- November 6, 2024
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Palm Coast will switch off its last four red light cameras April 6.
The City Council didn’t discuss the cameras when it voted to remove them at an April 4 City Council meeting.
The cameras, which had for so many years stirred debate at City Council meetings, were voted on as part of the meeting’s consent agenda — a collection of items, usually uncontroversial, that council members vote on in bulk without discussing each item.
Palm Coast’s red light camera program began in 2008, with 10 cameras.
The City Council voted to add another 26 in the summer of 2012, and renewed its contract with American Traffic Solutions.
It added more in 2013, ending up wth 43 cameras at 27 intersections.
But public opinion was turning against the cameras.
Current City Councilman Steve Nobile made getting rid of the cameras an issue in his campaign for election, calling them a “direct, self-inflicted economic disaster.”
In March 2015, the City Council voted to reduce the city’s 43 cameras to just five, and to cut two years from the city’s contract with ATS, which was scheduled to end in 2019.
One of the remaining five cameras was removed during the course of the Palm Coast Parkway six-laming, and wasn't ever re-installed, leaving the city with its current four. One of them — the cameras that faces northbound at the intersection of Cypress Point Parkway and Palm Coast Parkway — was one of the original 10 cameras installed in 2008.
Palm Coast’s contract with ATS was set to end Sept. 31, but the city and ATS agreed to end it early, on March 31. The cameras will all be removed by June 30.
