Good morning.

I want to thank everyone for coming out today.

We do everything that we can to start on time.

We have our presenters here today.

I welcome you to the meeting of the council's transportation and air and airport committee meeting.

We um meet once each quarter, but um also will meet as necessary.

I want to thank our presenters for being on time.

Um we don't have a quorum.

If one other member walks in, we'll officially call the meeting to order, but we can certainly go through the presentations verbally.

So at this time uh we have Ms.

Attorney Ashley Becknell, the executive counsel for the New Orleans City Council, um, she'll be presenting on for the members of the public, national trends and autonomous vehicle regulation, the legal landscape regarding for higher autonomous vehicles, ongoing Raymo testing in New Orleans, and potential legislation moving forward to protect citizens and ensure safety while accommodating growing technology.

Thank you, Attorney Becknell.

Um, so uh, Councilmember Green has asked me to present uh regarding Waymo, Robo Taxi, and Zooks.

Those are uh corporate names of the various four higher autonomous vehicles that are currently on the market.

Um, we know some of these have been seen in the city of New Orleans, especially Waymo, so we wanted to give everyone an update on what the city is doing in response.

Um, just a brief agenda of what we'll go through.

We're gonna have some background about what are autonomous for higher vehicles, what the federal regulations are, state and city regulations, Waymo testing in New Orleans, and the plans for city legislation.

So autonomous for higher vehicles are driverless vehicles that are available to provide rides to passengers in exchange for a fare.

Um that way they're similar to taxis and ride share.

Waymo is the most established company in the market, the one that most people are familiar with.

They are operated by Google, but Tesla and Amazon both have their own uh autonomous for higher vehicle options.

Tesla's is called RoboTaxi.

Amazon's is called Zooks.

The way that the federal government classifies autonomous vehicles is by levels of automation.

And many of these already exist in commercially available vehicles.

Level zero is just a momentary driver assistance.

It provides warnings and alerts or emergency safety interventions.

Level one is driver assistance.

That means that the driver is fully responsible for driving the vehicle, but the system provides continuous assistance with either acceleration and braking or searing.

Some of these the cruise controls available on vehicles operate this way.

Level two is termed additional driver assistance.

Driver is still fully responsible, but the system provides assistance on a continuous basis with both acceleration braking and steering.

This is what you generally see with a smart crews and in many vehicles that are on the market today.

And then we get into the higher levels of automation.

Level three is called conditional automation.

But a driver must be available to take over upon request.

This is how most of the quote unquote self-driving Teslas operate.

And then the highest levels of automation are levels four and five.

When it is engaged, the system drives and the people just ride in the car.

The system is fully responsible for driving tasks, and a human driver is not needed to operate the vehicle.

The main difference between level four and level five is that level four is limited to certain service areas, whereas level five operates on all conditions and all roadways.

Neither of these are available on today's vehicles for consumer purchase.

So autonomous for higher vehicles operate at a level four, and we'll come back to this slide, but I wanted to go ahead and put that piece of information out there.

So the national highway transit safety authority requires that the vehicles be tested by the companies that build them.

They must comply with federal motor vehicle safety standards, and the companies must certify that their vehicles are free of safety risks.

And these higher levels of automation, they are in testing, but they are not yet available for consumer purchase.

The NTHSA also operates an automated vehicle complaint form and a vehicle safety hotline for anyone who experiences any safety issues regarding these vehicles.

You can find this on their website, but we've also provided the link.

It's fairly easy to locate.

So as I've said, autonomous for hire vehicles like Waymo, and I will use Waymo sometimes as shorthand since that's the one that's appeared in the city of New Orleans, but this generally applies to all of these types of vehicles.

They operate at a level four.

There's no human driver necessary.

They are restricted to operating in specific mapped geographical areas, which is also known as geofencing or being geofenced.

Just a little bit about each company.

Waymo has manual controls, but they remain unused during passenger transit.

They may be operated remotely, however.

And the cars maintain a traditional seating layout.

Robo Taxi, which is the Tesla option, is the same.

Zooks has no manual controls and actually offers face-to-face seating for passengers.

So by far the most future forward option, at least from a visual standpoint.

As far as state and local regulations, the state of Louisiana regulates commercial autonomous vehicles, which are essentially large tractor trailers that are autonomous.

