Red Light Camera News Lockport, IL Will Turn off RLC in November that kept Shoppers AWAY!
http://heraldnews.suntimes.com/news/6430085-418/city-council-majority-defends-choices.html
Lockport, IL Will Turn off RLC in November that kept Shoppers AWAY!
(Thanks to www.stpetecameras.org for the link!)
City council majority defends choices
By Tony Graf
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July 9, 2011 7:56PM
Reprints ShareUpdated: July 10, 2011 2:32AM
LOCKPORT — Alderman Kelly Turner, a member of the city council majority, outlined some aspects of the newly approved budget during an interview last week.
Red-light cameras to be discontinued in Lockport: “The red-light cameras will be shut down in November,” Turner said. “There was a penalty if we shut them down before that, of $30,000. And we didn’t want to pay $30,000, so the cameras will be shut down in November, and it won’t cost us anything.”
“I’ve already gotten phone calls from people who have said, ‘Thank you so much,’ and, ‘Congratulations,’ because people hated it,” Turner said. “The politicians and bureaucrats all tell you that they’re great for revenue, but the basic thing is: People avoid areas with stoplight cameras. They’re afraid of them. They don’t make right turns with stoplight cameras.”
That holds up traffic, Turner said.
It also can keep potential shoppers away, he added.
“The people who are on the (council majority) wanted Lockport to be a friendly place for shoppers to come, without worrying about red-light cameras,” Turner said.
“There are other towns that don’t have them, that have the same stores we do,” he said. “And will (shoppers) go to the places that don’t have stoplight cameras? Absolutely.”
No additional water rate increase: “They were going to increase the water rates again,” Turner said.
But the council majority, which emerged after the April elections, has canceled plans for additional increases, both for this year and for next year, Turner said.
The current rate increase, approved by the former council in December, remains in effect.
However, Turner also wants to roll back some of the current rate increase. The council majority is looking for cost savings, through a review of the water system by Robinson Engineering.
“Because we don’t have all of the figures in yet from Robinson Engineering, because we don’t know all of the information, we have not been able to lower that yet,” Turner said. “But as far as we’re concerned, that’s still on the table.”
“Will we be able to roll the entire thing back? Probably not. They say the system was operating at a deficit, and we knew that. But we want to roll some of it back, though, because our water bills did go up tremendously,” Turner said.
Turner explained the reasoning behind the Robinson review: “What we want to do is have Robinson look at the system — which they are looking at right now — and say: ‘Look, do we need these projects? Do we need those projects?’”
“And Robinson would be best to know, because they were there all along during the heavy growth years of the city. That’s why we want to bring them in,” Turner said.
“I thought they were a great engineering firm. Not to say the other ones are bad, but Robinson seems to view things the way you would if you were doing it yourself — that is, they were cost-effective. We trust them, and we wanted them to review what was going on.”
Public works department: “I think that Public Works is going to go back to the traditional direction that it always had,” Turner said.
“We felt that the public works department was getting away from its original mission, which is literally maintenance of the city. And that maintenance, in our view, is things like fixing water-main leaks, patching potholes, cutting grass in abandoned yards, picking up leaves, and picking up branches.”
“In the old part of town, the reason that you have Public Works pick up the leaves is because if you don’t pick them up, the leaves then clog the storm sewers. And when the storm sewers clog, houses flood — because a lot of house drains are connected to storm sewers.”
“So when Public Works got away from that, it caused all kinds of problems,” Turner said.
“Public Works was getting into road building, and we just felt that wasn’t really their expertise, and that expertise was more with private companies, because they do it all the time and public works didn’t.”
Engineering: Turner says the city will save money by using outside engineering firms for large projects. The city would retain an engineer for smaller projects.
Turner said the city would save money because developers themselves pay for an independent engineering firm to review their plans. The city would pay nothing in such cases.
Roadwork bond issue: Turner is supporting a 10-year, $10 million bond issue for roadwork, funded by the 1 percent sales tax approved by voters in November.
Turner said a bond issue would allow the city to get roadwork done faster — within a two-year period, instead of 10, which is the present plan.
The council will debate the bond issue later this summer, but the matter came up during budget debates.
Homebuyer incentive canceled: The council majority has ended the city’s homebuyer economic-stimulus program.
The plan granted the first 100 buyers of a new Lockport single-family residence a one-time payment of $10,000 at closing. Buyers of a new townhome or duplex would receive $7,000.
The stimulus program was funded as follows: A homebuilder pays $26,000 in total fees for a typical four-bedroom single-family home, benefiting a variety of taxing entities. With the stimulus program, the builder still paid all those fees, but $5,000 of it went back to the buyer.
Then the builder paid an extra $5,000 to match the other $5,000 — providing the homebuyer with a total $10,000 incentive.
Alderman Dick Van Dyke opposed the plan when he was a member of the council minority. Now a majority member, Van Dyke has worked successfully to cancel the incentive.
“I have been an advocate in stopping the subsidy for new homebuyers,” Van Dyke said at a meeting last month. “It turns out that there have been 25 or 26 homes that have been built under this program in the last two years.”
“The problem is that those dollars — which is $130,000 — would have been earmarked for water and sewer repairs. Those are tap-on fees. And that was money that just flew out the window,” Van Dyke said. “And not only was that the case the first year, but the second year as well. And we’ve now learned we can’t support that.”
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