continue to february 26th, commissioner fung, aye, president hwang, aye, vice-president lazarus? aye, commissioner honda? aye. the vote is 5-0. these matters are continued to february 26th. >> this is appealing the revocation on november 1, 2013 of ramp taxing medallion number 9060. we'll start with the attorney, you have seven minutes. >> good evening.

i'm heidi, i'm the attorney for appellant linus oha who is the holder of ramp taxi medallion and also for best cab, the taxi company or the color scheme. the regular taxi medallion operates under the also, and they're both here to answer any questions should you have any. mr. oha has worked in the san francisco taxi industry for the past ten years. his permit is restricts for use in a disabled accessible van. he's worked as a parking control officer at sfmta. mr. oha immigrating to the u.s. in 19 85. that started best cab company

in 2006. while many cab companies in san francisco have 100 plus medallions, best cab is one of just a handful of small companies with one or two medallions. as a condition of holding a taxi medallion, all are required to drive their taxis at least 800 hours a year. as of august 4, 2009, they may modify their hourly driving requirement based on them being unable to drive due to illness or disability. in 2012 they amended the transportation to require that taxis pick up a minimum of eight wheelchair rides per month. this requirement falls the transportation code requires that sfmta allow medallions to

transfer freely between taxi companies, aka color schemes, with very limited exceptions, none of which /aeu apply today. we're here because sfmta wishes to renot met his driving requirement for 2005 to '08 and discipline for that violation was upheld at the board of appeals in 2009. the hearing officer ruled at the past hearing that mr. oha had met his full-time driving requirement in 2009 because, in her view, the small amount of required driving that he had not proven was considered min /phupbl and he gave her 82 waybills which would have been 822 hours, but for some reason

it came in slightly under. mr. oha submitted proof of driving proof was not credible and thus supported revocation of his medallion. for 2011 the hearing officer admitted that mr. oha provided evidence of driving 78 ten hour days but ruled that he did not meet his 2011 driving requirement and supported revocation. the hearing officer said that she knew of no rule that would allow mr. oha a driving modification due to his condition and sfmta did not correct her even though there was such a rule in police since 2009. we urge this commission to apply the 2009 to years would have shown substantial compliance be r /phraoeupbs and not be in danger of revocation of his medallion. we ask there many oha be given a modification as allowed by the

ada to excuse the 50 hours over the course of two years that he was unable to prove having driven. from 2012 when the new minimum wheelchair pick ups went into affect, the hearing office resolved that he did not meet the minimum for 2012. and supported revocation of his medallion. despite having no legal best cab company for the failure of mr. oha's ramp medallion to meet the minimum number of wheelchair pick ups. here we note that in september 2012 he realized he was unable to meet the minimum number of ramp taxi pick ups and submitted paperwork to transfer his medallion from best cab company to desoto cab company. sfmta

denied that transfer in utter disregard of the transfer guidelines. instead ignoring mr. oha's multiple subsequent attempts to change the decision to deny that transfer, sfmta waited until may 2013 when it served both mr. oha and best cap with revocation papers. now to recap, sfmta seeks to revoke mr. oha's medallion for not meeting his full-time requirement for 2005 to '08 for which he was already disciplined. he was also found to not have met the /raoeufrplt for 2011 and 10. also mr. oha claims eligibility for an ada accommodation modifying his driving requirement for those hours as allowed under mta's

policy. sfmta also seeks to revoke his medallion for not meeting the requirements for wheelchair customers. in 2012 he filed to transfer. in may 2013 sfmta sought revocation of both mr. oha's ramp taxi medallion and best cab color scheme with violations associationed with mr. oha's ramp taxi medallion. in other words they blocked mr. oha from making corrections and now seeks to hold both medallion holder and taxi company liable for ongoing violations related to mr. oha's medallion. we respectfully urge the commission to reverse those revocations and i'm available to answer questions. .

