**PLAY THE GAME OR BECOME THE GAME Part 2**

At the end of the year 2001 we hired a guy to help us on New Years Eve because I knew it was going to be really busy. The guy seemed to do OK so I kept using him and even let his wife drive so we could take a break from time to time. Several months after I hired this guy we had a falling out so he decided to start his own taxi service called Bert's Taxi. I believe this is when our troubles with the law began because the city decided they needed to regulate us by making sure certain requirements were being met such as commercial insurance, license, etc.

My cousin worked at city hall as the city inspectors secretary and she called me on the phone to tell me to come to her office to show my proof of the requirements to run a taxi service. When I got to her office I showed my proof of commercial insurance and my operators license from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. I asked her if the other taxi service had showed what they had yet and she said she was going to call them as soon as I left. I guess they didn't have anything at all to show her so they got shut down for the weekend. The following week they got what they needed on one van and submitted it to the city.

A few days later my cousin called me again to ask me how many vehicles we were using and she told me the city had received information that I was advertising three vans. I believe this can about because of the business cards we were using at the time and I had put on the cards that we had three vans in service. I told her that we were planning on starting up a third van and I would bring down the additional proof of insurance as soon as I purchased another van. The following week I went to Oklahoma City and bought a nice van and got it commercially insured because I was determined to be successful with this business. I submitted all the information and it seemed that we were good to go.

In the next few weeks we found out that the other taxi service was running up to a half a dozen vehicles and I was certain they weren't carrying commercial insurance on hardly any of them because the price was so steep. I called my cousin and she told me to come back to city hall to discuss this problem. When I got there she told me that the city manager said that I had to get affidavits signed by people using the cabs that weren't commercially insured and they had to have tag numbers and vehicle descriptions listed on the affidavits. I got several people to get a ride with them and I was shocked to find out that they only had to pay three dollars for a ride anywhere in town.

The two people that had gotten the rides volunteered to sign affidavits about a pickup and a car that were being used. I guess when I turned in the affidavits the city manager Guy Hylton must have changed his mind about enforcing his rules and my cousin said that he took it in front of the city council for a vote. She said that they voted not to enforce the policy that had already been placed on us and I was about as angry as I've ever been in my life. I can't believe that a little better planning hadn't been done before we were told that we had to comply with certain rules and to me its the same thing as somebody opening up a wrecker service next door to a legitimate wrecker company but not having to meet the same requirements as they do.

Quite a while after the ordeal over the commercial insurance happened the city decided to try to purchase the local electric system and the people of Elk City got to vote for or against the purchase. Lots of people were opposed to this purchase including me and many people were very outspoken against the take over. I thought the way the commercial insurance nightmare got handled was a pretty clear indication that the city leaders weren't very good at managing things and I felt like they shouldn't be allowed to control our power service. Just a few days before the vote to decide this took place I was joking around in front of some people in a bar about giving people a free ride to the polls to vote against the take over of the electric system and apparently some of the city managers friends were listening.

The vote was an overwhelming no and the city was defeated by the people so they didn't get what they had tried so hard to achieve. The day after the election my cousin called me and told me that the city manager had heard I gave people free rides to vote against their project. She wanted to know how many people I had given a free ride to and I thought it was some kind of joke. I told her that I didn't take one single person to the polls and all of a sudden I remembered joking around at the Oasis bar about giving the free rides. She told me that Hylton was very angry and I might be in trouble. What if I had given free rides to the polls to vote and how would I possibly be able to force the people to vote a certain way? I thought this was ridiculous for a city manager to behave in such a manner but I can't say that I was real surprised especially after I learned how he handled many other things over the years.