift started at 5:00 o'clock and now

we're here today. we're in an election year. this would be the majority of votes right now. if you disregard what we're telling you over and over you're disregarding your job duties. mta is out of control. it should be over seen. it shouldn't be making money off of us or taking our profits from us. they should allows us to do our jobs, be respected, honored. 16 years waiting just for nothing. i could have doing a million things. this is the majority. we are speaking. we should be heard. please do the right thing and keep honoring what we have been doing, and we have been working for all this time. it's in black and white. you are legally bond to do what the black and white paperwork says

what has been already voted into effect. if you disregard this it will be issue after issue. it was simple. medallions go to the drivers. why do we differ from this? because they wanted to make money off of this, and that's what they're doing. if they're not checked it will go as under the title of corruption, taking our profits and livelihood. profits are getting squashed everyday. everyone is taking our money, the credit card companies, the limos, and you're hearing the same thing over and over. stick to the rules. stick to the regulations. stick to what you're supposed to do. thank you. >> do you care to state your name for the record ma'am?

>> my name is ms. pardinea, big dog taxi, 16 years on the list. thank you. >> good evening honorable commissioners. i have been living in the city for 29 years driving a car for almost 24 years on the medallion waiting list for almost 14 years. yeah, i said it. okay. can i start over again? >> state your name. >> okay. good evening honorable commissioners. i have been living in the city for 29 years, driving a car for 24 years. on the medallion waitings list for 14 years and i am maline m alick. we have been good afternoon the right of appeal. this is the process. if you

don't the city attorney says -- all due respect to the city attorney, the board can hold appeal of the individual permits but not the number of the permits. if you think about it when you get the number of permits to the taxi companies that is the denial of the original permits because all the medallions under the prop k system should have gone to the waiting list to be earned and it's the denial of the individual permits and the board should hear the appeal. we are not -- [inaudible] so we should have the right to appeal. please don't take the right away from the drivers like me who can't afford to go to court. commissioners, since the taxi -- sf mta took over the taxicab fares they sold 218 medallionings. they gave 50 to the people not on the waiting list and they never put their

name on the list for zero cost, and now they gave 150 to 200 medallions directly leased to the cab companies. they ignored the people on the waiting list. every decision they make is not right. we are not angels. we should have the right to appeal because we don't have thousands of dollars to go to take them to the court, so please, please give us that right to appeal. i'm 55 years old. they're trying to steal my retirement. they're trying to rob my family's future. every part of my body is giving up on me. now i need the medallion and in the process i'm going to be left out and drivers like me are going to be left out, so please, please give us the right to appeal which is no cost to us.

otherwise we all going to go where? we be homeless. thank you very much. again i am maleem malik. thank you very much. have a good evening. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> hello. my name is ed heely and have been a cab driver for 27 years. i also write a blog and i probably spent -- oh my god, three to $400 going to meetings of the mta of various kinds, and i can say this for the first couple of years they were listening to cab drivers and paying attention to what they said, and they came up with a pilot plan which gave money to the city, and cabs to drivers -- allowed drivers to retire and

continue to list. however for the last year -- i mean director's contention they balanced all aspects of the transportation industry does not seem correct. they have -- i don't know what he's done with the buses and the bicycles and the rest of them, but the mta board had a change. personnel and they stopped listening to anything the cab drivers said. people made reference to the taxi advisory council. this was a body that met for two years and came up with 60 or 70 different suggestions on how to improve the business, and the mta board gave them 20 minutes to deliver that thing. nobody on that board even listened to what is going on in the taxi business. the only abiding rule they're interested in, the balance is balancing their checkbook. this is quite

obviously taking money away from cab drivers that they would have gotten from the 150 medallions. these people would have retired on. most are in their 60's and without the medallion they will die impoverished and the mta is taking this for a general fund and supposedly for the good of the public. this is something that they're want living up to their mandate to regulate the business because they're not paying attention to the experts who would tell them to regulate the business. there is a study by harra that the city commissioned and they put this through before even listening to it, so they haven't kept up to their agreement under proposition a. as for the contention that this is all too complicated. basically i guess

