http://theexpiredmeter.com/?p=7203

September 27th, 2010
Brookfield Rejects Red Light Cameras
It didn’t even come up for a vote.

Monday, at the Brookfield village board meeting, trustees spent all of 15 minutes discussing bringing red light cameras to two town intersections, but decided not to go forward with a vote.

At the previous board meeting two weeks prior, the issue came up for discussion again after a full two year hiatus. While Redflex Traffic Systems was the original RLC suitor in 2008, upstart local camera enforcement company SafeSpeed, LLC was being considered as the vendor this time around.

While there was discussion about safety, revenue, and all the typical RLC issues, there were two out of the ordinary issues that killed the cameras.

The first was the additional cost necessary to upgrade the intersections according to IDOT standards in order to erect red light cameras to the tune of over $30,000 according to reports.
But, perhaps the true deal killer was the unwillingness of potential camera vendor SafeSpeed, LLC to indemnify the Village of Brookfield against any possible legal actions taken against the town in regards to RLCs ala Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to The Newspaper, Minneapolis recently was forced to refund $2.6 million to 14,000 drivers because the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled the city’s RLC program was unconstitutional.

“The straw that broke the camel’s back was not the statistics or crash reduction but the fact that SafeSpeed would not indemnify them (Brookfield) against legal action and it scared them off,” explained Barnet Fagel, driving safety consultant for the National Motorists Association who attended Monday night’s meeting. “That was the main point they were making.”

Representatives from SafeSpeed did not attend the meeting.

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