City Cab suggests small changes to Fortuna's ordinance for a sustainable taxicab business

Letter from Jaison Chand, City Cab's Chief Operating Officer to Fortuna City Council :

Mayor Sue Long, Council and Staff,

Thank you for the opportunity to present our situation at the workshop this morning.

We have had requests from hotels, bars, Autorama, the Fortuna Rodeo Association, and past Police Chiefs over the last 15 years about taxicab service in Fortuna. In response, we have on four previous occasions presented changes to the ordinance that would make operations feasible. Put simply, the current ordinance has too high of an administrative and operational burden for a company our size. A sustainable taxicab business in Fortuna is already tenuous. We need to make it easier to obtain and retain certification.

Council Member Strehl mentioned that the council had made changes to the ordinance in the past, but no taxi had shown up. I’m not sure which company or process drove those changes, but we were not engaged in the process, and our substantive requested changes were not adopted.

I have attached the ordinance along with the changes we would like to see, based upon the ordinance I received at today’s meeting. I mentioned all the substantive items this morning, and you’ll find some other small technical changes.

As always, I am happy to answer questions, and I would encourage the city to keep us involved if they are interested in having us in Fortuna.  If the City of Fortuna decides the changes are acceptable and adopts them, we will re-engage those businesses and associations and formulate a plan for coverage and marketing.

Mr. Chand spoke with me just now.

"There are a number of small things we've requested changes on, but the most substantive is that we've asked Fortuna to recognize reciprocity with Eureka in their driver permitting process. All of our drivers are fingerprinted, photographed, and go through a background investigation with the Eureka or Arcata Police Departments. We'd like to see Fortuna recognize those driver permits as valid and remove the annual recertification requirement. This wouldn't be a big deal if we had four or five drivers, or we expected a high volume of calls in Fortuna, but we have over 40 permitted drivers with new drivers hired all the time. It will take time to build Fortuna Taxi service to a sustainable level".

"We are unique among taxicab companies in that our drivers are all employees and they are paid an hourly wage, given health insurance, and a retirement program. Unlike most companies that lease taxis, we incur those costs whether a taxicab picks up 1 fare or 20. That makes it challenging to enter new markets, because it takes time to build the volume to pay for service."