{"id":20376,"date":"2017-03-15T19:39:45","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T19:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20376"},"modified":"2017-03-15T19:39:45","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T19:39:45","slug":"memo-to-council-candidates-hands-off-red-light-cams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20376","title":{"rendered":"Memo to council candidates: hands off red-light cams"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I am going to make a request of the individuals running for Amarillo mayor and the four City Council seats.<\/p>\n

It is this: Do not mess with the city’s red-light cameras, presuming the Texas Legislature allows you to make that call.<\/p>\n

I looked through mayoral candidate Ginger Nelson’s detailed platform statement this afternoon after the thought occurred to me that I’ve heard nothing from the candidates about what they intend to do with the cameras. I pored through Nelson’s platform and didn’t see a single mention of the cameras.<\/p>\n

Does that mean she intends to leave ’em alone? Or does she want to pull the plug on them without warning us in advance? I doubt it’s the latter, so I’ll just proceed with my request of her and the others who are running for mayor and council member.<\/p>\n

The cameras have been in operation for nearly a decade now, thanks to some foresight shown by a previous city commission\/council, led by then-Mayor Debra McCartt. The police department had expressed concern about motorists running red lights, in some cases ignoring them completely while zooming through them from a dead stop when there was no other traffic.<\/p>\n

The cameras were installed to photograph the license plates of the offending vehicle, with the citation sent to the vehicle owner’s residence.<\/p>\n

I get all the griping from offending owners who would say that someone else was driving their vehicle. Of course, they have recourse; they can take their complaint to the Municipal Court and argue their case before the judge.<\/p>\n

The Legislature allowed cities to deploy the cameras a few sessions ago, but placed some restrictions on how to spend the money collected. The city must dedicate the revenue to traffic improvement methods. There can be spending of that revenue on city manager frills, or new drapes for the traffic engineer’s office.<\/p>\n

This technology has its foes. Some of them are in Legislature. They have threatened to rescind the cities’ authority to deploy the devices, which I find ironic, given some legislators’ insistence that they — not mayors, city council members or senior city administrators — understand the local concerns better than those on the ground in the affected cities.<\/p>\n

If the 2017 Legislature does the right thing and allows cities to make that determination for themselves, then my hopes is that Amarillo decides to keep the cameras on the job.<\/p>\n

They are doing what they are supposed to do. They are deterring motorists from breaking … the … law<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am going to make a request of the individuals running for Amarillo mayor and the four City Council seats. It is this: Do not mess with the city’s red-light cameras, presuming the Texas Legislature allows you to make that call. I looked through mayoral candidate Ginger Nelson’s detailed platform statement this afternoon after the … Continue reading Memo to council candidates: hands off red-light cams<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[288,290,3864,4653],"class_list":["post-20376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-red-light-cameras-2","tag-texas-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20378,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20376\/revisions\/20378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}