The Lubbock City Council passed the second reading of the transportation for hire ordinance.

“It levels the playing field, and it just opens the market to everybody,” Councilwoman Karen Gibson said.

Gibson said this had been about two years of work, with all the stakeholders, to get to this point.

The ordinance creates two categories of transportation for hire companies, identifying them by how the customer hires the car. There is a category for cars that can be hailed by the customer, which will be called an operating authority, and the other that is a web or app-based operation, called a transportation network company.

Gibson said the ordinance will go into effect sometime in June. 

“If they’ve already gotten their permits, the permit they have now is valid until they have to renew, and then they’ll just renew with the new permits,” Gibson said.

More information about the ordinance can be found here.

The city council also passed some building code changes, with some local amendments.

There was a lot of discussion about corrugated stainless steel tubing, or CSST, which is a gas tubing product.

In 2012, Brennen Teel was killed in a house fire. According to officials, lightning struck the home and resulted in a fire in the attic, and officials said the gas pipes caused the explosion.

“It means that our new building codes in Lubbock restrict the use of CSST products, which is a flexible gas line product, unless they meet these heightened, enhanced standards,” Mayor Glen Robertson said.
 
“Our only thought process was the health and life safety of our citizens. We had a lot of discussions, technical discussions, testing discussions, but those aren’t really our issues, those are the manufacturer’s issues, that they can work out afterwards. Our decision was to raise the level of the safety of this product, because we have had one death in the community,” Robertson said.
 
Teel’s family was at the council meeting and reacted to the changes.
 
“City Staff, they have been diligent, they have been professionals, and most of all they did the best thing for the City of Lubbock,” Ken Teel, Brennen’s father said.