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FlaglerLive | March 27, 2017
The plan, termed a “wind down agreement,” would end the operation of the cameras by March 31 “by mutual agreement.” But Palm Coast would have to pay ATS $16,000 to remove equipment.
FlaglerLive | July 23, 2015
Palm Coast’s decision not to settle a lawsuit against it had looked like a mistake once the Supreme Court ruled red-light cameras illegal, until the plaintiff died and was not replaced on the lawsuit, allowing the city to slither out of the it.
FlaglerLive | April 15, 2015
The Florida Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal on a red-light camera case with a direct bearing on Palm Coast’s traffic-enforcement program. Five justices concurred in turning down the appeal, without explanation, as is customary when the court turns down a case.
FlaglerLive | March 24, 2015
While the restrictive proposal cleared its latest committee, 7-3, the bill’s only surviving measures would require cities to send our red-light camera notices by certified mail, and to use revenue for public safety programs.
FlaglerLive | March 17, 2015
A divided council still disagrees on the red-light cameras’ value. The city is being sued, but says the payout, should there be one, will be manageable.
FlaglerLive | March 11, 2015
The proposal and one like it in the Senate would further complicate Palm Coast’s troubled red-light camera program and its relationship with ATS, the private company running the local scheme. Right-turn on red tickets generate the majority of revenue.
FlaglerLive | March 10, 2015
The city would also reduce all operating cameras from 43 to just five. But it would also see its revenue per camera drop, from the current $700 per month to $350 per month. The city’s revenue from the cameras would drop from $361,000 to $21,000.
FlaglerLive | March 1, 2015
After coming close to suspending its red-light camera [program, the Palm Coast City Council has retreated, again exposing a willingness to do its camera vendor’s bidding before looking after its residents’ interests.
FlaglerLive | February 24, 2015
Fearful of a lawsuit from ATS, its red-light camera provider. the Palm Coast City Council says it would reduce the cameras from 43 to five, but not eliminate them, even if it means ending all its revenue from the cameras but preserving that of ATS.
FlaglerLive | December 9, 2014
The Palm Coast City Council is considering suspending–but not ending–its red-light camera program until courts rule more conclusively on the legality of the system.
FlaglerLive | November 25, 2014
While still issuing $158 fines for red-light violations, Palm Coast is for now no longer pursuing drivers who refuse to pay, so those drivers will not get the steeper $264 traffic citation. But those citations may be issued pending the outcome of a court case.
FlaglerLive | October 28, 2014
You may be better off not paying your red-light camera ticket in light of a court decision declaring issuance of those tickets illegal. Palm Coast is studying the ruling as its cameras continue to flash.
FlaglerLive | June 12, 2014
Palm Coast is on the hook for $1.19 million in fines it illegally imposed on drivers between 2007 and 2010, when it ran 10 red-light cameras outside state law. The Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 today that such schemes were not permissible. Palm Coast was sued but refused to settle, as did American Traffic Solutions, its contractor. So the city may now have to pay up.
FlaglerLive | May 20, 2014
The member-by-member assertion never to have accepted money or gifts from American Traffic Solutions, the red-light camera company that runs Palm Coast’s system, contrasts with an industry known for its lavish spending on lobbying state and local government officials.
FlaglerLive | May 14, 2014
Palm Coast’s contract with ATS to run the city’s red-light cameras runs through September 2019 but is mostly silent on monetary penalties should the city opt out. An earlier version of the contract had granted Palm Coast the authority to end it without cause, but the city inexplicably scrapped that provision in 2012.
FlaglerLive | May 13, 2014
The City of Palm Coast today submitted a 16-page memo to Flagler County Judge Melissa Moore-Stens explaining, without apologies, its absence from a hearing before the judge on April 30, an absence it sought to justify while hinting at blaming the court for being unclear about its intentions.
FlaglerLive | May 6, 2014
There were no dramatic moves Tuesday evening among council members or from the city manager. A dozen members of the public addressed the issue, as did City Manager Jim Landon, as did most of the council members and the mayor. But in the end, the most conclusive action was that the council should talk the matter over more thoroughly at a workshop soon.
