South San Francisco motorists to receive red light camera ticket refunds within sixty days
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Red light camera program troubles continue to grow in South San Francisco, California. On Wednesday, the city council will meet to discuss how to pay the $250,000 bill submitted by the San Mateo County Superior Court to cover the administrative costs of processing $3 million worth of red light camera citation refunds. Because the city failed to properly ratify its contract with American Traffic Solutions, the company in charge of automated ticketing, the 6800 tickets issued between August 14 2009 and February 28, 2010 were declared invalid by the court.
Read more via California: City Fined $250,000 Over Botched Red Light Camera Program.
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What’s amazing is that despite all the problems, the SSF council voted to continue the program!
They definitely missed the trend – which is to get out while the getting is good. Compton, Cupertino, El Monte, Fairfield, Fresno, Fullerton, Indian Wells, Irvine, Maywood, Montclair, Moreno Valley, Paramount, Redlands, Roseville, Santa Fe Springs, Santa Maria and Upland all have shut their camera systems. Loma Linda and San Carlos voted last week to let their contracts expire without renewal. (They had hoped to terminate the contracts immediately, but would have had to pay a big penalty for the privilege.)
Maybe SSF missed seeing the trend because its continuing debacles are a large part of the inspiration for the trend!
If I lived in SSF I would be upset to see my council OK’ing $250K to pay the courts for processing the refunds, “loaning” $1.7 million to the court to fund the refunds (supposed to come back to the City later on, but remember the borrower is a branch of a bankrupt state govt.), not even asking the camera vendor (ATS) for a refund of the 9 months of rent the City will have paid while the system was not producing tickets (9 months x $32K = $288K), and making the refunds to motorists who went to traffic school (est. $200K).