FEWER TAXI COUPONS WILL BE AVAILABLE

Residents who use Cape Girardeau's taxi coupon service will get one less round-trip a month under a cost-cutting measure.

The City Council voted Monday night to cut the maximum number of coupons sold to each household from 16 coupons to 14 monthly.

The council also agreed to use a pending report on mass transportation from the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission and other information to start looking for alternatives to the popular coupon program.

The decision to cut service wasn't an easy one, city officials indicated, especially since many people have asked the city to increase the coupon program.

But the only bid for the program, submitted by Kelley Transportation Co., came in $80,000 higher than last year, and the city had to find some way to trim costs.

The city received a $118,375 grant from the state for the program and has to match that grant dollar for dollar.

The city will increase its reimbursement to Kelley Transportation for each trip.

City staff had originally suggested either cutting service hours so that the coupon service would only be available from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., or cutting the number of coupons issued per month from 16 per household to 12.

Cutting service hours would have saved the city an estimated $42,000, said finance director John Richbourg, but Kelley Transportation hadn't approved the change in the contract.

Cutting the coupons back from 16 to 12 would save the city $32,000, but councilmen said 12 trips a month wouldn't meet clients' needs.

Cutting coupons to 14 a month will mean increasing the city's share of the program cost by $16,000 over the amount now budgeted.

"Surely we can find $16,000," said Councilman Jay Purcell, who suggested the compromise.

Maintaining service at its current level would have cost the city an additional $34,381.

The city will transfer the additional funds from a contingency fund to cover the extra cost.

A motion by Councilman Frank Stoffregen to increase the cost of the taxi coupons to residents by 5 percent, the maximum increase allowed without a public vote, failed for lack of a second.

Cost for disabled and elderly residents is $1 per coupon. Other residents pay $2 per coupon.

Stoffregen said the city should tighten the requirements on who can use the coupons, but Richbourg said the federal government requires that at least 15 percent of the coupons be made available to the general public.

Councilmen did agree to begin looking for other transportation sources. Kelley Transportation has been the only contractor to bid on the program since its inception in 1981.

The city had little choice but to approve the contract with Kelley Transportation, said Mayor Al Spradling III.

"Unfortunately, we don't have an alternative," Spradling said, pointing out that the city's bus service, which shut down in 1969, lost money.

"We have many people who need to get to the doctor. We have many people who need to get to the grocery store. We have people who need to go here, there and yonder," he said.

Eliminating the taxi coupon program entirely would be "a terrible disservice to the community," Spradling said.

"We can't just throw it out entirely," he said.