- November 17, 2024
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The final hearing on Palm Coast’s camera program contact was almost anticlimactic: Most of the meeting room’s audience section was empty, and just a handful of people spoke during public comment before the council voted 3-2 to reduce the city’s contract with ATS by two years, to 2017, and eliminate all but five of the city’s 43 cameras.
Only one resident — CarMichael McMillan, who once started a petition against the cameras — spoke strongly against the camera program durin the meeting’s public comment period.
The matter was largely settled in previous workshops, after city staff negotiated with camera company American Traffic Solutions to revise the contract so that the city could comply a court ruling requiring city staff, instead of ATS, to mail traffic citations and review potential violations. Palm Coast will offset that additional work by cutting the number of cameras in the city from 43 to five, keeping the number of staff hours about the same as it is now. ATS would also continue to pay for the city's defense in a class-action lawsuit arising formthe camera program.
Only one detail was left unsettled by the March 17 meeting: whether Palm Coast would keep its contract until 2019, or reduce it two year to 2017 at the cost of receiving $350 per month per camera from ATS instead of its usual $700 per month per camera.
City Councilman Jason DeLorenzo said he’d vote for the contract amendment if it included a reduction of the contract to 2017. Councilman Steve Nobile motioned to accept the ATS contract amendments with a reduction to five cameras and an end date of 2017. The council approved it 3-2, with council members Heidi Shipley and Bill McGuire dissenting.
Shipley, who did not speak on the red light cameras during the council meeting, said later in an interview that she wanted the number of cameras reduced to five, but would have like the city to keep the contract until 2019 in order to maintain its camera revenue.
“The reason I want 2019 as opposed to 2017 is that it’s an even wash. Then there’s no money that we would lose,” she said. As to the remaining five cameras, she said, “I think if they’ve found 5 intersections that are a problem, keep them till 2019.”
Before the vote, other council members voiced their positions — all already enumerated at previous meetings — on the camera program.
McGuire, the cameras’ most outspoken supporter on the council, said that replacing the cameras with another system to reduce intersection cameras would cost money.
“Any other options that the city will pursue will cost money,” he said. “This program costs $0.”
“The program does not cost $0,” replied Nobile, who ran on a promise to get rid of the cameras. “It’s taking $2 million to $3 million a year out of our economy.”
Nobile said that the cameras do nothing to stop the most dangerous crashes, which occur when people are distracted. “When they’re not paying attention in the first place, nothing is going to stop them until they get hit going the other way,” Nobile said. “Someone texting on the phone, putting on makeup, there is no stopping them. … I don’t see how anything — a camera, a design — is going to stop them from blowing through the light.”
McGuire said he regularly hears from people who don’t want the cameras gone, and that when he goes to the infraction hearings, what he hears from people fighting their citations is, ‘Well, that law’s fine for those people, but not for me; I should be able to make the call myself.’
He said he’d asked the Sheriff’s Office for information on what they would do to make up for the cameras’ absence and not received a response.
“This is a public safety issue, it’s a law enforcement issue, and I can’t support something without knowing what’s down the road and what’s behind it,” he said.
DeLorenzo, who has pushed the council to drop the camera program entirely even if it means a lawsuit from ATS, said he’d vote for the deal with the contract reduction.
“I haven’t supported this program from the beginning, and my reasoning has been always then same,” he said. “From young adults we learn how to drive, and we learn how to drive a certain way, and that’s a very consistent way. And with the introduction of the cameras, I find that drivers are nervous, and they’re inconsistent.”
He noted that traffic accidents have increased since the cameras were installed. “Since the introduction of the cameras in 2012, on average, traffic accidents in the county have increased by 40%,” he said. DeLorenzo acknowledged that the crashes might not all be related to the cameras, but the extent of the increase suggested a correlation.
“We went from in 2011, 600 accidents to over 1000 in 2013, the first full year with all of the cameras in place,” he said. “I would have really liked to have gotten to a point where we could have ended the program completely.”
Sheriff’s Office Commander Mark Carman, who presides over the Sheriff’s Office’s Palm Coast precinct, noted in response to a similar argument about traffic crash increases, voiced by CarMichael McMillan during public comment, that many of the fatal crashes that have occurred since the cameras were installed happened at intersections on state roads, which do not have red light cameras.
Mayor Jon Netts said council members have been communicating with residents who have proposed alternatives to the cameras for handling intersections safety, such as additional signs or striping on the pavement before intersections. “City council has asked the (city) manager to talk to various traffic engineers to put together an RFP to see if there is any other solution,” he said.
He doubted that signage was it. “If you somehow don’t see the red light, I doubt that you’re going to see some writing on the pavement, but you never know,” he said. “The city will pursue any other possible options that there may be. Don’t know what they are, but we’ll look.”