FlaglerLive | May 2, 2014
With City Manager Landon saying drivers are feeling harassed by red-light cameras, Mayor Netts losing faith in their original purpose and council member Bill McGuire proposing an outright referendum on the matter, the backlash against ATS’s cameras has become so strong that the council will next week discuss the possibility of eliminating them.
FlaglerLive | March 27, 2014
Red-light cameras’ powerful lobby defeated Senate Transportation Chairman Jeff Brandes’s attempt to end the use of the devices, but several proposed restrictions are still moving through the Legislature, such as limiting profits to safety uses and requiring safety studies before cameras can be installed.
FlaglerLive | March 7, 2014
Palm Coast’s red-light cameras siphon off more than $2.5 million out of the local economy every year, in the share that goes to the state and to ATS, the company that runs the scheme, yet the city council quietly approved the deal through 2019, long past the terms of every one of the council members and some of their successors.
FlaglerLive | January 9, 2014
Besides no longer allowing municipalities and counties to install red light cameras after July 1, the proposal would cut fins to $83 and allow local governments to impose only a $25 surcharge on tickets to fund the existing systems, which would be allowed to continue. That would lower Palm Coast’s and its private provider’s take by two thirds, likely rendering the system too expensive to run.
FlaglerLive | November 1, 2013
In September, the 43 red-light cameras in Palm Coast generated $255,740 in fines, what would work out to an annual total of $3 million. The state and ATS, the private company running the system, took more than seven times the revenue share left Palm Coast, which means that the overwhelming majority of the money is leaving the local economy.
FlaglerLive | September 4, 2013
GOP Sen. Jeff Brandes blames red-light cameras “as backdoor tax increases,” but the Palm Coast City Council Tuesday reasserted its commitment to its 43 cameras even as they siphon out more than $3 million a year from the local economy–in taxes to state government, and in revenue to ATS, the Arizona-based company that runs the system.
FlaglerLive | August 22, 2013
The $1.7 million Palm Cast reaped in red-light camera fines between 2008 and 2010 may be at stake if the Florida Supreme Court rules such systems illegal after it hears the much-anticipated case on Oct. 8, with ramifications for numerous cities and counties across the state.
FlaglerLive | June 25, 2013
In a surprising and radical shift, Palm Coast City Manager Jim Landon used harsh words to describe the city’s red-light camera program, saying that while the system makes intersections safer, its harsh punishments are out of proportion with the crime, and Palm Coast’s drivers–and the city’s image–are suffering as a result. But he is less clear on how to improve the system, which he does not want dismantled.
FlaglerLive | June 11, 2013
The Palm Coast City Council will forego adopting steeper fines, of up to $408, for red-light camera tickets, but it has yet to find a solution to a problem particular to the city: the large number of people who pay their tickets but whose payments appear never to register with ATS, the company managing–and profiting from–the system, causing drivers headaches and additional costs.
FlaglerLive | May 28, 2013
New legislation gives local governments like Palm Coast authority to raise red-light camera ticket fines to $408 if a drivers contests the ticket and loses. Netts’s opposition signals a slight but discernible shift in the mayor’s thinking about red-light cameras.
FlaglerLive | May 4, 2013
A new law awaiting Gov. Scott’s signature returns hearings to the control of local governments that have red-light cameras, such as Palm Coast, and allows them to impose an additional fee of $250 on top of $158 tickets, when contested, among other changes.
FlaglerLive | March 14, 2013
If they become law, the restrictions would seriously crimp the use of red-light cameras as revenue generators, as is the case in Palm Coast, where up to 52 such cameras are in place–at least for the companies operating the cameras, since Palm Coast is guaranteed revenue regardless of the number of tickets issued.
FlaglerLive | March 1, 2013
The proposed law, by Sen. Joseph Abruzzo, would shift the burden of proof of a red-light violation to the government imposing the fine, it would eliminate citations for right-turns on red, and it would require a live, government representative at hearings to prove that a violation took place.
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