The St. John Taxi Services Association came up over the weekend with a "workable solution" to the ongoing strife between taxi drivers and private courtesy car operators over parking in the Cruz Bay dock area.
The solution, association secretary Carmen Wesselhoft said, is to keep things the way they were until a week or so ago.
That means St. John Accommodations Council courtesy car drivers will have to stay in the waiting lane at the head of the ferry dock unless they are lucky enough to find any of six 30-minute spaces unoccupied at the Battery end of the taxi stand.
Depending on the size of the vehicles, the stand has 26 to 28 parking spaces. According to a 1979 lease and a new one the Property and Procurement Department has pledged to put into effect, the taxi association controls them all.
At a taxi association meeting April 20, members voted to claim the six spaces that up to then had been available for public parking of up to 30 minutes. "From Monday through Friday, we will be utilizing the entire taxi stand from the space next to the handicapped parking to the Battery gate, including the six spaces now designated for public parking," Wesselhoft said then.
On Saturday and Sunday, however, the taxi drivers voted to let the six spaces revert to 30-minute public parking.
Wesselhoft said she hopes returning public access to the six spaces newly reserved for the taxis can free up the waiting lane that accumulates during peak visitor-arrival times at the head of the dock.
Although it's a return to the status quo, it's better than what transpired in the interim, Accommodations Council president Mary Hildebrand said Sunday night. "I'm glad those six spaces are going back to being public parking," she said. "The sign had come down, and we were a little concerned."
Ongoing conflicts between taxi drivers and courtesy car operators over parking in the immediate ferry dock area came to a head March 18 when an off-duty police officer stepped into a dispute. According to witnesses, the officer grabbed Caribbean Villas courtesy car driver Kelly Giggenbach by one breast, slammed her repeatedly against a parked vehicle in view of more than a hundred visitors and residents, and tried to choke off her screams.
After conducting an in-house investigation of the matter, St. John's top cop, Zone D commander Rene Garcia, recommended that a disciplinary hearing be held for that officer and another implicated in the case. The hearing is scheduled May 11.
Following the March 18 incident, representatives of the taxi drivers and the Accommodations Council were called to meetings aimed at settling their differences — successively by St. John administrator Julien Harley, Property and Procurement Commissioner Marc Biggs and Sen. Almando "Rocky" Liburd.
At the April 14 meeting with Biggs, taxi officials produced a 1979 lease signed by then-Gov. Juan F. Luis. The lease gave the association control over every parking space from the foot of the dock to the gate of the Battery, the St. John administrative headquarters.
Biggs agreed to renew the lease to the association for between $500 and $600 a year for the whole area. Property and Procurement apparently has not yet signed the lease.
"We were disappointed that Property and Procurement just gave the lease to the taxi association without, we felt, proper consideration of all the issues going on on St. John," Hildebrand said Sunday. "They didn't seem to consider the real activity that goes on at the dock.
"There are a lot of things they could have done. But Mr. Biggs told us before the April 14 meeting that they had been working in good faith with the V.I. Taxi Commission and were not going to change their minds for any frivolous reason."
On April 17, in Liburd's Cruz Bay office, the Accommodations Council presented a proposal for a block of the parking spaces to be reserved for council use.
Liburd said he told the villa managers that while the taxi association held a valid lease, there might be room for compromise. "I also said it wouldn't be fair for the Accommodations Council to control the spaces," he said, "because that would shut out other groups who could also claim the right to a dedicated parking space."
As Wesselhoft remembers the April 17 meeting, "the first thing they [the courtesy car operators] were asking for was six to 20 spaces."
Hildebrand recalls it differently: "We asked for six and at one point 14. I don't think we ever asked for more than half" of the 28 spaces.
At any rate, Wesselhoft said, "They tried to find a ‘workable solution.' Right now, the ‘workable solution' will be for the Accommodations Council drivers to park in the waiting lane — and they will have to stay near their cars to move them out as required."
It was a waiting lane confrontation that triggered the incident in which the off-duty police officer is alleged to have assaulted Giggenbach.
Wesselhoft said an agreement by courtesy car operators to stay close to their vehicles while awaiting the arrival of their passengers will eliminate the need for taxi drivers to go looking for those who leave their cars unattended in the waiting lane.
Hildebrand said the council won't press its concerns any further at present. "The next action that we can take is to prepare for next year," she said. "The lease is for only one year. All we can do is be prepared to talk about it at any opportunity."
