Yellowknife (May 16/03) - One company is looking to enter the city's cab market while another is off the road until next week at the earliest.

Doug Gillard, manager of municipal enforcement with the city of Yellowknife, confirmed Wednesday that a new cab company was looking to open in Yellowknife while another one was trying to get back on the road.

Bill Slave, the owner of a new taxi business called Somba K'e Cabs, said Wednesday he hopes to have his company up and running by the end of next week.

As for Yellowknife Cabs, it was unable to renew its licence at the end of March because of a lack of vehicles.

"The law says that in order to operate a taxi business you have to have 10 cars available and 10 contracts with 10 drivers. We inspected only two cars and we didn't have proof of the contracts," said Gillard.

The city sent Yellowknife Cabs a letter saying it had to comply with the law, and that its licence hadn't been renewed.

The city told Yellowknife Cabs to cease operations until it was complying with the bylaw.

"However, we noticed some of their cabs running after we had sent them the letter and Yellowknife Cabs was brought to court on May 6," Gillard said.

The taxi company was charged with operating without a brokerage licence, fined $1,800 and told to cease operations until it complied with the bylaw.

John Dalton, the owner of Yellowknife Cabs, said he had the cars, they just needed to be painted.

"We had the vehicles but they weren't painted. Instead of just fining us, they put us out of work and our drivers out of work."

He thinks the city went a little too far by shutting his business down.

"Things just didn't come together. The cars we had out there were inspected but we had a couple of cars that needed to be changed so we were adding a few newer cars. Circumstances and time came into play and we weren't ready by the end of March," he said.

He said he hopes to reopen next week.

"We will meet the bylaw and have 10 vehicles on the road," he said.