Getting a speeding ticket in Greeley will likely be less expensive at the start of the year.
The city council has yet to approve the 2011 budget, but at Tuesday night’s budget work session the majority of council members informally favored scrapping a traffic-calming surcharge that’s been in place since 2003.
Councilman Mike Finn led the charge to dump the $25 fee, which is applied on municipal traffic tickets of three points or more.
Finn argued that the surcharge makes Greeley traffic violations the most expensive among regional cities. City research shows that a four-point ticket fine, for a violation such as speeding, costs $185 in Greeley, compared with $135 in Fort Collins and $110 in Loveland. The fine is highest in Weld County, which tickets a four-point violator $192.
“Basically, there’s no reason Greeley should have the highest cost for a moving violation in northern Colorado, especially given the community,” Finn said. “It’s not a wealthy community by any stretch, and (the surcharge) is a revenue generator. Call it what you want to, but the purpose is to increase the revenue to the general fund. To me, it’s wrong, especially when the people who benefit are the people who are giving out the tickets.”
The surcharge generates about $260,000 a year, going most recently to traffic-calming efforts in the police department’s traffic enforcement team. The money covers salary and benefits, as well as traffic safety expenses such as radar guns, traffic enforcement vehicles and education campaigns. The money has also gone to traffic-calming measures such as raised crosswalks, traffic circles and street closures.
A city study found the surcharge has delivered tangible benefits in education and enforcement efforts, but that “no hard evidence exists of specific safety benefits” from the construction projects. Therefore, city staff recommended that beginning in 2011 the roughly $260,000 be used to defray salary and benefit costs of seven officers assigned to the traffic enforcement team.
In a straw poll Tuesday, council members siding with Finn were Mayor Tom Norton, Maria Secrest and Charles Archibeque. Those favoring the surcharge were John Gates and Donna Sapienza; Sandi Elder remained neutral, but she said Wednesday she’d vote against the fee when it’s time to approve the budget. “In this economic time right now I would vote to get rid of the surcharge,” she said.
At the meeting, Finn said the fee amounts to a “bounty on the citizens of Greeley,” but Gates, a former police officer and current head of security for Greeley-Evans School District 6, said, “those that are violating should pay the freight.”
“I feel the traffic-calming surcharge is violator-based, and you don’t have to pay it if you don’t break the law,” Gates said Wednesday. “While nobody likes to get a ticket, traffic enforcement and any related surcharge do tend to have an effect on driver behavior.”
Police data show Greeley had 81 injury accidents in 2009, down 80 percent from 405 in 2005. The number of vehicle accidents also has shown steady decline. There were 3,357 accidents in the city in 2005, compared with 2,170 in 2009.
“Those numbers aren’t accomplished by sheer luck,” Gates said. “Nobody likes to get a ticket. I’ve had ’em and I don’t like it. But it’s all about enforcement and education. I feel education and enforcement have made our city safer, and the numbers flat make a believer out of me.”
Gates said he wouldn’t support the surcharge if it went to officer raises. He said the money allows the team to “buy things that are unpopular to some – radar guns, traffic enforcement vehicles and traffic education campaigns.”
Finn took issue with the fact that surcharge funds go mostly to enforcement team salaries and benefits. “It’s just such a conflict. I mean, my goodness, the more tickets you give out the more money that goes into the police fund.”
Further, he said, money spent on tickets means less spent locally.
“Insurance goes up for that person, and that money leaves the community. It goes to whatever insurance (company),” Finn said. “It’s not a good way to collect money for a general fund.”
The council plans to fill the revenue gap with money from the salary and benefit contingency fund. Historically, the city budgets 98 percent of salaries and benefits, counting on attrition to lessen overall expenses. But due to lower attrition in the last two years, the city set aside the contingency fund as a cushion in case turnover didn’t occur.
The fund stands at $602,162, and “the finance director felt comfortable we can dip into that,” City Manager Roy Otto said.