These types of autonomous vehicles are already present in Texas based on some based on some testimony at the legislature.

I think they said that they are regularly operating between DOTD and the Louisiana State Police.

The city regulations that are already in place focus on drivers.

We have regulations regarding CPNCs, which is short for certificates of public necessity and conveyance.

Those are traditional taxis.

We also have what we call TNCs, which is transit networks.

Those are ride shares such as Uber and Lyfts.

And here is just some city regulations that would be relevant to this sort of transit.

Driver includes every person in actual operation of a vehicle, whether as owner or agent.

And you can see that this would be somewhat problematic with a driverless vehicle since we require drivers.

And you can see that our laws really were enacted in a way that did not contemplate a driverless car.

It is unlawful for anyone to drive a vehicle regulated by our four hire vehicle laws without possessing a driver's permit.

The driver's permit has to submit photographs of the driver.

They have to have fingerprints, which would not apply if there was no driver for the vehicle or they were remotely operated.

Drivers have to wear photo identifications.

Again, just laws that didn't ever really contemplate the idea of a driverless vehicle being on the road.

Other states are a bit ahead of us.

These vehicles are already operating in many of them.

California has a fair amount of state regulations regarding these vehicles.

And I think that any legislation in the city of New Orleans will certainly be aware of these and use the parts of them that are working for our own legislation.

In California, police can cite autonomous vehicles for moving violations, what's termed a notice of A V noncompliance.

A B companies must respond to emergency calls from first responders within 30 seconds.

They must maintain an approved publicly posted first-responder interaction plan that details how officers can access vehicle overrides.

Emergency officials can use geofencing to prevent AVs from entering active emergency scenes.

There is a required minimum of $5 million in liability insurance coverage for these companies in California.

They have to engage in specific safety case testing, which is more fully laid out in California regulations.

They also have to maintain a two-way communication link between passengers and remote operators at all times in case something goes wrong while passengers in the vehicle.

And the state also maintains a public complaint portal for anyone experiencing issues with the vehicles.

Texas has some similar rules.

They require DMV authorization for the companies that are operating the vehicles.

The vehicles have to have recording devices and meet certain safety and failure requirements.

They have to have first-responder plans, and the state also maintains a public complaint portal.

Texas cities, however, are preempted by state law from regulating autonomous vehicles, so there's no city-specific laws in the state of Texas.

This is also true in Tennessee, where Waymo's operate in Nashville, and in Florida, where they operate in Orlando and Miami.

The cities that have regulated Waymo so far and companies like Waymo have tend to prevent them from operating.

New York City allowed these vehicles to operate under what was called a pilot testing permit.

However, this permit expired in March of 2026 and was not renewed, so these vehicles cannot currently operate in New York City.

For them to be on the roads, a human operator must be seated behind the wheel, capable of taking control of the vehicle at any time.

And New York taxi requirements prohibit the for hire use of these vehicles at this time.

Boston also has fought against laws that would allow Waymo and vehicles like it.

In order for them to operate in Boston, Massachusetts state law would have to be changed to allow AVs, and the Boston City Council has advocated against that.

So Waymo is currently testing vehicles in New Orleans.

I know many of you have received calls from constituents who've seen them on the roads.

I've personally seen them on the roads.

From what they've told us, they are testing around 12 vehicles here, and these should have drivers in all vehicles.

They're planning to transition to autonomous tests later in 2026, but any for hire service would not begin until the testing is fully completed.

And we've been in contact with them to better understand their plans and the landscape from their perspective.

So, to the extent that we are looking at city legislation, our main goals would be to ensure that adequate safety controls exist to protect passengers and other citizens using the public right-of-way.

This means both clear rules for the treatment of passengers to ensure their safety, but also guardrails regarding liability towards other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians who also use these same streets, and protocols for public safety interactions so that NOPD and our other first responders can interact with these vehicles in appropriate ways.

We would also work towards parity and fees among all the different types of Ford-Hire vehicles to the extent that we can.

This is a loose timeline.

I will start by saying please don't hold us to it.

It's just to give an idea of how this will likely work.

But I think that there's certainly room for change here.

So quarter one of this year involved conversations among city stakeholders.

We've had conversations specifically with the ground transportation bureau and some of the council offices regarding autonomous for hire vehicles.

