additional 700 cabs would not be enough to meet that current demand. under proposition a, transportation code section 1 11 5 and the city's first policy this board is mandated by law to meet the convenience and necessity process in san francisco. it's about time that you do it now and we appreciate your attention to the matter. >> could i ask mr. ward one question? >> . >> mr. ward, could you just address very briefly the concern about workers' compensation? >> can't hear you. >> the question is about workers' compensation. all set? >> very good. >> the question -- one the comments raised earlier was about workers' compensation and i assume it's the case that under this program the color scheme would provide the workers' compensation's coverage for the cab. could you address that if would you like to? >> directors, i will confirm.

as is mandated under the transportation code, as well as it has been for many, many years, yellow cab, luxor cab and the other full service color schemes are mandated to and do provide workers' compensation for all gate and gas drivers. and under the proposed plan by staff, these will be gate and gas operated medallions. under a lease. >> very good. >> thank you. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon. here i come again, this has been since 2007s we have been screaming for taxi cabs at my company and full service companies. we have not basis point able to address our demand for over five years now, if not longer. we are maximum capacity with our system. we're putting up to 82 people a day in our taxi cabs and far

exceeds the national average. creating the ability to provide the staff -- the metrics that provide the staff with the paratransit, provides a reliable cab service chart. if you had item 7 on your chart that was sent to you, would tell you the districts by break buon of inadequate cab service. have you gotten a chance to look at that? we forwarded it to you. you can see the numbers are pretty crazy and these passengers that are calling two and three cab companies at one time are in competition with the smartphone apps or charging people credit card guarantees for pick up and it's causing extensive no-go that we call going there and nobody is there. our response time is 11

minutes, 48 seconds at normal time, but peak time hours it can really fall apart for us. our city shouldn't be treated this way. our residents of san francisco shouldn't be treated this way anymore. when we're maxed out and we have been this way for five years, how can you not think about giving you more cabs to put on the street? it's a slam-dunk. i appreciate all of your abilitis to create this thing and the most important thing, this creates jobs for people. so thank you for your time. >> thank you, sir. >> kevin carroll; martin kosinskski. >> good afternoon, i am the executive director of the hotel council of san francisco. i also serve on the hotel transportation plan community advisory committee and i also am a resident of district 7 in san francisco. the hotel council is a non-profit member organization that represents over 70 hotels and 25,000 hotel rooms in san francisco. we have the pleasure of welcoming millions of visitors to our city every year.

we strongly recommend the adoption of the resolution before you to expand the number of taxis up to 200 full-time taxis. the issue of lack of taxis is one of the biggest concerns of hotel industry and work we have done with our members. we have worked closely with the mta and applaud your efforts to do more research to find out the true number of taxis that are needed. we have worked with your researcher and with the taxi companies to get this answer. when a major convention or an event is in town, it becomes even worse. we do have situations where there might be 40 or 50 people waiting for a taxi cab at one time and for hotels outside of the downtown corridor can get worse. hotel guests spend money and time out of the hotels and across san francisco. for every $300 spent in the hotel, $700 is spent outside in

the city with taxi cabs, restaurants, attractions and tours. something like this that could help get more of our visitors out to be able to spend more time and money outside of the areas into more parts of our city will benefit us all. we ask your hope to help our visitors, our taxi companies, businesses large and small and our residents of san francisco by approving this resolution to add more taxi medallions. thank you for your time. >> martin cosinskski. >> good afternoon, i'm a taxi driver driving for green cab. usually i drive in the mornings. it's amazing. it seems to me that they are working in different cities for whatever reason, because when i wock, work, i get up at 3:30 and pick up my cab by 4:30 and sometime issues wait for two

hours for the first ride and every permit is going to make me and people like me and other drivers make less money. and it's really hard to support the family on the income of full-time taxi drivers, around $35,000, $40,000 a year. i do support the peak-time permits, which you tried in single operating permit. i think you should issue more of those. they will be on the roads when

needed. you know, just a general comment seems like you took 20-30 million dollars out of the industry and you haven't invested in that industry even $1. not in working transitions for the driver and haven't approved any kind of service. i was part of the group in '95, which we supported the sharing of the dispatch data, which was greatly improved the cabs. you haven't picked that issue up and overall i'm extremely disappointed with your work. >> thank you next speaker. >> amy lawrence, followed by keith rasckin. >> good afternoon; >> ladies and gentlemen of the audience and commissioners, good afternoon. i am shocked at the speed of

