New city ordinance will regulate taxis

WASILLA — Taxicabs operating in the city of Wasilla will now need to get a license from the city, according to an ordinance the city council passed Monday.

And, actually, the bigger taxicab companies in the city couldn’t be happier. Corky Hedrick, owner of Alaska Cab, said that she definitely wanted to see the regulations pass.

“The reason I would like to see that is that we have so many rogue companies out there that have one taxicab, probably no insurance and I know one of them is probably a druggie and the reason I know is that he used to drive for me and the reason that he doesn’t is that I sent him to get a drug test,” Hedrick told the city council.

The changes require that the cab get a city license, which requires a background check for the driver, requires that the cab carry commercial insurance, and requires that major accidents be reported to the police.

Roger Erdman, owner of A Cab also wanted to see regulations pass.

“I’m not big on regulations but I also don’t like to be liable as a taxpayer if somebody is in an accident that isn’t covered,” he said, later noting that a person injured in a taxi crash might go after the city rather than a fly-by-night operator that doesn’t have any money.

Erdman also pointed out that taxis are regulated almost everywhere else in the country so it’s reasonable for a person to assume they’re regulated in Wasilla and not think to be wary of a cab operator.

“I think that people need to know that they are riding with someone who is a safe person,” Erdman said.

Mayor Verne Rupright said that the idea was to get taxi companies to get city business licenses and to pay sales taxes, “like any other legitimate business in the city” but also to make sure they’re operated safely.

He said that, really, the need or the ordinance popped up relatively recently with the proliferation of what he called “small, gypsy-cab operators” in the city.

“This is really not a broad sweeping ordinance whatsoever, it’s a matter of being able to deal with the gypsy cab issues, to make sure that you have reputable drivers, not potential rapists,” Rupright said.

City police chief Gene Belden said that once the ordinance was in place his officers would work to make sure cab companies were complying.

“Once it’s established then we can pretty much ride herd on the (ones who don’t comply), tell them to take their business elsewhere,” Belden said.

City attorney Richard Payne said that the ordinance was purposely written to be looser than other municipalities.

“This was stolen, borrowed, plagiarized from the city of Anchorage but when the mayor asked me to do it he said, ‘pull it way back,’” Payne said of the ordinance. “In Anchorage they’re almost like alcohol permits, they’re costly to maintain, costly to have.”

Rupright said the last thing he wanted to do was close up the market, create a system like the famous taxi medallions attached to the hoods of New York City taxicabs.

‘We didn’t want to create a medallion system where a cab license was worth a million bucks when they went to sell it. It’s still a free market,” Rupright said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.