As we've moved into quarter two, we've started having conversations with industry stakeholders.

We're also having this discussion here at Transportation Committee.

Ordnance drafting would not likely occur until Q3 and introduction and not until Q3.

From what we've been told, we don't believe that Waymo will begin autonomous testing until late Q3 or early Q4.

And assuming that the city has adopted the ordinance by that time, we would be also working with the mayor's administration to implement the ordinance to make sure that the ground transportation bureau or whatever city agency is in charge of regulating these vehicles has what they need to implement the legislation.

And that also goes for NOPD and other first responders.

And so as a result, we don't anticipate licensed for hire autonomous vehicle rides being available to citizens before 2027.

There's just a lot of work that needs to be done on our end to create the infrastructure for these to operate safely within the city.

And that is the end of my presentation, but I'm happy to take questions if the members have any.

Thank you, attorney Becknell.

Councilmember Harris.

Yeah, thank you, Ashley, for this update.

So I have some questions about preemption.

Sure.

Are the same state preemption issues that occur in, I think you said Texas applicable here?

Meaning, do we need would Waymo or these companies need uh state changes in law in order to operate in New Orleans?

I don't believe they would.

There's nothing that would prohibit them from operating from what we've been told by DOTD.

Um they are obviously the arbiter of the interpretation of their own laws, and so they have passed specific laws to both allow and regulate the commercial vehicles, and in our conversations with DOTD on this issue, they've said that they're interested to see where we go with this and paying a close eye, but certainly not planning to stand in our way and available to help us however they can.

Okay.

Are these operating or testing in any other city in Louisiana?

Not to my knowledge.

Okay.

Have we looked at um cities like Pittsburgh, who I know, Pittsburgh, uh, Phoenix, have Waymo.

I've looked at Phoenix.

I have not looked at Pittsburgh.

Um, Phoenix does not have specific city law, but the state of Arizona does have fairly uh permissive laws regarding A V operations, and so my understanding is that's one of the more permissive environments where these operate.

So we obviously have a lot of construction happening, especially in district B.

We were just at a site visit and had to traverse various road blockages.

Do we know or have any indication from these companies how they are dealing with these road closures that often happen in the city?

I don't have detailed information on that, but that is a question that we've asked them, and we anticipate getting more information.

The main thing that they've told us so far is uh the the purpose of these driver tests that they're currently doing is to gather data about the state of our roadways.

I know one of the specific metrics they mentioned to us is that they're creating a detailed map of potholes that they will share with the city.

I'm sure that will be voluminous, but uh they are working to gather that data, but we need a lot more information about what that looks like, how they implement that in practice, because it's also, as we all know, something that changes frequently.

You might an intersection might look one way one day and the next day have a completely different configuration due to construction due to a traffic light being out, and those are some concerns that we are very much uh keeping front of mind as we move forward.

I know you talked about protecting pedestrians, bicyclists, other uh automobiles.

One of the big issues that happened in San Francisco was a Waymo accidentally hit a cat and killed it, and there was a big outcry about these vehicles operating.

So I would hope that any legislation or ordinance that we have also takes into consideration our four-legged friends.

Absolutely, as a cat owner myself, I uh very, very aware of that issue.

I know there's also been issues with pedestrians being strick struck by these vehicles, and so safety is the number one concern.

Yeah, I just again I as we work with the knee administration to get in better traffic light, better street signs.

I just have a concern that we're not going to be up in ready as a city for autonomous vehicles in 2027 as far as our infrastructure.

And I think that that may well be true, which is why I wanted to be make it clear that this is a loose timeline.

I don't think that there's any interest in releasing these until we're ready and we believe that they can be done safely.

Um certainly as a lawyer, I'm not immune to the liability issues that are presented by these, many of which are novel, as I'm sure you're not as well.

Um I don't make policy, obviously that's the job of the council.

But my my guess is that that would be a very, very significant policy priority for any of the members who would be reviewing draft legislation on this topic.

All right, thank you, Ashley.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Councilmember Harris, for those questions.

And sometimes the presentation and the questions that are asked put us in a position where I can say I don't have much more to offer.

I do appreciate the presentation.

I do want to tell the members of the public that you can find this presentation that you saw, those who are watching and those who are present, you can find them by simply doing a search of New Orleans City Council-meetings, go to this transportation meeting and go to the particular link, and it'll give you access to this.