>> counselor, your brief did not address one of the points made by the department related to where they disqualified some of the waybills based upon the odometer readings. do you have a response to that? >> i really don't simply because -- oh, are you talking about in the 2010 or which year are you talking about, sir? >> it was a couple of years. >> because i know for 2010 it's my understanding that the waybills were discredited by the hearing officer for the reason that -- 2010 -- that was -- for the reason that they examined his parking control officer schedule, but they actually examined a typical parking control officer schedule and apparently that parking control officer

schedule did not apply to mr. oha and so they didn't look at his individual parking control officer schedule. but in looking at the typical parking control officer sed schedule they said oh, he can't be in two places at the same time and if he was driving on these particular shifts and if a parking control officer works on those particular shifts, then clearly these waybills are not credible so that's my understanding of those. in terms of other discrepancies i'm not sure that the hearing officer reached specific findings that she articulated in her memorandum. >> okay, thank you. can hear from the department now. >> good evening commissioners,

enforcement legal affairs manager for the sfmta. this is a matter of two things. one, the responsibility of a permit holder to do all the actions necessary to protect the permit and the other to serve our public. what mr. oha and the council tend to /khrosz over is the fact that they are responsible for serving our disabled population in that vehicle. our 9,000 series medallions are supposed to make an effort to put a wheelchair customer's first, that's why they're required to be wheelchair accessible vehicles. we only have 100 of them here in the city, so what we wanted to do is to ensure that they put those customers first. as i demonstrated in the brief, mr. oha has not been able to

demonstrate a single wheel /kphaeur pick up in over six years and even beyond that he's unable to demonstrate any para transit pick ups. he's the color scheme holder of the company. the company has two vehicles total. mr. oha's and mr. minzi's so the responsibility on mr. oha as the color scheme owner and the medallion holder at that color scheme is large because 50 percent of his fleet refuses to do what it's required to do and it's important to acknowledge that mr. oha's responsibility as the owner of the company to ensure that 50 percent of his fleet, which is his one ramp medallion is picking up the wheelchair customers is important and most important that it's his own medallion. it's not someone else's medallion. no one else received those

fines and citations, mr. oha did. he can't pass this on anyone else. he did seek to move his medallion to another company, but he's moving it away from the company he is the owner of. he is the owner of best cab and essentially is saying i give up. i will not do anything to better the service on this taxi. i'm going to have someone else take responsibility, yet i want to maintain my name on the front of this company, in a company that my car's actually not at. he's going to be required to maintain his driving requirement, but he'd be happy to go to another company, so i, the owner of best cab will be driving somewhere else in order to maintain my requirement. it doesn't make any sense. beyond that, as we demonstrated in our brief, the issues we have regarding the operation of best cab also that are not necessarily related to the wheelchair pick ups but in

terms in the operation of the company itself. mr. leon? >> good evening. my name's scott leon, i'm the lead investigator for the case. i've been monitoring all of the disciplinary action for mr. oha as well as the color scheme holder for best cab. in respect to the problematic issues with this color scheme, best cab had repeated failures of not properly maintaining his business permits at least since 2009 for not staffing the business from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. there were eight separate occasions, including myself and the sfmta staff to announce visits, random inspections, closing inspections and with those visits we found that best

cab was not properly maintained the business presence. they were also not properly maintaining the business presence has to do with not submitted the weekly reports which consist of driver rosters, too many drivers, mechanical break downs which we believe is essential business requirements to show proof they are properly running a color scheme premise. they have not provided any reporting whatsoever since 2010. in 2010 there was no reporting ing submitted for the entire calendar year for a total of 20 consecutive weeks. and in 2011 our records show they only submitted one report in january and nothing else. in 2012 our regards our records show that they did not submit

any weekly reports for a total of 18 consecutive weeks. if you have any questions i'll be more than happy to answer. >> just to wrap that up, to clarify now, best cab has been doing its weekly reporting in 20 13, but that's now the responsibility of a different company. again, mr. oha has placed his company responsibility with another company. it's essentially he's not running a company at all. when we have a problem with the vehicle, we have a problem with wheelchair pick ups for the medallion holder we go to that medallion holder. when those problems continue we move forward with /sr*ef revocation. we've discussed with the medallion holder, the company what the problems are and now we have nowhere else to go to rectify these problems.

