Red Light Camera News ATS's Pound of Flesh: Says San Bernardino "owes" 1.8M and not $114.075.00
ATS's Pound of Flesh: Says San Bernardino "owes" 1.8M and not $114.075.00
Ban the Cams note: Cities, these scaemra vendors will turn on you if you threaten their revenue stream. If you get into bed with the scamera companies, you and your citizens will lose long term.
(Ban the Cams ENCOURAGES ALL CITIZENS OF AREAS THAT USE SCAEMRAS TO BE THE SQEAKY Wheel and KEEP FIGHTING AGAINST THE RLC SCAM!!!!!!)
Ban the Cams note 2: It seems ATS might have CONTROL OF SIGNAL TIMING AFTER ALL.
Quote: The Sentinel was unable to confirm a report that city officials are now monitoring the city’s operating red light cameras and court filing activity to ascertain whether American Traffic Solutions is issuing citations at intersections where the lights’ timing is out of compliance with state law.
http://www.in0landempire.us/politics/1-8-m-cost-to-shutter-san-bernardino-red-light-cameras/
$1.8 M Cost To Shutter San Bernardino Red Light Cameras
SBC Sentinel
by Mark Gutglueck, 7/22/11 - The San Bernardino County Sentinel
Like several other local cities, San Bernardino is looking to end the contract its officials got into several years ago for the provision of traffic light cameras. As in other jurisdictions, San Bernardino officials saw the devices as a means of enhancing municipal revenue, believing they could be sold as a safety enhancement stratagem that would reduce, through a vigorous enforcement program, the number of fatalities, serious injuries, and property damage that resulted from traffic collisions. In actuality, however, the red light cameras proved to be overwhelmingly unpopular with residents and did not in most cases provide cities with sufficient revenue to cover their costs in sponsoring the program. Fines for running red lights typically ran to $465. The city saw little of that revenue, as the contract was structured to provide the red light camera operators with a major portion of the money collected up front and court costs ate up much of the remainder of the money obtained in fines.
And though public officials throughout the country and in California long defended the concept of red light cameras even in the face of statistics showing the devices elevated in relatively greater numbers rear-end accidents while lowering the number of more serious and sometimes fatal T-bone collisions, the integrity of one of the camera operating companies, Australia-based Redflex, came under serious question, by extension tainting the reputations of other operators. In Arizona, where Redflex’s American corporate headquarters is located, the secretary of state confirmed reports that Redflex had falsified speed camera documents used by cities, law enforcement officials and the courts in a way that had increased the company’s profits.
And in San Bernardino County, a scandal involving red light cameras broke out into the open when it was revealed that the duration of yellow lights at intersections where some of the cameras were installed, including two intersections in Loma Linda, were shorter than was required by law, causing an increase in the number of tickets issued.
En masse around the country as well as in cities where the red light cameras had been installed in San Bernardino County, the devices were removed by the cities that had once hoped to cash in on them, including Upland, Loma Linda and Rancho Cucamonga. Many of those cities contracted with Redflex for the provision of the cameras. Generally, the cities committed to a five year contract with that company that entailed a financial penalty to the city if it terminated the contract early. In San Bernardino, city officials contracted with American Traffic Solutions for the cameras, inking a nine-year deal. After six years, city officials want to end the program and earlier this year began casting about for a way of terminating the arrangement at minimal cost.
In March, the council committed to shutting the program down after being informed by assistant city attorney Jolena Grider it would cost the city a maximum of $114,075 to buy its way out of the contract.
As of last week, however, the city had yet to pull the trigger on American Traffic Solutions. It has now been publicly stated that the cost of closing out the red light camera system will actually cost San Bernardino $1.8 million.
City manager Charles McNeeley and his lieutenant James Graham had sought to conduct quiet negotiations with American Traffic Solutions that would have resulted in the program being terminated and the savings American Traffic Solutions realized by not have to keep its equipment in place until 2014 incorporated into a formula that would have provided the city with a buyout cost much closer to $114,075 than $1.8 million.
American Traffic’s position is that a contract is a contract and that it wants the full $1.8 million pay out if the program is scrapped. Corporate officers and attorneys for American Traffic Solutions maintain the $114,075 termination fee the city wants to apply is a pipe dream and could only be binding if American Traffic Solutions breached its contract with the city.
Upon learning of American Traffic Solution’s intransigence, the city council balked at ending the program, and city residents continue to receive traffic tickets, oftentimes ones for making a rolling stop prior to making a right-hand turn, an offense that costs $475 and results in fattening American Traffic Solution’s corporate accounts, more than matches the court’s costs of whisking the cases through its system, but provides little if any revenue to the city.
The traffic light camera issue is of some moment in San Bernardino, the county seat which has been particularly hard hit by the economic downturn of the last four years. There is a a concern that the continuation of the red light cameras in San Bernardino while cities elsewhere are getting rid of them has led to potential consumers and customers, in particular consumers and customers who have already received camera tickets and sustained the sting of a $475 fine, avoiding the city altogether and no patronizing its merchants.
The Sentinel was unable to confirm a report that city officials are now monitoring the city’s operating red light cameras and court filing activity to ascertain whether American Traffic Solutions is issuing citations at intersections where the lights’ timing is out of compliance with state law. The issuance of such citations could be construed as grounds to terminate the contract.
(Ban the Cams note: Interesting eh, ATS might have CONTROL OF SIGNAL TIMING! Something I believe they DENIED in the past)
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