which you destroying the income of the average driver in san francisco. given medallions away nonstop, only to find out the story of the income of the san francisco taxi driver -- what does he actually make? do you have any idea? put it out more medallions is fine, but san francisco has a logistics problem, and it's that gridlock and peak time that it takes place. why don't you stand around union square at 2:00 a.m. and watch hundreds of taxis centraling the city looking for income when there is no one around. you are going to add 200 cabs to that? between 2 and 6 there is no business at all. the cab firms know that, but they just collect fees. they talk a lot about service and shortages, but what you really have is income, bribes and kickbacks. most of the big firms in town i have worked for. you can't get a taxi until you pay $5 to $10 on top of regular

fees. you don't talk about that, do you? you don't talk about the driver that can't pay his bills because for a given day he didn't make gate and gas. you talk about service. you talk about everything connected to the taxi industry. you hear attorneys coming up and telling you you are short 500 cabs. that is all nonsense. you have a peak time problem that you can't control with your buses and you can't control them with the limousines, but you are going to control them with taxi cabs by putting 200 more on the streets. i will show you on the screen -- it shows in the past ten years the economic recovery has created more jobs at 7-14 dollar and hour. thank you for your time. >> next speaker, please. >> keith rasckin. [ applause ]

[ reading speakers' names ]. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon, my name is keith rasckin. so great transportation for a great city. thank you. i can believe in that. my platte metaphor for the cab industry, more men, get them in there shoveling water out. this thing is sinking quickly. you will put 200 medallions on and have drivers that are new, training them, along with the regular drivers that go through and have to cover the attrition of the system. you will put 200 drivers into the system that don't know the

system. meanwhile you are taking drivers on the k list and screwing them by telling them that drivers invested 20 years of their lives, good drivers and telling them we will not give you a medallion. this thing is completely backwards and makes no sense. if you look it from the top-down business point of view, you are taking a drivering force and shoving them into the ground. and the whole idea about dispatch, now i'm a dispatcher. i have been dispatching for years and i know the business. i can sit in dispatch and the drivers don't take orders. why don't they take orders? they don't understand the system. maybe they don't understand the language. maybe they are working 20 hours a day if you are not looking at the drivers you are wasting your time with the 200 medallions. you have to look at the big picture and furthermore it's about the numbers. and the numbers show that with

200 medallions the gross revenue for 12 month is about $14.5 million. the net after expenses and insurance will be about $11.5 million that. is what we're talking about here. $11.5 million. >> thank you, sir. next speaker. >> mark gruberg. [speaker [ reading speakers' names ]. >> good afternoon, mark gruberg with uni[kwrao-euts/]ed taxi workers. this is completely premature. you have commissed a study, you are spending our money on a study and you are jumping the gun by pre-supposing something that none of us have seen and the director has alluded to that study. if it's a public study, we deserve to see it brand new go ahead and do anything based on that study. now we have reference to a private study that is being

done, which none of us have seen. and i'm sure it's a self-serving document on the part of these cab companies and we deserve to see that as well. you can't go ahead with this on that basis. secondly, at the last meeting, members of this board said that they wanted to take up the question of drivers on the list and sounded like there was some sympathy for doing something like this. this would be a preemptive strike. so for that reason as well, all of this needs to be discussed as a piece, at a single pc & n hearing and i will give you a couple of practical reasons. it says in the report there are big events coming up in early october. you are never going to get these cabs on the streets for those events.

absolutely impossible. take my word for it. secondly, it happens to provide in the transportation code that you can only hold one of these hearings in a 12 -month period. if you hold this hearing today, you are precluded from holding another such hearing for 12 months and then take the report and probably throw it away, because it will be antiquated by that time and forget about the people on the list, because they won't have their say in it and all that will happen is the corporate welfare is that the medallions represent. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. [ applause ] . >> ica pardinas. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. honest to god, i cannot believe what is happening here. i mean, this is beyond ludicrous. all of the people on the medallion list are near 50 and older including myself. we have been waiting and

waiting and waiting. the bottom line, not one single medallion should be given to anyone, but the people who have earned these medallions. what are you thinking? you are just going to take that from me? i am looking at you. i am looking at you, you, you, you, you and you. really? you are going to do that to me and all of these other drivers have been slaving out here? i am not rich. i don't have a san francisco condo. i'm not getting over. there are hours at least four hours out of a 12-hour shift, there is nothing. we're just driving around in circles, ask somebody who knows what is going on in the streets. not the paperwork. ask me. ask the driver what is going on. think about had you go home tonight. any metalion issued should go directly to the people waiting for it, who have been working for, who have been slaving for it. thank you. [ applause ]

