City of Vista Documents (Program Closed)

Vista, pop. 85,000, is 30 miles north of San Diego and 5 miles inland of Oceanside and Carlsbad

Vote No on Sheila Kuehl

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.)

Sheila "Kuehl Cams" Kuehl, in 2007

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.

Vista Docs Set # 1
  Fake / Snitch Ticket, a.k.a. "Nomination"

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

Vista Docs Set # 2
Ticket Counts

Violations Recorded and Notices Printed [4]

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

2004 - 2010 Official Reports
2010 - 2012 Official Reports
2010 - 2013 Official Reports
2013 - 2014 Official Reports
2004 - 2014 Official Reports
2005 - 2015 Official Reports
2015 (early) Official Reports
2015 (late) Official Reports
2016 Official Reports
Nov. 2016 Official Report

[  ] indicates a footnote.
[1]  Totals are as provided by the City.
[2]  These annual totals, or annual projections, are by highwayrobbery.net.  The 2016 projection assumes the cameras will run until the end of December.
[3]  Un-used columns are to allow for later expansion of City's system.
[4]  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, and due to time limitations may have been posted here only for selected months or locations.  If there is sufficient public interest, the remaining months will be posted.  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).
[5]  Monthly data has not been requested from the City.
[6]  The street and direction of enforcement (north, south, east, west, thru, left, right) is not yet available.
[7]  Monthly data was requested on: ----
[8]  The heading is repeated here, solely for the reader's convenience.  It is the same as the heading at the top of the table.
[9]  In 2010 most of Escondido Avenue was renamed Civic Center Drive.
[10]  The report for this month was generated ten days or less after the end of the month, shows a number of violations "in progress," so the "Approved Violations" figure given in the report may not reflect the full number of tickets eventually issued.  The citywide "Total" figure published in the table above was adjusted as follows:   500 + (166x500/511).
[11]  In Summer 2015 the yellows were lengthened at some signals.  See Set # 6, below.

An official report showed that in 2014, 62% of the City's tickets were for turns, mostly right turns.

Vista Docs Set # 4
"Late Time" Graphs

The City provided bar graphs of Late Times, etcetera, for all of its cameras.
These graphs track violations recorded, not tickets issued.
Where there is a large number of long Late Time violations in a curb lane, it is believed to indicate heavy ticketing on right turns.
(The curb lane will be the lane with the highest lane number.)


The picture above is an example from another city.

EMVW 2006
EMVW 2010

ESSA 2006
ESSA 2010

HAME 2006
HAME 2010

MEHA 2006
MEHA 2010

SAES 2006
SAES 2010

SAVI 2006
SAVI 2010

SYSH 2006
SYSH 2010

VISA 2006
VISA 2010

VWEM 2006
VWEM 2010

All cameras, 2012

All Cameras, 2013

All Cameras, 2014

Bar graphs are available for more than fifty other cities - see the list in the expanded version of Defect # 9.

Vista Docs Set # 5
The Contract, Paying Way Too Much, Ticketing Way Up in 2014 (and 2015)
&
2016 Vote to Close

2003 Contract
2009 Contract
2010 Amendment

Invoices received in June 2013 (and more invoices received in Feb. 2014 and Feb. 2015) showed that the City was paying $2833 per camera per month.

U-T Editorial

On Oct. 10, 2013, several days before the hearing scheduled for the city council in Poway to consider their staff's recommendation to remove the cameras from that City, the Union-Tribune published an editorial which recommended:

"Let’s eliminate every trace of this bad civic memory.
And to city leaders in Oceanside, Vista, Encinitas, Solana Beach and Del Mar — it’s time to do likewise.
The cameras are simply not doing the intended job."

April 2014:  Contract Extended, Price Too High

At the city council meeting of April 8, 2014 the council voted 4-1 (Cowles, nay) to approve a contract amendment extending the program another two years.
U-T Article

Unfortunately, the City did not negotiate the rent, so will continue to pay $2833 per camera - way too much.  The previous month (March 2014) the City of Elk Grove, California approved a new contract which specified the following schedule of rents for their five RedFlex cameras.

From Exh. D of the Elk Grove Contract

The staff report prepared for the April 2014 meeting contained this graph suggesting that the number of violations has declined over the years - as it should after the issuance of thousands of tickets.

From the staff report prepared for 4-8-14 council meeting.

However, for some reason, the City staff used figures very different from those shown in the official RedFlex reports the City has provided to highwayrobbery.net over the years (and which are displayed in the table in Set # 2, above).  When the 2007 - early 2014 figures from the RedFlex reports were graphed (below), there was  no decline in ticketing .  [Late note, updated Jan. 2016:  The figures for all twelve months of 2014 show a 26% increase over 2013, and the figures for the first eleven months of 2015 show a 5% increase over 2014 and a 32% increase over 2013.] 


Graph from the saferstreetsla.org report submitted for the 4-8-14 council meeting.

Early 2016:  Two More Years

At the Jan. 26 meeting the council voted 3 - 2 to continue the program for another two years.
Agenda and Minutes

Late 2016:  Program Closing

On Oct. 11, 2016 the council voted to end the program, as permitted by Sec. 6.2 of the 2009 contract. 
The last day of operation was Nov. 30, 2016.

Agenda and Minutes

U-T Article  (Archived Copy)

Article

This list of contracts and/or amendments was up-to-date as of Oct. 11, 2016.

Vista Docs Set # 6
Yellow Times Lengthened in Summer 2015

As required by the Nov. 2014 change to the CalTrans Manual (see Defect # 2 on the Home page), in 2015 the City lengthened many of its yellow lights.  The City's timing charts will be posted here sometime in Jan. 2016.

 

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RED LIGHT CAMERAS
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