Posted on 04/08/2014 3:43:33 AM PDT by markomalley
More roadside speed cameras could be Washington D.C.'s future as Mayor Vincent Gray's new budget calls for the city to collect an additional $50 million in speeding fines over the coming year. One council member called it "gotcha" government.
Gray said his budget is balanced in part by that steep rise in speed camera fines from more speed cameras on different streets at different times. The mayor's budget director said Motorists too often avoid permanent cameras, said the mayors budget director, Eric Goulet.
What you've found as residents, when the mayor goes out and when Ive been at budget town halls, particularly, complain about people slowing down for the fixed traffic cameras and then speeding up as soon as those are and then speeding through neighborhoods, Goulet said.
At-large Council member David Catania, an independent candidate for mayor, suggested the city ought to better warn motorists.
I think we need to do a public service announcement, to some extent, or a push that lets people know this because nothing makes people angrier than this gotcha mentality of this government that balances its budgets by these kinds of mechanisms, Catania said.
Despite that concern, city police are moving ahead, according to the mayors office.
What MPD has tried to do is have more mobile devices so that when theyre not needed in one location you can move them someplace else and then address people who may be speeding through our neighborhoods, Goulet said. So that would be the goal would be to move the cameras in a way to really discourage speeding throughout the city.
One thing I'll say: at least he's honest about the reason why he wants them...
Once more let's hear it for our heroes who are out there to make the streets safe a better source of revenue for the government.
Motorists too often avoid permanent cameras
&
Motorists will “too often”? avoid high tax locales
Must be a dialect thing?
I was thinking the same - at least they’re done insulting our intelligence by talking about “safety” and they’re publicly stating the REAL REASON for the cameras.
Why not just have the cops shakedown the commuters and save the cost of the cameras? The U.S. is quickly heading to the medieval robber baron era anyway. Just put a credit card reader in every patrol car. We have to keep all of the “Prince Johns” and their minions supplied with money.
Wait... so they’re really all about revenue, and not safety?
“When government financially benefits from lawbreaking, it becomes in its interest to prohibit as many things as possible...”
That’s the way the left operates.
Get something implemented under some “cover” reason,
get people used to it or hooked on it,
then admit what it was really about.
They want a commuter tax and this is a defacto tax on commuters.
I’m not sure that I agree with the “admitting” part - I think this just slipped out. I’m still waiting to hear the left admit a lot of things:
1) They were wrong on the Cold War
2) They made a COMPLETE MESS of education
3) Welfare causes dependency
4) Bilingual Education exists to keep kids from Spanish-speaking households from learning English, so they can remain an identifiable, impoverished, culture, and thus be reliant on Democrats
5) Big government doesn’t work, ever
6) They want to jail conservatives (or worse) but just don’t have a way to do that yet (the best they have is the IRS and Mozilla-type silencing).
Lots of things...on this particular one they simply don’t see any credible risk with being honest, so they are.
All but the last of those are admissions that their ideas were wrong. No - you won’t ever get that.
The last one does address what I was referring to - lying about the goals. They are still in the stage where they still have to lie about the goals on that one, because they haven’t disarmed us yet.
Many State legislators are writing laws to ban speed and red light cameras and DC is moving to ad them.
Says a lot...........
(Mayor Vincent Gray’s new budget calls for the city to collect an additional $50 million in speeding fines over the coming year.)
And you thought it was about safety!!!
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