By Lookout Staff

The council last year adopted the franchise system to reduce the number of Downtown taxis to a maximum of 250. Santa Monica has 44 companies operating in the city with a total of more than 460 vehicles. Many people, including City officials, say this is too many, and it creates congestion, pollution from idle vehicles and other problems.

Thirteen companies applied for franchises, and City staff recommended five for a fleet of 50 cabs each following a lengthy evaluation process.

Prior to the meeting in June when the council was supposed to vote on the franchise selection, those associated with the non-recommended companies held a protest outside City Hall. The decision was delayed due to what City Manager Rod Gould said were technical procedural reasons.

Last month, the item was before the council to set the public hearing that will take place on Tuesday. At that meeting, the council heard from several people opposed to the selection process. Armenian activist attorney Nora Hovsepian alleged there was racial bias in the selection because none of the Armenian-owned companies that submitted applications were recommended for franchises.

“These companies felt they were shut out of the selection recommendations because the process lacked transparency and gave rise to suspicions of discrimination against Armenian-owned companies,” she told the council. “These suspicions of discrimination have yet to be alleviated despite numerous requests for disclosure to the City regarding the selection process.”

Hovsepian said after she and others made a public records request for information on the selection process, they only received a document that was “unintelligible to us.”

The staff report for Tuesday’s meeting, written by City finance head Carol Swindell, contains lots of information on the selection process. It also addresses the racial bias accusation.

“The race, ethnicity or nationality of owners, officers, members or other personnel of the taxicab companies was not a factor in the evaluation process and played no role whatsoever in the evaluation committee’s recommendations for taxicab franchises,” Swindell wrote.

She continued, “The evaluation committee was unaware of the specific race, ethnicity or nationality of individuals linked to specific taxicab companies until such race, ethnicity or nationality was pointed out by outside individuals and organizations subsequent to the evaluation process, and well after the publication of the taxicab companies recommended for an award of a franchise in the City.”

At last month’s meeting, council members received advice from Assistant City Attorney Joseph Lawrence on what the council could do at the selection meeting. They cannot approve franchises for those not on the staff-recommended list. If they want to approve another company, they must ask staff to review it and come back with more information at a later meeting.

Also, the council can alter the number of taxis awarded to each franchise, but cannot not allow more than 250 in total. To do that, the taxi franchise ordinance would have to be changed.