Gone
In settling the lawsuit with camera vendor American Traffic Solutions, whose contract was supposed to run through 2014, the city agreed to pay the Arizona-based company $4.8 million.
The city had $2.3 million in red-light ticket revenue on hand at the time of the settlement, and officials said they expected to be able to pay the balance from fines collected from some of the tens of thousands of delinquent light-runners who had not yet paid up.
No such luck.
Depending on how much new red light ticket revenue is collected between now and Dec. 31, when the final settlement payment is due, city finance officials say more than $1.1 million of the settlement could wind up being pulled from the general fund, meaning taxpayers and not red light violators will be on the hook.
“My thoughts are the same now as they were then,” said Councilman Jack Christie, one of two current council members who opposed the settlement, concerned it would impact the general fund. “As a fiscal conservative, you never want to commit money that you don’t have. It’s not complicated.”
Councilman C.O. Bradford, who also opposed the settlement, agreed.
“(City Attorney) David Feldman and Mayor Parker assured council that general fund money would not be used,” he said. “Some of us said, ‘Let’s not put in that backup proviso then, let’s make sure the (processes) are there to collect those dollars.’ That didn’t happen.”
See here, here, and here for the background. I get what the city had in mind, but I have no desire to defend it at this point. Instead, here’s the trailer to “The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult”, since that was what came to my mind as I wrote the title to this post:
May we never hear of these accursed things again.