and finally, mr. oha is not meeting the driver requirement and i think mr. leon proved that very well in the below hearing regarding his waybills. one of the things you should know, one of the important things about that driving requirement is that had mr. oha been a regular driver in his vehicle, in his ramp medallion vehicles, he would have recognized very early on the issues that he was having regarding the wheelchair pick ups. it's something that many of our medallion holders make an attempt to try to rectify. they'll try to get in that car on their own and do the pick ups themselves. mr. oha is the final responsibility, he's the person i have to call to say hey, make sure you drivers do this. he's the medallion holder. we

cannot subsidize that company any longer. it's merely some colors with a phone number that no one can possibly use. thank you. >> is there any public comment on this item? seeing none, then you have three minutes of rebuttal. >> again, heidi, first i'd like to point out that this company was first conceived in 2006 and all taxi companies do have problems, they all have a certain level of violations, certain number of violations that come through their door and best cab has been addressing that over the years. sfmta's hearing officers findings were not based on a laundry list of violations. i want to point out too that it's not illegal to bring in

professional management as mr. oha have brought in professional managers. that's not illegal. so not to be distracted by that, mr. oha would like to be responsible to the disability community, especially in light of the new legislation as of january 2012, by moving his permit to desoto cab company where he has access to a better system of dispatch. he believes that would make all the difference in the world. however, that move was blocked. sfmta has held best cab to different standards and rules as compared to its competitors. and i want to point out too that sfmta has stifled the growth of the company by refusing to allow another medallion holders to join best cab. the argument about best cab

being not the best cab company and that being the reason that mr. oha is transferring his medallion should hold know weight whatsoever. we urge this commission not to be confused by mta's arguments and mr. oha's desire is base /-l ed on that. in fact, his ongoing efforts to move his medallion to another company is simply an acknowledgment that best cab cannot meet the newly enacted demands that require eight ramp taxi permits per month. there's no reason that best cab cannot capably meet the demands, such as mr. mezing and in fact there are no complaints against his permit. they are business partners, they've been business partners since 2006 and sfmta knows this. respectfully, we urge the board of appeals to reverse the

revocation. the transportation code requirement for minimum pick ups targets only medallion holders, not color schemes, thus to revoke the color scheme for this section would be a serious error of law. >> i have a question on this. just want to know the requirements or the standards for mta to determine whether a transfer to a color scream of medallion to one is met. what are the requirements and what is the code section on which -- >> i cited that in my brief actually. >> you cited 1109ap. >> yeah. >> what about section 1116? it's not in your brief or -- >> i'm not sure about that. the sext section that i cited

says that if the me medallion holders request for color scheme should be approved unless they're on probation. they may deny a change in color scheme affiliation if a court of competent jurisdiction issues a temporary or permanent order to prohibit or delay the transfer and none of those conditions applied in this case. >> what's the standard? they're saying you can apply -- what standard would mta apply to determine whether transfer is appropriate? >> well, it appears that in this case sfmta applied and entirely novel standard that has absolutely no basis in the law. >> what is the law? >> the law is what i just cited. >> what about section 1116. isn't that the code section that actually sets for the program for the transfer?

