City council rejected the request of the special needs advisory committee for a surcharge onto the new proposed taxi and ridesharing bylaws.

The surcharges, which would have been on every ride in the city, would have gone to provide incentives for future accessible vehicles or future purchases of such vehicles.

One of six to vote against the bylaw, Coun. Brian Swanson said that any surcharges would have been swallowed up by administration. He used an example of a seven cent surcharge on taxi rides in the city.

“Say there’s a 1,000 such rides a day in the city of Moose Jaw,” said Swanson. “I don’t know if that’s high or low... That would yield $70 a day. I can assure you that the bureaucracy created at City Hall to oversee such a program will swallow that up plus much more.”

The honourable intentions of the surcharge would not be realized, Swanson said

“We will create more jobs and will create more oversight and we will create collection mechanisms and we will need to buy software.”

Swanson said eventually, there would be more spent than received.

“For city hall to get into it, we’re just expanding the scope of city hall into areas that we probably shouldn’t be, at great expense, and not really solving the problem,” said Swanson.

The request was defeated, with only special needs committee member Coun. Scott McMann voting in favour.

Without the special needs amendments, council will look into the new taxi and ridesharing bylaws at a future council meeting.