This presentation, Attorney Becknell, I'm greatly appreciative of.

Thank you.

I'm happy to help.

It helps answer a lot of questions, and I think that it puts the public's mind at ease relative to the fact that there is testing going on, there is consideration of safety factors.

We recognize the challenges in our city.

We're looking to see what is happening in other cities before we move forward, and we're not looking at something that's going to have a hundred way more vehicles or you know, these type vehicles autonomous for higher vehicles on the streets within the next few months.

We're talking a loose timeline of 2027.

Um, maybe let's say at the earliest, it could go a little bit later.

Our primary concern is going to be public safety while we investigate and embrace technology as it can help all of our citizens.

There are some benefits, for example, people who can't get out of their homes.

You can, you know, vehicles delivering medicines and delivering groceries and products like that.

Um is something that can help our community, but nothing will be undertaken without sufficient analysis.

As you've seen already, we're doing some of that work, we're moving in the right direction in that respect, and I greatly appreciate the presentation and thank you for your questions, Councilmember Harris.

I have no cards, so at this time, I thank you, Attorney Becknow.

Thank you, Council members.

I'm going to um go a little bit out of order and go to item number five, which is the discussion of the regional transit authority structural changes and other general updates.

It includes Ronald Batiste, who is the RTA's chief interim chief and interim chief executive officer.

Andrew Plessis, who is the permanent there is a typo in our agenda.

She is the board chair of the regional transit authority, and Eric Wright, who is the regional transit authority attorney.

Yeah, it's a as Andy Plessis sits um in her seat.

I just want to tell the members of the public um that I know Andrew Plessis, but I want to say publicly, we appreciate the fact that whenever the city or public entities call on you for assistance, that you're there.

You've taken on a quite a challenge in terms of chairing this particular board, but it's a challenge that you're used to.

As a state senator, as the vice president of the nation's largest black bank as the um someone who is integral in making the New Orleans East hospital happen, and in other capacities, you've served our city well.

This is a challenge, but you're up to the challenge.

Thank you very much for your willingness to serve.

I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, Chairman Green and Council Lady Harris.

You know, this is an opportunity to create change.

As you indicated, I am Ann Deplessis, Chair of the RTA Board of Commissioners.

With me today, I have Ronald Keys, our interim chief executive officer, and Eric Wright counsel to the board.

The new board came into service in a very important moment for the RTA.

There was clear need to strengthen governance, restore public confidence, stabilize leadership, and refocus the agency on its core mission, providing safe, reliable, accessible, and efficient public transportation for the people of New Orleans and the broader region.

Shortly after the new board was seeded, the board became aware of a serious governance issue involving an amendment or an extension to former CEO Lona Edwin Edwards Hawkins Hankins employment contract.

The board's understanding was that the extension had not been approved by the full prior board in the manner that such a significant executive contract action should have been approved.

After review and consultation with council, the board took action to address that issue.

The board authorized negotiations regarding a separation.

The proposal presented by former CEO Hankins' counsel was not acceptable to the board and was not in the best interests of the RTA, its writers, employees, or the public.

Ultimately, Ms.

Hankins submitted her resignation and the board accepted it.

The board then moved immediately to ensure continuity of operations.

Ronald Batiste, a longtime RTA executive with deep institutional knowledge of the agency, was appointed to serve as interim CEO.

His role is to help maintain stability, support employees, continue day-to-day operations, and assist the board as we move through this transition.

At the same time, the board began the process of identifying a national search firm to assist with the selection of the next permanent CEO.

The board has identified KL2 Connects to handle the national search process.

Our goal is to conduct a professional, transparent, and thoughtful search for a leader who understands transit operations, financial accountability, workforce relations, customer service, infrastructure, and the importance of regional partnerships.

The board also engaged the Louisiana legislative auditor to conduct an extensive forensic review of the agency.

That review is expected to include financial matters, operations, systems, internal controls, and overall agency practices.

I want to be clear, this is not about politics or personalities.

It is about establishing facts, strengthening controls, protecting public resources, and making sure the RTA is positioned to operate at the level our citizens deserve.

While these governance and leadership matters are important, the board is also focused on the people who depend on RTA every day.