>> next speaker [ reading speakers' names ]. >> good afternoon, mr. kim. >> president of desoto cab. good afternoon, directors. first i want to say that i support this legislation. i think very strongly that many of the ills of taxi industry have been self-inflicted. i believe that the rise of these alternative services, people who should not be picking up the public, street land because we do not have enough taxi cabs servicing the city. i think every metric shows this. secondly, i think we have done a terrible job of how these medallions are actually being operated. most of these medallions, yes, they are run by companies, but many of them are leased out to third partied, brokers, individuals that are unaccountable in terms of how they are operating the medallion. my concern is when you issue these medallions that are directly leased to companies, what objective criteria are you going to use?

are you actually going to use real data? or self-reported data? are you going to make sure these medallions are run properly with the right insurances? and if they are not, are you going to take them back? my concern is as you lease the medallions don't exacerbate the current problems that the industry is facing. one thing that we can do is make sure that the medallions that you issue go to companies that are really providing the services. i am in an unusual situation with desotoa, because i have more orders for my fleet that i know what to do with. so wearing my desoto hat i applaud you for rewarding companies like mine that have done these services, but i don't know if you give them to me or yellow or luxor or some other company that are just brokering out the medallions to individuals? so i ask you to look objectively at the criteria that use to lease out the medallions.

i hope as we go forward that the majority of the medallions continue to be issued and sold to working individual drivers. >> thank you, mr. kim. >> terra housman. [ reading speakers' names ]. >> good afternoon. >> hello. last week when you pulled the rug from out from under the drivers on the waiting list, there were voices of concern among the board members that we have to do something for those ivers soon. i suggest doing this before you do something for those drivers soon is premature. but i suspect you are going to be passing this anyway. so i would like to suggest that in the resolution, that you change some wording. the fifth paragraph down, which is the second "resolved." may i suggest that you either strike

the "shall be operated with a hybrids electric compressed natural gas, et cetera." two possibilities. either strike that, because the goal was to get 20% reduction in the carbon footprint of the taxi fleet. you exceeded that tremendously. you see that 49% reduction in the fleet by insisting over the past few years that all cabs -- all new cabs be hybrids. but this has produced unseen consequences. it's very, very difficult now for a family with three children or people with a lot of luggage to get a cab with enough capacity for them. i drive a 6-passenger van, and desoto has more of them in fleet than others, but still i'm running myself ragged trying to keep up with those

calls. because we need cabs with higher capacity. and the higher capacity vans, i'm sorry, are not hybrids. so please either add in "and large-capacity vehicles," or please strike, "everything shall be operate widhybrid, et cetera." from that resolution. >> thank you. >> dede workman, peter witt, carl russeau. >> good afternoon. >> i'm dede workman the director of public policy for the san francisco chamber of commerce. i have a letter for each us, stating the clam bers' strong support in the increase of tami medallions. the unmet demand for cabs in san francisco is well-documented and well-demonstrated. this need is only going to grow as the citis a population grows as our business continues it rebound and tourism increases.

as anyone who visits or lives or works in san francisco will tell you there are not enough cabs on the street and with all due respect to the drivers because i believe what they are saying about their own reality, it's true in their cases, but as a consumer, and someone who lives here, as i do in district 9, and works in the city. i will tell you treasvirtually impossible for me to get a cab most of the time. so in representing the chamber, we want to convey to you the chambers' strong support and urge you to increase the number of medallions. >> thank you. next speaker. >> peter witt. >> good afternoon, mr. witt. >> with all due respect to the chamber of commerce, mostly impossible. what does that mean? we do have a dispatch mandate. i would like to know whatever happened to it? you have. it by the way, bought, sold, hook, line and

sinker without data. you have no data. this is a biased report by staff. here is a report by staff -- can i show the monitor, please? monitor, please. i don't see my picture up there? where is my picture, by the way? this is data that has been skewed by staff. my favorite picture is this one. where it shows you what is going on. can anybody make sense out of that? peak times. peak times it goes and goes. where is the data on that? really, creative contributions, that is the word i was looking for. i have been giving you creative contributions in the form of 1,000 customer every year for the last 15 and that also includes visitors. this current data that you are doing doesn't include visitors. not one visitor.

