Highland Docs - Main Page - Red Light Cams

Some of Highlands's tickets can possibly be ignored. If your "ticket" does not have the Superior Court's name and address on it, it is what I call a "Snitch Ticket." For more details, see the Snitch Ticket section on the Your Ticket page.

Do you live in LA County? Was Zev Yaroslavsky your County Supervisor? (He represented the Third District, which includes the central and western San Fernando Valley, Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice, Beverly Hills, the City of West Hollywood, and part of Hollywood.)

During her career in the California Legislature, Kuehl made three attempts to pass bills to allow the use of automated speed enforcement (photo radar) in California.

This table made by highwayrobbery.net, using official reports provided by the City under the California Public Records Act.

Set # 2 below includes the official reports spanning 2008 - 2010
Official reports, July & Oct. 2010
Official reports, 2011 - 2012
Official reports, 2012 - 2013
Official reports, 2013

[ ] indicates a footnote.
[1] Totals are as provided by the City.
[2] Annual total, or annual projection, is by highwayrobbery.net.
[3] Un-used columns are to allow for later expansion of City's system.
[4] Except where noted otherwise, the figures given in the table are for the single calendar month indicated. Any figures in red type (or, if you are looking at this table in black and white, the upper figure when there are two or more figures in a cell) are what RedFlex calls Total Violations, or all incidents recorded by the cameras. The figures in black type are what RedFlex calls Notices Printed, and represent the sum of genuine citations issued (those filed with the court) plus any Nominations mailed (not filed with the court, a.k.a. Snitch Tickets). Due to time limitations data may have been posted to the table only for selected months or locations. If there is sufficient public interest, the remaining months or locations will be posted. Full official data has been received and is available at one of the links given above.
[5] Monthly data has been requested but has not yet been received.
[6] Due to time limitations (both for the City and for highwayrobbery.net), data for these months was not requested. If there is sufficient public interest, data for these missing months will be requested and posted.
[7] The camera enforcement is believed to be on traffic on the first-named street, but the direction of enforcement (north, south, east, west, thru, left, right) is not yet available.
[8] Includes enforcement of posted "no turn on red" signs.
[9] The report for this month was generated just a few days after the end of the month, so it is likely that not all tickets (for violations which occurred during the month) had been approved and counted by that time.

Like the cities of Baldwin Park, Capitola, Citrus Heights, South San Francisco, Victorville and Walnut, Highland failed to hold the formal public hearing required by CVC 21455.6 before it approved the 2008 contract - see the staff report and minutes from the council meeting of Mar. 11, 2008, and the expanded version of Defect # 6.

The contract includes an illegal "cost neutrality" clause, whereby the city will not have to pay RedFlex the full rent if there aren't enough fines to cover the cost. See Subsection B. of Defect # 10. The staff report for the city council meeting of May 11, 2010 included a spreadsheet showing the actual cost-neutral adjustments to the payments to RedFlex.

The contract also says: Definitions. "Warning Period" means the period of thirty (30) days after the Installation Date of the first intersection approach. (Emphasis added.) See Defect # 6.

In 2011 the contract was about to expire, and on Mar. 17, 2011 the Highland Community News reported, in error, (this is the full article, unedited):

"The Highland City Council has approved the Public Safety Subcommittee recommendation to keep red light cameras in operation.

"Captain Dave Williams, who serves as Highland’s police chief, is not a big fan of the cameras, reporting that there is not a lot of evidence that the cameras avoid accidents. However, there was not a breakdown of injury/non-injury accidents and the
subcommittee theorized that there could have been more minor rearend crashes and fewer serious side-impact injury accidents.

"The City Council approved a seven-year program which reduces the cost of the program over time from $5,970 to $4,700 per year."

Inaccurate article from 3-17-11 HCN. See below for what actually happened.

The first and third paragraphs of the article above were incorrect. The city council had not approved anything, much less a seven-year program. What the council subcommittee (it was the Finance Subcommittee, not the PSC) considered was whether to do another one-year extension on the original contract, which was signed in 2008 and was for two years with three optional one-year extensions.

The reporter picked up the $4700 figure because Redflex had offered a slightly reduced rate in an unsuccessful attempt to get the City to agree to five to seven additional years (with none of them optional). If in the future the City were to seriously consider adding five or seven years to the contract, it should compare the Tier Two rate of $4700 (offered to it for the last five years of the proposed seven-year extension) to the $2225 the City of Solana Beach negotiated upon contract renewal in 2009. The lower rate, over a five-year period, could save Highland $297,000. (The Solana Beach contract is available on the Solana Beach Documents page.)

On April 7, 2011 the HCN published a correction.

On April 12 the Finance Subcommittee heard a presentation by the Public Works Department and the Police Department. On April 13 a widely-read national blog published an article pointing out numerous misrepresentations and inaccuracies in the presentation.

Despite the warnings contained in the April 13 article, at the April 26 meeting of the full city council City staff submitted a report whose one-page summary stated, "...no significant increase or decrease in high risk injury accidents since July 2008." Staff's summary failed to mention that graphs included in the report (near the end of Attachment 2) showed that injury accidents went up by more than double (comparing the average for 2005-2007 to the average for 2009-2010). The report recommended approving two one-year extensions. The city council approved a single one-year extension, 4 - 1 with Mayor McCallon voting "no."

The City also agreed to pay too much. Had the City asked for a better price, it could have achieved a price reduction during the one-year extension.

The 2012 Extension: Paying Too Much - Again!

A Second Amendment in 2012 extended the program two years to June 30, 2014 without an escape clause permitting early termination for convenience, and retained Cost Neutrality.

In the 2012 amendment the City agreed to pay $5750 per camera per month. Many area cities pay less than $3000 (see FAQ # 17), and had Highland's negotiators obtained a $3000 price, they would have saved the City $132,000.

Invoices and check copies obtained in late 2013 show that the City continued to pay $5750.

2014: Program Closed at the End of June

An Apr. 10, 2014 article said that the city council might allow the camera program to end.

Details

On Apr. 8 the Finance Subcommittee (two members of the city council) decided to recommend that the program be discontinued upon expiration of the contract in June. That decision was a switch from the subcommittee's original decision, in March, to extend the contract for another year. (The agenda of their Apr. 8 meeting includes the minutes of the March meeting.) The final decision (a vote of the full council) was made at the Apr. 22 council meeting, and the vote was 4 - 1 to close, with Councilmember Scott dissenting.

The materials prepared for the Apr. 22 Meeting (big file) include an Apr. 9 letter from RedFlex in which it was disclosed that 94% of the tickets have gone to visitors to town.

This list of contracts and amendments above was up-to-date as of 4-23-14.

Highland Docs Set # 4
More Coming

There may be some more Highland information posted in the next few weeks. Mark your calendar to remind you to come back here and look!

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