We are actively engaging with the community, union representatives, employees, riders, and other stakeholders.

The goal is to create a more efficient organization and to improve the rider experience, our workforce, and to make a better use of public dollars.

And our larger vision is to help build a world-class transportation system that is truly regional.

Public transit should connect people to jobs, education, health care, and opportunities, and neighborhoods across this region.

To get there, we must rebuild trust and improve reliability, strengthen financial and operational discipline, work collaboratively with the city council, the mayor's administration, neighboring jurisdictions, employees, riders, and community partners.

We are still early in this process, but the board is moving with urgency and purpose.

We are committed to transparency, accountability, stability, and service improvement.

We look forward to keeping this committee informed as the audit process, leadership search, and operational review moves forward.

So thank you, Mr.

Chairman and Council Lady, and uh I appreciate this partnership.

And we if you have any questions, I'd be happy to, we would be happy to answer.

Thank you very much for your presentation for being here today, too.

Councilmember Harris.

I don't know if you uh can publicly address what happened this past weekend with in my district with the um the incident involving uh the bicyclists and an RTA bus.

It happened around midnight.

Can you shed any insight into what happened?

If I if I may, council lady, I'd like, and we won't get to that.

I'd like for uh Ron to just introduce himself so he can give you just a little overview of of you know um how he's going to work with us, and then we'll turn it over to our council and they can address that.

Got it, thank you.

Thank you.

Uh good morning, Mr.

Chair and Council Lady Harris, uh Ron Baptiste.

Um, been present in here many times over the years, so it's good to be back.

Uh uh since my appointment, I've been working toward ensuring uh continuity in operations, maintaining organizational stability, and uh supporting the delivery of safe, reliable, accessible transit service.

Uh, with full support of the new board.

Uh we have been looking inward at some of our processes in the short period of time, meeting with my executive peers, analyzing the day-to-day operation and to the extent possible, making improvements.

So I will continue to do that during this uh period of transition and we will respond as expediently as possible to anything that we see needs to be um modified.

And thanks for having me here today.

Thank you for being here.

Good morning, Chairman Green and Councilman Harris, um, Eric Wright, general counsel uh for the RTA.

And to start by addressing your question, uh Councilman Harris.

We're fully cooperating with the NLPD, who's conducting an investigation uh with respect to that fatality on Sunday.

We're also we also have launched an internal investigation within the RTA that's ongoing, so we can't really comment any further, but we can tell you that we are fully cooperating with the NOPD and we are uh having an internal investigation.

And once we have some uh results from that investigation, we will share with the committee.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh so I'm here today just to discuss um our litigation management uh since we took over uh litigation uh in 2025.

Um this report is for the year 2025, and 2025 has been a transformative year for the RTA's litigation management program.

Upon appointment as general counsel, we've undertaken an immediate and thorough assessment of RTA's litigation portfolio, engaging claims administrators, defense panel counsel, the excess carrier, and a whole key stakeholders to establish a clear baseline and institute meaningful reform as far as the litigation.

What we inherited was a litigation philosophy built on delay.

What we leave behind at the close of 2025 is a program defined by accountability, proactive case resolution, accurate reserving, and financial stewardship through strengthened oversight, enhanced communication protocols, and hands-on case management.

We have achieved measurable improvements across every key performance indicator.

Upon appointment, we immediately initiated outreach to gain a comprehensive understanding of the RTA's active litigation docket.

Our approach was proactive.

We sought out direct engagement with defense panel counsel, the claims administration team, excess care, and all parties integral to mounting an effective defense on behalf of the authority.

Despite this friction, we remain committed to building constructive working relationships and gaining full visibility into the portfolio.

Some of the things we found that delay was being used as a strategy, kind of preventing litigation and just kind of waiting it out.

We've been uh more aggressive with getting these cases moved.

Um, we formulated uh settlement uh authority process uh where cases are settled uh or we get approval on settlement prior to uh mediations in trials to be more efficient in that respect.

Um we've gotten up on the billing backlogs and payment delays to counsel.

Um the reserves uh that are reported on each case had not been updated, which reflect um basically cause higher insurance premiums.

So we've gotten on top of that with basically uh updating all of those reserves.

Uh there was an influx of settled cases that had not been dismissed, which backlogged a lot of the courts' document docket.

We've cleaned that up.

