Transcripts and Minutes

Transript 102504.txt 1 1 2 3 4 Transcript of the Meeting of the 5 Taxi and Limousine Commission 6 Held on Monday, October 25, 2004 7 40 Rector Street - 5th Floor Hearing Room 8 Borough of Manhattan 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 TANKOOS REPORTING COMPANY, INC. 23 305 Madison Avenue 142 Willis Avenue Suite 405 P.O. BOX 347 24 New York, N.Y. 10017 Mineola, N.Y. 11501 (212)349-9692 (516)741-5235 25 Page 1 Transript 102504.txt 2 1 Meeting convened at 10:04 a.m. 2 P R E S E N T 3 MATTHEW W. DAUS Chairman 4 5 ELLIOT SANDER Commissioner 6 ALBERTO TORRES 7 Commissioner 8 IRIS WEINSHALL Commissioner 9 ELIAS AROUT 10 Commissioner 11 HARRY RUBINSTEIN Commissioner 12 NOACH DEAR 13 Commissioner 14 PETER MAZER General Counsel 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Page 2 Transript 102504.txt 3 1 CHAIRMAN DAUS: In the interests of time, 2 we're waiting for one more Commissioner, we're going to 3 start, jumping out of order on the agenda. 4 Good morning everyone, sorry to keep you 5 waiting, we'll try to be as expeditious as possible 6 moving this meeting along. We're going to the 7 Chairperson's report then back to the minutes. I want 8 to thank everyone who worked on the most recent 9 medallion sales over the last couple of weeks. We 10 concluded our corporate sale last Friday and the week 11 before the individual and the alternative fuel and 12 accessible sales. I want to thank Andy Salkin, who did 13 an excellent job of spearheading the second effort, as 14 well as Peter Mazer, our general counsel. They worked 15 together with a variety of staff around the clock to 16 make this an even more successful medallion sale than 17 the first go around. 18 Just for your information, for the record, 19 the first sale was held on October 15th, it was an 20 accessible and alternative fuel sale, a stand alone 21 sale, where 27 accessible medallions and 19 alternative 22 fuel medallions were auctioned off. This was a success 23 in our view, because the first time we tried to auction 24 off the accessible medallions nobody was able to win 25 them. Page 3 Transript 102504.txt 4 1 So we went back to the drawing board and 2 then to the Board of Commissioners who I believe enacted 3 some very sound policies and rules we created an 4 adequate incentive for the purchase of these vehicles by 5 taking the purchase price and separating it from the 6 other medallions, and also by putting in a lower minimum 7 upset price, which brought many more bids than we ever 8 anticipated. 9 So our goal is to get those vehicles on the 10 road. It's certainly not an answer to the problem, it 11 is a good start and it represents progress and I want to 12 thank also the industry, the brokers and the lenders and 13 everybody who helped in the private sector to help make 14 this a success, including getting the message out to 15 prospective bidders about the value and the merit and 16 the option of accessible and alternative fuel vehicles. 17 The vehicles that we did not -- medallions 18 that we did not sell for alternative fuels we're going 19 to hold over for the next sale. We got 89 valid 20 accessible bids, ten valid alternative fuel bids, which 21 were broken down by nine mini fleet and one individual. 22 Eight of those alternative fuel medallions will be held 23 over for a future sale. 24 The average sales price for an accessible 25 medallion was $275,730.85 and the high bid for the Page 4 Transript 102504.txt 5 1 accessibles was $347,000.01. The alternative fuel 2 medallions sold for an average of $220,742.59. The high 3 bid for the alternative fuel medallions being $225,111. 4 The individual medallion sale was held a few 5 days later on October 18th. The sale auctioned 116 6 individual owner-operator medallions and we received 288 7 valid bids. 8 Just for comparison's sake, the April 9 auction of this year, we had 126 for sale and there were 10 257, bids so we actually had more bids for the second 11 auction than the first one. The average bid for 12 individual medallions at the auction was $339,195.78. 13 The high bid for the individual owner-operators was 14 $360,000, which is an agency and a TLC record. 