>> what does it say? a: i >> i don't have it. >> i didn't review that section. >> that's not the applicable code section. >> i haven't heard that argument from sfmta either , but it says the transfer shall be approved. >> on what basis. >> the basis that the medallion holder wishings to move his permit from one color scheme to another. typically it's on the basis of the medallion holder either believes the color scheme to which he's moving would offer some amenities that his current color scheme can't offer, maybe because they're too small in this case, or because the color scheme that the medallion holder is seeking to move to is offering him a better deal so he's offering to pay additional lease fees or he's offering

better shifts or -- i dunno what their other amenities that color schemes can compete with one another and offer. >> okay. >> counselor, the department has indicated that the /aeu appellant has zero ramp pick ups. how does that work with your argument that the last three years when he was not granted a transfer -- what about the period before that? >> well, commissioner fung, number one, the condition -- the specific requirement to make the eight wheelchair pick ups per month only went into affect on january of 2012.

secondly it's my understanding that the electronic tracking of that system went into effect concurrent to that date. so the monitoring for the pick ups wasn't that good previously, there were what was known as paper scrip at the time, that wheelchair users would pay with. and the cab companies, depending on how organized they were would either redeem that scrip or wouldn't. and then the flight card went into effect at some point and then once they had that monitoring system available, the eight wheelchair pick ups went into effect in january of 2012. >> okay, but the monitoring system, i understand, is computerized and prints out -- can print out the list. you've been here a long time. >> right. >> you know that we used to be

able to find a number of pick ups within a general range, anyway -- >> definitely. and also i would point out though that not all of the wheelchair rides go through the para transit program and so as a result of that, the new rule in place, which requires eight wheelchair pick ups says that six of those must be through the flight program and the other two i'm not sure how you prove. >> okay. but tell us how many pick ups has your client made before 2012. >> i'm not sure that he kept good track of it, to be honest. and i mean, i definitely have asked that question and i'm -- it's, like, well, you're on a busy shift, you're supposed to

record it on your waybills if you pick um a wheelchair, you're supposed to do a little w and write a circle next to it or something. that didn't always happen. my client is in an unfortunate position of not being able to necessarily prove the number of wheel chair pick ups that he made prior to that time. >> okay. >> mr. murray. >> commissioners there has always been a wheelchair pick up requirement. it has changed of 2012. we did institute one that said you have to have eight wheelchair pick ups per month and that's because we are now better able to track those pick ups and able to see what the companies

are doing. it used to be much more onerous. it used to be three pick ups per shift, but then we recognized that it was onerous for drivers we lowered it to three pick ups. and as the tracking became much more secure we've been able to say now with can realistically track the pick ups and we've determined that eight is a doing number amongst the industry. and that's because the eighty wheelchair pick ups, if your vehicle is traveling 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it's two wheelchairs a week is what that comes down to. and again, the whole point of the wheelchair accessible program is to /phraeuts priority on those customers. the revocation of that permit needs to stand because otherwise -- we already have a history

that's not important to this permit holder. we're saying we're going to reward it by saying it's not that important to us either. go ahead and keep the permit and do your best. that's not acceptable. it's no longer do your best. this is what we'd need to have done in this industry, in the city to protect our people and i don't think there's anything else i need to add related to that other than again, mr. oha is the color scheme holder and as far as transferring his permit, he's frankly the only color scheme permit holder that has ever, as far as i'm aware of, requested a transfer of their permit to another company without actually closing their current company because it's something that's kind of mo magnanimous saying i want someone else to hold my

business for me. it's something none of us have been able to wrap our heads around regarding why a person would do this so -- and i think with that, i'll leave it open for questions. >> mr. murray, one point that wasn't addressed in your brief was related to the punishment that would be inconsistent with that for others who have done the same thing. >> absolutely not. the punishment for, you know, non compliance of the wheelchair pick ups and received the citations month after month after month and then we've suspended the permit and we've been in front of this board related to the suspension of the permit and that particular person got their act together after they came in front of this board regarding that suspension. so we move these things forward as much as we possibly can and this is just behavior on

behalf of the owner. and that's the big thing for us here. >> i've got a question for you mr. murray. so no matter what the circumstances that the medallion holder wants to transfer, do you have law or legal standards on why you're denying the transfer as far as sfmta's concerned? >> it is -- i believe the statute does say subject to sfmta approval. when they transfer it's not that they just go somewhere and it's done. they have to submit information to us and we obtain information from the other company on how it's going to be operat