the hotels as far as you are concerned cab-sharing might be an answer at peak times. when every wants any one thing at the same time, guess what? it's hard to get. in new york, when it rains in rush hour, there is a thing called the "change of shift." they call it something else too, but i forget the term right now. a change of shift. what are you going to do about that? by the way, what is this temporary full-time medallion? what is a temporary full-time medallion? i never heard of anything in my whole life. it's absurd. it's biased. it's staff-related and an in-house report. that is with a we had last time. excuse me. so we had last time. when malcolm was in '07, remember? your first and only pc & n hearing. >> thank you, next speaker.

>> carleau. >> thank you. i have been a leased driver in this town since 1995. my question to mta, are you trying to kill off the leased driver? are you trying to starve us out of existence? there is not enough time to study what you released and now you are talking about 200 around the clock cabs possibly. it doesn't make any sense. at the same time you are doing this, you are allowing sleazy, shady fake cab companies to proliferate on the streets while as my colleagues have said are driving for hours. i just don't see how we can continue like this and i'm speaking for myself, but it seems to me the mta is pushing the drivers to strike. you are pushing us to strike.

thank you. >> thank you, sir. next speaker, please. lynn van winkle. david silverglide, carl mcmuredo. >> i'm here on behalf of the of the golden gate restaurant association and over 100-member locations within the bay area. we strongly support the proposal to increase the number of taxi cabs in san francisco. the difficulty in finding taxis directly impacts the ability for residents and travelers to patronize our member restaurants. hospitality is our no. 1 industry in san francisco. part of being hospitality is helping people get to where they need to do when they need to get there. additional taxi cabs would certainly help in that regard. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> david -- he is not here for that. he is here for another item. [ reading speakers' names ].

>> good afternoon. >> thank you, mr. nolan. directors, i sent an email yesterday, maybe you got it. i suggested that you might want to defer your decision for one meeting until september 18th, to consider make something amendments. in the vernacular, the term [tkpho-lg/], i am confused. i this these are quasimedallion categories rather than medallions. so that is one amendment you could clean up the language. also, i think you should stipulate that there will be a maximum percentage of such permits as compared to the number of medallions, like 10%. i mean, notwithstanding slippery slope and conflict of interest concerns, i do think it makes sense to have some flexibility built in and to stabilize the companies with

company-operatored medallions, even though as the permit holder -- and the other thing, the people on this medallion waiting list, the language in the regulation you passed last time, the legislation said that you may issue rather than you will issue or shall issue medallions to the waiting list. i think you need to to come back at the next meeting and be definitive as to what your plan is. i don't think it's difficult [skp-ept/] for the difficulty in making the decision itself. i do think if you are going to issue something like 150 permits of this nature, you should also issue 50 as a measure of good faith to the people on the waiting list and define what the plan s. i will say quickly there is a recession of sorts, the sidewalks do roll up at certain hours on week needs and on the

euberissue to explain will your plan is. [ applause ] >> [ reading speakers' names ] dave haly, former medallion holder. i keep thinking that i will write my novell, but i come here and you give me better stuff than i can think of myself. you could give these to people on the west and i'm sure john lozar could give them to individual drivers. basically most of what you are listening to is fiction of one kind or another. it's actually very slow right now and by time these medallions will be in winter

and at which case there will be far too many cabs on the streets. there is no reason you should be pushing this forward without talking to mr. hara. i talked to him and indicated he might be putting cabs on the street, but able to do it in a scientific manner rather than the old method of back-door politics. you have really given yourselves a really bad reputation over the last couple of months as an organization that pays no attention whatsoever to the drivers and puts on these events as a farce. i suggest that you hold an actual meeting where this can be discussed and wait for mr. hara to tell you whether or not you should have cabs on the streets. thank you very much. >> thank you, sir next speaker. >> benjamin dallas. [