15 The corporate medallion sale for the mini 16 fleets sold in lots of two was held last Friday, the 17 22nd of October. Another successful auction, we 18 auctioned off 130 medallions. We had 229 valid bids. 19 We averaged a bid of $393,232.07. That's the 20 individual. You times that by two to get the mini fleet 21 price. The high bid was $407,551.26, which was another 22 all time industry record. So certainly I think the high 23 prices of the medallions represent a lot of factors. 24 You could debate what factor means most, obviously, the 25 interest rates, the recent fare increase are factors. Page 5 Transript 102504.txt 6 1 I think the overall City local economy 2 coming back and doing better is a factor and we're just 3 happy to have been a part of getting the information out 4 to the public and, again, I want to really thank the 5 staff, they did a tremendous job, and our Commissioners, 6 for having the vision and the foresight to make sound 7 policy to make this last sale a success. 8 On the service improvements, just a quick 9 update on what we've been doing. We had an industry 10 summit on October 14th and DCAS at 2 Washington Street. 11 The summit was really an extension of our request for 12 information. We received a lot of proposals in the 13 mail. We actually thought it would be a great idea to 14 pull everybody together, give them an opportunity to 15 meet each other, but present even more information to us 16 in a Q and A session where people can benefit from each 17 other's ideas and we learn more about what's out there. 18 I'm happy to say thanks to the efforts of 19 Andy Salkin and Ira Goldstein, and all their staff out 20 there; Tom Stiles, Chris Montgomery, it was a tremendous 21 success. We reached out to everyone in the world, as 22 many people as we could imagine, and they all showed up; 23 from big companies, small companies, giant technology 24 companies to small businesses that are startups. 25 It was really a tremendous day and we've Page 6 Transript 102504.txt 7 1 been partnering with other City agencies, not only DOT 2 under Commissioner Weinshall's leadership but under 3 Commissioner Gino Mancini's leadership, with the 4 Department of Information Technology and 5 Telecommunications also known as DoITT really played a 6 major role in guiding us and helping to understand the 7 technology and the summit itself. 8 The next step, after this point after having 9 over 70 vendors attend this event, is to actually now 10 compile this information, digest it and provide it to 11 our group of Commissioners, which consists of 12 Commissioners Torres, Dear, Rubinstein and Giannoulis 13 and they'll be making policy recommendations to the 14 Board and making recommendations to us. 15 I want to thank in particular Commissioners 16 Torres and Rubinstein for attending at various points 17 during that day. 18 In terms of, just quickly, I know a lot of 19 people in the medallion industry as well are asking 20 about the hotels and what we're doing and the street 21 hails. Well, we're doing quite well. The new class is 22 doing very well, our new class of inspectors that we 23 recently hired. 24 Just to give you some quick numbers, so you 25 can mark the progress of our street hail enforcement Page 7 Transript 102504.txt 8 1 initiatives. In fiscal year '02, for the entire fiscal 2 year we issued a total of 2587 summonses. In fiscal 3 year 2003 we issued a total of 3,550 summonses. In 4 fiscal year '04 to date, which is not over yet, we've 5 already issued 4,453 street hail summonses and climbing. 6 That represents a 72 percent enforcement increase from 7 2002 and a 25 percent increase thus far from '03, the 8 prior year. 9 So we are listening to the industry, to the 10 drivers and we're going to continue our efforts and if 11 you have any comments about how we can better do that, 12 where we can better go to enforce the law, please call 13 311 or contact our First Deputy, our Enforcement Deputy, 14 Joe Midolo, and we can take your recommendation and act 15 appropriately. 16 Last, but certainly not least, today is a 17 very big day for the TLC and our industry, all of our 18 industries, because we are beginning to look at and 19 hopefully do whatever we can to try to help out with the 20 insurance issue.

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