Ticket Time Arrives with 25 Citations Per day For Small Ute Pass Town
Rick Langenberg
The town of Green Mountain Falls has hit a royal flush with its stepped-up, highly visible, camera-friendly campaign against speeding motorists, with a revenue jackpot stream of possibly $130,000-plus a year, if current trends continue.
And that’s just the beginning, as the enforcement effort is expected to expand from the downtown onto Hwy. 24, a problem area where often a third of the drivers are spotted exceeding the posted speed limit by at least 10 miles-per-hour. “It has been a little bit ridiculous,” said Green Mountain Falls Marshal Sean Goings, when addressing the board of trustees at their Dec. 2 meeting about the area’s continual fight against drivers going way too fast, and posing serious public safety dangers to themselves and others. He has maintained that the town has a serious issue with speeders, and is now taking necessary action.
Based on the kick-off period for issuing citations, the program is bustling with success when it comes to snagging speeders in the downtown area and hitting them hard in the pocketbook. Only instead of a law officer pulling over offenders, it’s now the eye of a heavily sophisticated automated camera system that is scrutinizing motorists and overall traffic activity. The ticket process and fine collection is being handled by the Louisiana-based Meta Traffic company, which owns and operates the equipment.
In turn, GMF leases the equipment for $1,500 per month.
Since the enforcement stage began in late November and the probation period ended, the citations increased from an average of five per day to 25, according to Goings.
Part of this spike is attributed to the cameras, which are installed on a trailer, being moved to a more strategic location in the downtown. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the town netted about 135 speeding citations. By comparison, during a month of preliminary warnings when the camera was located near the swimming pool and tennis/pickleball courts, only 156 citations (with no fines) were issued for the entire period.
Goings hopes this initial high volume of citations will serve as a deterrent, in getting folks to slow down when they cruise through town. He said the program was not pursued to generate more revenue. “This is not about making money for the town,” stressed the marshal, when the program was first introduced in the fall. “This is about public safety…We definitely have an issue with speeding.”
And when it comes to the entrance of Hwy. 24, he noted that many motorists have complained they are risking their lives when they try to get on the opposite side of the main roadway. “We have had many complaints about this,” said the marshal. Studies, which tracked traffic speeds on the main highway in the GMF area, discovered that about a third of the Hwy. 24 drivers were excessively speeding, with one driver nearly getting clocked at 100 miles-per-hour.
During last week’s trustee meeting, Goings expressed optimism that cameras could be installed on the highway area in GMF much earlier than preliminary estimates.
If that occurs, the town could see traffic ticket revenue explode in a dramatic fashion, with a significant windfall of hundreds of thousands of collars, according to officials.
To date, the marshal said he has received much support for the program. He said citations are only issued if a person is exceeding the posted limited by 10 miles-per-hour and more.
TMJ News, though, has received a few complaints from residents, who view this as an attack against the locals. Actually, under this program, a local resident can only be cited for one speeding infraction per week.
The trustees have fully backed the program and had little reaction to the marshal’s report concerning the high volume of speeding citations issued. It is still hard to track how much the town can make on the program, as each citation can be appealed. But in an earlier presentation, officials from Meta Traffic reported that based on this their implementation of the program in other communities, a very small percentage of offenders take these citations to court.