director ed riskin was saying it was too complicated for the average person to understand. i guess the congress could make the same argument to the supreme court. it's too complicated for you to understand so you should let us just make policy. this has to be looked at again, and once again this is no benefits. mr. wiener has no idea what goes on in the cab business. okay. no benefits to the cab business whatsoever and experienced drivers are going to quit. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good evening board members. first i would like to thank you for hearing this case. i filed i wanted to file an appeal but somebody said i couldn't, so on this matter, and thank you for

giving us three minutes. that's something the mta has never done and something they have never done also to give drivers hope. you know where is scott wiener? he just left. this was his first time here and he spoke and left. i remember my first cab ride. i was about nine years old. it was to the hospital. i was a burn victim and my mother called for a cab. i'm a 24 year driver and san franciscan native and i am passionate about cab service. i must say that they say money is the root to all evil. is that what the "m" in mta stands for? i would hope also one board member would change her mind. i also thank the board for delaying this

case. balance with competing interest. yes, mta competes with our customers and we have other customers too. pc process has been over looked. the mta -- first of all too big to fail but they have. they have failed miserably i'm going to tell you. policies, the policies here were excuse me dictated by staff and ed ras kin and not the board. these were not developed or approved by the board. excuse me. they were approved but the basis by which they were approved was misleading and it was anecdotal and it was hearsay and there are no facts, none, zero, to fall back on, absolutely none. no facts, no

surveys, notice findings, no company mandates fulfilled which they should be. the only way -- this is no way -- excuse me, to run a business. it's my business. i'm waiting. you know in 1998 this board put conditions on for 300 new permits and one of those conditions was -- it was number three. it was to define peak time hours. now, this say problem. this is the problem. and we have yet to define it. we have yet even to work with it. all we want to do is add more cabs. now dispatch is another major problem unaddressed completely. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please.

>> good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. my name is mohammed and driving for 25 years. i'm not a politician. i'm just a cab driver. sorry. i'm just a cab driver for 25 years in san francisco. and as you see all the car drivers cannot come here and speak. if they would they would say the same things you heard for the last 20, 30 minutes. we just here to ask your help. help us to do something that we need. with your help -- nothing more than that but we need your help. please help us. help 7,000 cab drivers get what they need and proposition a approved by the people to regulate the cab, but not to steal from the cab. please help us. 7,000 cab

drivers need your help. please help us. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good evening. i am marvin ramos and with desoto cab for 15 years and frankly i don't know what to say. i'm not a speaker. other than i feel that there is no representation for us cab drivers, and i don't know. during this whole session here i got this vision that there's top feeders and bottom feeders, and my experience recently has been there's just so much clear example of what is going on at the top on the bottom. it's like the general public is going out there and doing their own limo, their own homo cab, their

own lift cab, their own sight car. it's endless. so who is going to remain to regulate the top? at this point the sf mta -- there's lots things out on the road as a cab driver i could get to my customers much more efficiently creating left turns on market somewhere. things that the muni buses have, benefits. we don't have none of this. none of this for us. what we do have -- what i am seeing i am sorry. i just feel there is no future. you have heard it. i am starting to feel customeret get in the cab and they're asking -- you know, is there a reason they're not answering the phones, and

granted there is this new thing that is bold new. information highway way and the websites and infiltrating it is system and changed the industry in general. nevertheless this isn't a reason for the big companies to come in and to exploitd the working class, the cab drivers in this case. the public out there right now that would like to come to the meeting but they can't. they're standing on the corner, the 800,000 that aren't represented -- well, i heard that figure 15 years ago and 880,000 population in the city so that's the example of who is representing us, grabbing numbers and having hearing and it just infuriates me. anyway a friend asked me to come here. i feel powerless coming here. i

don't feel heard most of the time when i come to these committee meetings. however, i would like you guys to stay on board and to at least hear the appeals of what us, the people, the working class, hear are here for. >> thank you. anyone else like to speak on this item under public comment? okay. thank you. >> hello. my name is brewa gravis. i am a cab driver since 1973. when we became part of the mta we had some hope. everybody else that they were

