PORT HAWKESBURY - Town officials here have approved a temporary taxi license that will allow the area's transit cooperative to continue providing wheelchair-accessible service to town residents, on the condition that this license not infringe on any other taxi operators currently working in the town.

The request from Strait Area Transit (SAT) reached the Port Hawkesbury Town Council table at this month's regular council meeting. According to the town's Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), Terry Doyle, SAT made the request after its main wheelchair-accessible vehicle, a bus with a wheelchair lift, became unusable for this purpose earlier this summer. 

Doyle pointed out that SAT made the taxi-license application to allow one of its smaller vehicles to serve as an accessible means of transit until the damaged bus receives its necessary upgrade. However, he noted that SAT officials do not wish to infringe on the business of Port Hawkesbury's current taxi license-holders, who do not offer accessible service at the present time.

With Deputy Mayor Blaine MacQuarrie absent from the meeting and town councillor Jason Aucoin declaring a conflict of interest on the issue, remaining town councillors Mark MacIver and Hughie MacDougall both voted in favour on the taxi license, on the premise that the service provided by SAT would not duplicate existing taxi services within town limits. 

Town council also received a taxi license application from Mark and Theresa Kavanaugh, who have operated similar services within Richmond and Inverness Counties within previous years. At Doyle's suggestion, council has agreed to defer the application to Port Hawkesbury's Committee of the Whole meeting this coming Monday, to allow the Kavanaughs more time to provide data such as insurance costs to the vehicles that would be used should their taxi license for Port Hawkesbury be granted.