Another problem with the Redflex contract

What about unpaid citations, does the City of Knoxville have to cover them This clause is on page 9.

(E) Prosecution of Citations: Compensation. The City shall diligently prosecute Citations, and Redflex shall have the right to receive, and the City shall be obligated to pay, the compensation set forth on Exhibit D attached hereto.

The problem this presents is if someone doesn’t pay a citation, will Redflex still receive compensation for the citation? According to this, it should and the City will have to pay Redflex from their share. I've been playing around with some numbers. It looks like during the time when Redflex and the City of Knoxville would be splitting the money 85/15, if 20% don't pay their citations, the city will be losing money.

The big problem with this is that several years ago, the Knoxville City Court, which would be the court that would have jurisdiction over these citations, had over a million dollars of unpaid fines. This news report is from 2001 and I’m worried that things haven’t changed since then.

Another question is if someone successfully fights a citation, will the City have to make up the difference? Maybe that's why there is no plan for letting people contest citations.

Red light

Michael Silence had this about the proposed contract for Redflex to install red light cameras in Knoxville.

Redflex gets 85% of the first $4,500 worth of citations for each calendar month for each location. Since the citations are $50 each, that should be the first 90 citations each calendar month. After the first 90, the money would be split 50/50 between RedFlex and the City of Knoxville. First 90 citations = $4,500 x .85 = $3,825 for RedFlex. The City of Knoxville would only get $675 of that $4,500. (After the first $4,500, the split will be 50/50 with the City of Knoxville. For now, I'm only going to talk about the first $4,500.)

However, the contract refers to the first $4,500 that comes from “Designated Intersection Approach” and not “each intersection”. On page 3, (F) has the definition for “Designated Intersection Approach” as those set forth in Exhibit A. However, in Exhibit A, it refers to “implementation of up to 15 intersections”. The question is then, in the compensation part, are they talking about having cameras set up at 15 intersections or at each of the approaches (which is usually 4) at each of the 15 intersections?

Then there is this on page 7 of the contract. “(N) “Intersection Approach” means a conduit of travel with up to four (4) contiguous lanes from the curb (e.g.. northbound, southbound, eastbound or westbound) on which at least one (1) system has been installed by RedFlex for the purposes of facilitating Photo Red Light Enforcement by the City.”

Let’s go back to Redflex’s share for the first $4,500, which would be $3,825. $3,825 x 12 = $45.900 That is for 1 year for 1 location. Multiply that by 15 intersections and you get $688,500 but only if they mean intersections and not approaches the way. If they consider each intersection to have the possibility of 4 “Designated Intersection Approaches”, which I think is what they mean, then that could up their compensation to $2,754,000 each year. ($688,500 x 4).

I don't know about you, but I don't like it.