Um we have uh some trial results.

There were two trials last year.

Um trials had not been moving prior to 2025.

Um we've got a couple of verdicts, uh, one for 158,697 dollars on a case where a lot more was asked by the uh plaintiff's counsel.

Also, we got a case settled on the first date of trial for 1.4 million that had a significant uh uh demand that was asked in that case, and we were able to clean that up.

Overall, there were a total of 77 new suits that came in, and we settled over 77, over 100 percent of the amount of cases that came in.

So the docket is currently moving.

Um, and just going uh into uh the year, the cases that resolved some of the key cases, there were over 32 million dollars demanded between those key cases, and we resolved those cases for $8,887, which is basically 23 million below what was asked in these cases.

So we've brought judicial efficiency uh to the legal litigation management, and we plan on doing so moving forward.

Um, thank you all.

And if you have any questions, I can address any further questions that you have.

Thank you all, all three for your presentation.

Councilmember Harris, do you have any questions?

I'm just impressed that uh there's a 30-year-old case that's still there.

Well, that that third, I didn't mention that.

That's a there was a 30-year-old case that we found that was um the reserve on it uh was pretty significant.

Uh it was five million dollars.

Um, we that's one of the first cases we targeted, and we worked vigorously to get that case resolved for $84,000.

That's amazing.

Yeah, you can't even find witnesses after 30 years.

No, yeah.

There were there's a lot more legal fees that have been spent on that case in 30.

And judicial interests and all the other things.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I just want to add that uh Eric was my court coach at the CA law.

We knew she'd be a great trial lawyer.

In the spirit of New Orleans, we're all connected some way or the other, you know.

So I appreciate it.

I do have a card, but it's on the next matter, so we'll address that matter.

But I just want to thank you.

Your presentation, the I think you've made members of the public feel confident that the regional transit authority, such an important agency, is right now in good hands in terms of the leadership, the board leadership and the interim CEO, and thank you for your presentation too.

That was good information to share.

It also can be contacted by simply researching and Googling, if you will, um, doing some research on Regional Transit Authority.

Send your questions in.

And I know right now, based on the three people who I see there, your question is going to be answered.

You will get a response.

So that's important.

And as we move forward, it's important to recognize that the regional transit authority plays a tremendous job in our city's social and economic well-being.

It needs to be an agency that is operated with efficiency and also in a deliberate manner to deliver services to our citizens.

Thank you for your commitment right now.

And as a transportation chair, certainly call on me at any time.

Let me know what I need to know.

The Transportation Committee and the Council is ready to move forward in this important agency.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Councilmember Harris, the third item on the agenda, which is item four, and we just went out of order.

We're not going to be able to vote on, but I want to give some background information so that members of the public and the council understand from witness from whence this um proposed ordinance comes.

The ordinance calendar number 35 471 authorizes a temporary, and I want to emphasize the word temporary, one dollar gas surcharge on completed taxi cab and trips through December 31st of 2027.

31st, 2027, December.

The purpose of this measure is to help offset the continued increase in fuel costs that everyone has seen that our drivers and operators have experienced.

This is not intended to be a permanent change.

Rather, it is a temporary measure that will provide relief while allowing the city to monitor economic conditions and the impact of these increases on both drivers and passengers.

Very important, the Department of Public Works and the Ground Transportation Bureau.

At the expiration of the surcharge, I wish to emphasize that there will be an expiration of this surcharge, December 31st, 2027.

The City Council will have the opportunity to reevaluate conditions and determine whether any further action, including consideration of a permanent fare adjustment, is warranted.

So what will happen, members of the public, is that it will not be voted out of committee, but there will appear on the city council's agenda for next week an item number 35471.

You can comment on that item.

Your comments will be welcome.

You can attend the meeting and comment up to two minutes for anyone who wishes to make a comment, but I just want to emphasize again the temporary nature, the support of the Department of Public Works and the Ground Transportation Bureau.

We do have one comment card from Mr.

Shazad Ahmad, who is in support.

Do you wish to comment?

Come forward.

You have two minutes at the microphone.

I would love to have it on.

Thank you for the opportunity, sir.

I just uh, as you said, it's it's impacting our industry.

Uh the fuels uh fuel cost uh pretty much, you know, uh since the fuel went up since March.

