The red light cameras are installed, the strobes are flashing away, and tickets are being issued.
We are stuck with cameras forever. Right? Wrong!
Our mayor wisely negotiated a contract with the camera vendor that lets the city back out of the contract without penalty if the vendor is given notice in the next few months. The grace period was established so the city could evaluate the program and gauge public opinion.
Over 400 Redmond citizens have signed an online petition in the last week protesting these cameras in Redmond. Last November, the citizens of Mukilteo voted these same cameras and vendor out of their city by a 2-1 margin (70 percent to 30).
There’s no doubt in my mind that a vote in Redmond will have a similar outcome.
Now it’s your turn. Go to face book.com/no.red.light.cameras, click “like” and express your opinion. The results and your comments will be shared with the council and mayor. The mayor negotiated the grace period so he and the city council can hear from you. The comment period is short.
The citizens of Redmond are speaking out and despise the camera program for the following reasons:
• The cameras are really about increasing revenue. Despite comments from the council about not raising revenue, when two councilmen (Hank Myers and Richard Cole) tried to set the fee at a break-even level of $25 instead of the $124 maximum allowed by state law, they were voted down 5-2. Why?
To convince the public the program is not about revenue, the council needs to adopt the Myers-Cole amendment of $25 and make it law that any excess revenues go to charity and never touch the municipal budget. Failure to pass the amendment now will only send the message that the program is truly about increasing revenue.
• This camera technology changes our relationship with our city. The words most commonly heard are “Big Brother,” “1984,” and “Nanny State,” and people describe the program as evil and creepy. Ultimately, it comes down to the question, “What kind of city do we want to be?” Do we want to maintain our small town, home town feel, or do we like having strobe lights flashing around us reminding us that our city’s robots are trying to catch us misbehaving.
• The self-serving analysis is done by the red light camera vendor, American Traffic Solutions (ATS). ATS used the oldest sales trick in the book: the “free” brake check. ATS came to Redmond and performed a free study of our intersections. The conclusions were stunning. ATS, which profits handsomely when Redmond buys their cameras, found that some drivers run red lights. They also found that when a city installs their red light cameras, the number of violations decrease. Shocking. The study created a $340,000 per year contract with the city. The same vendor will be studying our intersections after the trial period. Anyone want to bet on their findings?
Please let your mayor and city council members know that you want this technology out of your city. Email your elected officials at Redmond.gov.
Polls and elections show that a majority of citizens do not want this type of traffic enforcement. The city council can either poll its citizens and act now or the issue can be decided through a citizen’s initiative.
Scott Harlan has lived in and around Redmond his entire life. He owns a small business in Redmond and is a board member of a Redmond human services non-profit. He can be reached at s.harlan@comcast.net.
