The news that the city’s red light camera program is in financial difficulty, some $4 million worth, is not a surprise. It’s also not a surprise that installing red light cameras to raise money, as opposed to preventing accidents, is bad public policy. This is because you have to turn the cameras off if they don’t generate enough income, which defeats the entire purpose of the program.
Which the city is contemplating doing — most likely through some sort of rotation program, so that motorists won’t know which ones are working and which ones aren’t.
A less generous sort than myself would take this opportunity to say I told you so. But I’m not that kind of guy.
I will, however, note that there is a time-honored and respected method for financing desirable city services, like installing red light cameras to prevent accidents. One either raises taxes or cuts other services to pay for it. This is, however, apparently beyond the intellectual ken of most of the members of the council.
Or, as The News story quoted the president of a group called the National Motorists Association: "They’re in between a rock and a hard place, and when the money goes away, the cameras go away. Probably the only way they can sustain it is to raise the violation rates, despite all the protestation that this is about safety and not about revenue."
