Uber dead-ends in Pasco. Petition, city council could change that

David McClain works four days a week as a reactor operator at Energy Northwest.

When he’s officially off the clock after a 10-hour shift and in his car heading home, he turns on his Uber Driver app.

“It’s on and I’m ready to go, and if I get requests then I take requests,” he said.

His goal is to head toward Kennewick and be home to his wife and two daughters by 7 p.m.

But as he sees it, if he can get a few extra bucks for a drive he already is making and help someone else get home, then what’s another half-hour to hour on his work day.

McClain has been driving for Uber since January, and hates seeing half his time and resources wasted when he takes a customer to Pasco but can’t pick up a new passenger until he leaves the city limits.

Last week, he started a Change.org petition with the Uber Tri-Cities Facebook group asking Pasco to reconsider its fingerprint requirement for drivers of both taxis and transportation network companies, like Uber and Lyft.

Uber’s driver background checks do not include fingerprinting, and the San Francisco company has called that a deal-breaker in working with a city.

So while drivers with the smartphone-based car service can get passengers anywhere else in the Tri-Cities, they only can drop them off in Pasco.

That means people have to reach out to another ride-hailing service licensed in the jurisdiction.

However, McClain’s petition — which had 450 signatures as of Saturday afternoon — might be moot, since Councilman Al Yenney already asked to revisit the topic.

It is on Monday’s workshop agenda for the Pasco City Council, which meets at 7 p.m. at city hall, 525 N. Third Ave.

Yenney is the councilman who proposed the fingerprint ordinance in April that passed 4-3. It was the fifth time the issue was debated in just over three months.

‘Couldn’t get out of the damn airport’

At the time, Yenney recognized that the service would benefit Pasco, but said city officials needed to “have a little control over the drivers.”

In the seven months since that vote, Yenney said he has received a large number of complaints from residents, business people and his fellow Pasco Kiwanians about the Uber void.

Additionally, Yenney thought other transportation network companies that are OK with fingerprinting would be interested, but none have come forward.

“It’s just one of them things; you’ve kind of got to keep up with the times,” he said. “I’ve thought about it quite a bit, and fingerprinting isn’t a for-sure deal either. … There’s a lot of things we can legislate (as council members), but people have to make their own choice on what they’re going to do.”

Yenney told the Herald that Pasco is trying to be business-friendly, but isn’t taking advantage of some opportunities that people are accustomed to finding in other cities.

He talked about a friend who is a regional manager for a local chemical company and recently had 21 facility managers travel to the Tri-Cities.

“They couldn’t get out of the damn airport,” Yenney said. “They got into town and he forgot to tell them, ‘Hey, we don’t have (Uber) here.’ ”

A councilman for 10 years, Yenney lost his re-election bid earlier this month.

He said he hopes a revised ordinance will pass before he leaves office next month, and believes the council has enough “yes” votes if Councilmen Saul Martinez, Bob Hoffmann and Chi Flores still are in favor of having the rideshare service in town.

Pasco Police Chief Bob Metzger earlier this year said that because his signature will go on the business license, he wants to be able to ensure passengers are getting into a car with a driver whose identity and background is verified by police.

Kennewick and Richland did not include the fingerprint clause in their ordinances passed last year.

Yenney said that if Pasco is going to drop the fingerprint requirement for some for-hire drivers, then they should do it for all, including taxi drivers.

He added that he does not like going against the chief, but it’s time to relax the requirements so citizens can benefit from all transportation network companies.

‘Fingerprint or not, this is not safe’

Westin Mick of Pasco says it was narrow-minded of council members earlier this year not to remove the requirement.

“Fingerprinting does not tell me what a person’s criminal activities were, here or in their country of origin. It just tells me they have not been caught,” he wrote in a lengthy email to all board members.

Mick is the general manager of TiLite, a custom manual wheelchair manufacturer based in Pasco.

He said they fly people in weekly from across the globe, but end up lodging them in the other cities so they can use Uber during the evenings.

In his own travels around the country, Mick said he’s met a college student, a young mother and a retired school teacher — all who enjoyed the money and the flexibility of being a driver.

It also gives the general public “a surge of available options during the peak hours,” Mick said.

He noted how he’s tried to get taxi service from his home a number of times and either had long waits or no availability in his area.

After one taxi ride to a south Richland winery, Mick said he had to wait about eight minutes while the driver wrote down all his credit card information and then called it in to be processed.

“Fingerprint or not, this is not safe,” he said, adding that he then took Uber home and never had to exchange card information with the driver.

‘I feel like it’s my true calling’

There are easily 150 to 200 registered Uber drivers in the Tri-Cities, if not double that number, McClain said.

He gets behind the wheel of his “non-fuel efficient” Ford F-150 about 20 hours a week for Uber, doing the majority of that driving on Thursday and Saturday nights.

He tries to have “a good balance of work and home and Ubering,” but this last week got a pass to drive as much as he wanted as a birthday gift from his wife.

“It’s like it is my true calling. I feel like I’m providing people with a good service and I feel like I can do it well,” said McClain, 43, who always makes sure to greet his passengers with a smile. “It brings me joy doing it.”

He said along with getting people home safe from the bars and parties, drivers have rescued motorists broken down on the highway; rushed people to the hospital; helped the elderly get to their loved ones; made roundtrips to the drug store; and even taken customers to Spokane, Seattle and Portland.

McClain said the Tri-Cities Airport requires Uber to tack on a $1.50 access fee to riders who are dropped off there.

That money goes to the airport, which is operated by the Port of Pasco, he said.

He finds it ironic that even though the city doesn’t want Uber drivers there, a public agency in Pasco is benefiting from the passengers.

And even though city officials essentially said no to Uber because of the requirement, McClain said the local drivers still want to show good faith to the city and help out the community by adopting a section of highway that goes through Pasco.

Uber Tri-Cities is responsible for keeping Highway 395, between Lewis Street and Interstate 182, clean at least four times a year. Their first roadside cleanup was Saturday.

This story was originally published November 25, 2017 at 2:34 PM with the headline "Uber dead-ends in Pasco. Petition, city council could change that."