overseeing were employees that had benefits, that had health care. they had sick and vacation pay. they had retirement, and we hoped, we prayed that we might benefit from the same and equal treatment eventually. we didn't think it was going to happen over night. we are far too realistic for that, but we thought it might happen some day. instead we got exactly the worse. we are now paying for muni drivers' benefits, and we don't have them. the mta is an agency -- you have heard this from so many people. they're out of control. they have to answer to basically no one. the

board of supervisors gets to vote their budget up or down. there's no line item veto. the only thing they get to do is say "well, we can do it around the edges and then we'll let it go" because evening the bos has no control and now the mta wants to take away the one last place that we have had any place to be heard in city government because god knows the mta has not listened to us. well, they have had hundreds -- hundreds of hours of town hall meetings and they tweaked a couple of things around the edges, but the main problems in this industry, the lack of a future, unless you get a medallion, no benefits for

drivers, no hope for anything. they have taken it away, and now if you do not hear our appeal you are going to let them make the decision that you don't have any control over them either. please. you have the control. keep it. >> thank you. is there anyone else that would like to speak under public comment for this item? okay. seeing none then commissioners the matter is submitted unless you have questions. >> i do have questions of mta. i don't know both of you, which of you, anybody. >> [inaudible] deputy director of taxis and accessible services. >> i just have a couple of

questions. one of them is it the position of mta that section 4.0 1b -- sorry. 4.1 06b is not superceded by prop a? >> i'd like to ask the city attorney -- i mean we have already submitted a letter saying that we have not submitted our own legal briefs because the city attorney's office has expressed its legal opinion. we consider this a legal opinion so i don't want to -- i don't have a firm grasp of the number of sections so if there are questions about the city attorney's opinion i would rather have the city attorney's office dreaz that. >> i understand that. i wanted to know whether as an entity

mta views -- i don't believe the city attorney has addressed this particular question whether this section of the charter has been superceded, and that's the provision that relates to to whether the board has the ability to grant or deny appeals. >> again it's a very legal question, and if the city attorney's opinion has not addressed it the more of a reason to address it to the city attorney. >> i mean in the memo. doesn't mean period. i want to know what mta's position is on that? you're taking no position. >> our opinion is that the city attorney's opinion is correct and as to a legislative policy issue related to the governance of the taxi industry in san francisco that is not something that the board of appeals continues to have jurisdiction over after the proposition a. >> okay. so i understand it's the view of mta that the resolution at issue is one of

policy, and so i am trying to square that with that section, and i am trying to understand whether this policy in fact does grant or deny individual permits as the memo would suggest it does -- the memo suggests that the policy and it would -- it does not sort of krorch upon that. >> if you're referring to the issue whether this is referral for grant or nile of a permit. it's their position it's not. this is a classification of class of permits that are different in their characteristics than other permits. for example the medallions that the individuals on the waiting list are waiting for are permanent full time permits to operate a taxi. the class of permits that this decision relates to are three

year agreements allowing people to operate a taxi for the lifetime of a taxi vehicle, and then the permit ends, so this is fundamentally a different class of permits, and the decision that is being appealed is to which not companies these are given or somebody qualifies for the permit or not, or whether they were granted or denied a permit unfairly. the question is should we have created this class of permits which companies are eligible and individuals are not? >> i guess one of the things that i'm most curious about to the extent that individuals on the waiting list will not -- because of this -- what mta is characterizing as a policy decision. does that mean -- does that foreclose on opportunities on the list.

>> no not at all. there is a consultant study under way and we hope to have a decision whether we can issue more permits to meet the taxi demand and if so where the permits should go, so at that point there will be a decision whether the permits go to the class of permits that are full time permanent medallions issued to working taxi drivers in order of seniority or a different kind of permit. now over the past year we have created two classes of new permit now. you heard one of them referenced. one is a part time permit and a single operator permitted and granted in the order of people with the most seniority as a taxi driver opposed to people with the most seniority on the applicant waiting list. this was a different class of permits. it had different eligibility criteria. it's only allowed to be operated 90 hours per