On Monday, the Oswego City Common Council passed, with a unanimous vote, the decision to hold a public hearing regarding new amendments made to the city’s taxi cab laws.
The proposed amendment to Chapter 228 on taxi cabs has been a work in progress for many years. At Monday’s meeting taxi cab driver Bob Mills, driver of Lone Wolf Taxi, said he was “110 percent” in favor of the changes and thanked the council and the mayor for keeping their word in fixing the law. Mills, who has driven a taxi for 35 years, worked closely with Councilman John Gosek on the changes.
Oswego Mayor Billy Barlow said “the city has an obligation to public safety,” one of two reasons the newly added amendments were so important. The other reason was to even the playing field among cab drivers.
According to Mills, illegitimate cab drivers have been a problem in the city for a while, often soliciting people in unmarked vehicles. Mills said this has even become a problem for college students, especially those who like to go out on the weekends. He said the vehicles pick people up in cars that are unlicensed and uninsured, leading to safety concerns. These unlicensed cabs were also taking away business from legitimate ones, Mills said.
Of the changes that made the biggest sticking point with the council and some taxi cab drivers was the section on good moral character. This section defines what determines someone to have good moral character using a negative standard. This means that a person must not be involved in the following activities: being convicted of murder, being convicted of an aggravated felony or other crimes which included things like fraud, sexual abuse and prostitution and they cannot be a “habitual ‘drunkard.’”
The standard does not mean that such person cannot get a license, but they would have a harder time, a decision left up solely to Oswego City Police Chief Tory DeCaire. The addition of the good moral character section is based on of Federal Immigration Laws.
The good moral character standard came about after some cab drivers wanted to make sure that drivers were reputable.
“We just had a local cab shut down based on that and the guy went to prison. His name is Maurice M. Mahoney, he owned Sonny’s Taxi,” Mills said. “He was popular with the people, kids, but he had that hidden agenda.”
Mahoney was found guilty in July of molesting a girl in 2002, when the victim was 6 years old. He is currently serving up to five years in Mohawk Correctional Facility.
Regarding the implementation of the new law, Mills said he hopes that when this is fully passed the city enforces it and it does not “collect dust.” He noted that it cannot just be the city that gets involved in the enforcement, but Oswego State as well.
“Some aspects of it is black and white and will be hard to enforce, but does need to be enforced,” Mills said. “It’s going to take more than the city, sooner or later the campus security is going to have to get involved in this too.”
Other changes to the law include cutting licensing fees in half, from $200 to $100. This means that a person can license their first taxi for $100 and then every other one after that is also $100.
The city of Oswego also changed the double inspection policy. It only requires drivers to have a New York State inspection. Before this, cab drivers had to also be inspected by the chief of police to ensure that the vehicles were clean, had a good appearance, were suitably painted and varnished. If they had not met any of those standards then they could be refused a license. Gosek said changing this saves time and money.
The last major change they made would hopefully be an incentive to get people to license their vehicles, Gosek said.
The other change the city made was to the fines for violating any portion of the law. Before the new amendments were proposed, there had been no set minimum for fines. Section 228-26 of the law states that “any person who has been convicted of a violation of any provision of this chapter for which no punishment has been specifically provided, shall, upon conviction, shall be punished by a fine of not less than $150 and not more than $500 or imprisonment for 15 days.”
DeCaire said while he believes the new amendments will incentivize people to get licenses, it does not give Oswego Police any more authority to pull taxi cabs drivers over without a reason. What they can do is investigate the activities of taxi cabs believed to be in violation of the law. DeCaire said even though they cannot pull people over, the law is helpful.
“I think it does add another layer of protection for the students, or the residents or whoever uses those taxis the help ensure they’re a legitimate taxi company, it’s a legitimate taxi operator,” DeCaire said.
The public hearing is scheduled to be held on Nov. 28 at 7:10 p.m. in the Council Chamber of City Hall located at 13 W. Oneida St.
