The Santa Ana City Council Tuesday voted unanimously to terminate the city’s contract with a red-light camera vendor that is the subject of a federal bribery investigation, with council members saying the nearly $500 fines associated with red light tickets are an excessive burden on residents, according to the Voice of OC.
However, the contract with Phoenix-based RedFlex Traffic Systems doesn’t expire until June, 2015 and city officials said the cameras must stay up until then because they can’t terminate the contract early.
You know that some of these Council Members must have voted for these cameras originally. Voters should certainly hold that against them in November.
How anyone thought that charging the people of Santa Ana $500 for a red light ticket was fair is impossible to understand. Granted we don’t want folks running red lights but the majority of these tickets are for cars that barely cross the crosswalk.
The bigger problem in our city is jaywalkers. Until our residents start obeying traffic laws, as drivers and as pedestrians, the needless deaths are going to continue.
When city council decides to let discredited red light program continue until contract will have run out, I hope they know that those of us with brain and memory will not spend one red cent in Santa Ana at the very least until the contract ends – I hope you are listening Santa Ana business owners. I received one of these shameless tickets, went to court only to find two lawyers working for Santa Ana using their prized law education to extract $500+ from laypeople as if they were shooting fish in the barrel. Shame. The moron of the officer appearing “to help”, his “knowledge” on the subject happen to have come from red-light camera company training, dispensing pearls of wisdom , such as “it can’t be programed – it’s all digital”. You should see the self esteem on that cretin. Shameful parody of the justice, really really shameful.
We agree!