But one more thing I want to see, you said uh this temporary surcharge, but if there is a possibility we can do something like put a cap on a gas price, like you know, uh uh maybe like above three dollars somewhere.

Whenever the gas goes there, there's this charge automatically got implemented, you know.

Instead of we have waited like three and a half or four months uh to get over here today, and that's the old four months, you know.

It's like our drivers are suffering from this.

That would be it, so well your general question.

I'd have to speak to you specifically.

I can't imagine how the city would be able to say anything above a certain price because gas prices are so volatile.

For example, we're having strikes going on right now in the Strait of Homoes, which are raising prices on gas.

I don't know if it's five dollars a gallon now, it could be seven dollars a gallon.

Those conditional and transitory changes are hard for the city council to be able to say that we would regulate that.

But I need to be careful with my wording.

I'm willing to consider everything that is presented.

Um this council deliberates, and we have persons who take into account public matters, but I want you to think through what you asked and know how difficult it would be for me to say that anything above a certain price per gallon for gas is something that the city council can cover.

Definitely I agree with you, and we will make uh uh written plan and submit it to you guys uh to look at it.

You know what I'm talking about.

It was a general question, you know that uh I asked you, you know, so some sort of a bad kind of a stuff, you know.

Uh uh I want to be open-minded, as I said.

I want you to put it in writing, recognizing that um we are open to all considerations, but I can't comment except to tell you the difficulty based on what you suggested just now.

All right.

That's your two minutes, however, I was talking.

So if you wouldn't mind turning the back the mic back on for one more minute, yeah, go ahead.

I think uh as you know, the cab industry haven't got any raise uh in their affairs from since like 2012.

I think that uh I believe uh might be uh a year or two off, but I think from then we haven't got an increase on that.

We will uh put a plan together and put it to you in front of you guys also for that one so you can uh uh look at that.

I appreciate it.

We're open to any considerations.

You know that we'll be paid attention to.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

All righty.

All right, thanks.

I'd like to take a 30-second break before we adjourn.

Members of the public who are watching and who are present, if you will bear with us for five more minutes, I would like to vote on the matter calendar 35-471 and also vote on the minutes so our meeting can be complete, and if we receive a unanimous vote, then the discussion the 35-471 would be on the city council's consent agenda, still subject to whatever public comment you may have.

Please bear with us for five more minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Willard.

How are you doing?

Yes.

Okay, a real call.

Yeah, we here to have a quorum.

Councilmember Green.

Present, Councilmember Willard, Councilmember Harris, Councilmember King, Councilmember Hughes.

We have three members, we have a quorum.

Thank you very much.

May I entertain a motion to um approve the minutes from the April 2nd meeting?

Moved.

Councilmember Willard moves and seconded by Council Member Harris.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

So the amendments have been approved from the April 2nd meeting.

Councilmember Willard, I just want to re-emphasize a couple of points relative to calendar ordinance calendar number 35471.

The ordinance authorizes a temporary, I emphasize temporary $1 gasoline surcharge on completed taxicab and trips through December 31st, 2027.

The purpose of this measure is to help offset the continued increase in fuel costs that the drivers and operators have experienced.

It's not intended to be a permanent change.

It's a temporary measure that will provide relief while allowing the city to monitor economic conditions and the impact on both drivers and passengers.

And our office has received feedback from taxicab operators.

We also have received support very important from the Department of Public Works and the Ground Transportation Bureau.

And at the expiration of the surcharge, the city council would have the opportunity to reevaluate conditions and determine whether any further action, including consideration of a permanent fair adjustment, was warranted.

So at this time, if there are no questions from council members, I move for approval of calendar number 35471.

Second.

Seconded by Councilmember Willard.

Members, please just say aye.

Aye.

I see yes on here.

And um thank you very much.

I want to emphasize to the I would like to request that it be on the consent agenda as we proceed the unanimous support.

And I'd like to emphasize to the public that if you wish to comment on matters involving the city council, you can do research into New Orleans City Council-meetings.

You'll find this agenda, you'll find this item, and you can comment.

Thank you.

If there's no matters to be brought before the body, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

All right, it's probably moved and seconded.

There being no objections, this meeting is adjourned.

Again, thank you, presenters for being present, and thank you, council members, for joining us today.

I'll take the comment card.

Thanks.