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Saturday
March 20, 2010 Since 1922 |
Red light petition given to city hall
By Jane Howard Lee
Contributor Published December 30, 2009 The man leading the fight against the city’s red light cameras took another step Tuesday to convince city officials to do away with the program.
Byron Schirmbeck presented City Clerk Leticia Garza with a large stack of petitions signed by people who want City Council to either do away with the cameras, or let citizens vote on the program.
Schirmbeck and a team of volunteers collected signatures by going door-to-door in some neighborhoods and by setting up signing stations in several local businesses.
“We have a total of 1,324 signatures,” he said as he turned over the petitions.
The only signatures that city officials will accept are those of registered voters who live in the city, so Schirmbeck and his volunteers took care to check each and every signature.
“The number of valid signatures we got is 668 and the minimum we had to get was 620,” he said.
The City Clerk’s office has up to 20 days to check the signatures and certify the results to City Council at its next meeting.
Once the results are certified and sent to City Council, council members are required to consider the petition. The municipal code states that “… a proposed initiative ordinance shall be read and provision made for a public hearing on the proposed ordinance.”
The code requires council to take final action on the ordinance within 60 days. If council members fail to approve the petition as submitted, an election must be scheduled within a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of 60 days. The vote can be a regularly scheduled election or a special election.
“We still anticipate a legal battle,” said Schirmbeck, “but we’ll do whatever we have to do to see that the people get a voice in this issue.”
Safety or revenue?
Schirmbeck got involved in the issue after receiving a citation for running a red light at the intersection of Garth and Baker roads. He contested the ticket, claiming that the yellow light interval was too short. His ticket was dismissed, but his battle to do away with the cameras was just beginning.
The heart of Schirmbeck’s argument is a belief that the city cannot prove that red light cameras have reduced accidents. Revenue, rather than safety, is the driving force behind the program, he claims.
To prove his point, Schirmbeck requested detailed accident data from the city and gathered other data from public sources. He checked those figures, made comparisons and found some discrepancies.
“With millions in fines and public safety at stake, the analysis of the red light camera accident data needs to be approached in an accurate, honest and scientifically sound method,” he said. “Small, simple addition errors can be magnified when expressed in terms of percentages. If the data is mined or manipulated to reach a predetermined conclusion, then the integrity of those creating that conclusion or propagating it is impugned.”
City officials recently confirmed some mathematical errors were made when statistics were compiled. They also said they had to extrapolate some data to meet state requirements, but they deny that figures were “fudged” to make the red light program look better.
Deliberately
misleading
Schirmbeck claims the mistakes were “a deliberate attempt to mislead Baytown City Council and the public.”
“The manipulation comes from the dishonest comparison of data on the bar graph presented to council,” he said. “What was withheld from this chart is that it is actually a comparison of 18 months of pre-installation data to just 12 months of post-installation data.”
Deputy City Manager Bob Leiper disagreed. He said the state’s reporting procedure requires information from 18 months before and 18 months after the installation of cameras, but Baytown’s cameras have not been up that long.
Also, the state changed the method of reporting after the last legislative session.
“To make a comparison, I had to redo the first year’s report,” said police Corporal Randy Rhodes, who manages the camera-generated citations and keeps records related to the program.
The new state requirements include all accidents within 500 feet of a red light camera intersection, while the old requirements only reported what happened within the intersection square – from curb to curb.
At a July meeting, assistant city attorney Ford Hamilton said he provided City Council members with statistics based on the first year’s report (the bar graph that Schirmbeck alluded to).
That data changed when city officials revised the report to meet new requirements from the Texas Department of Transportation (TX DOT).
“The numbers we came out with are just the best estimates we can come up with … we certainly haven’t fudged on the figures,” said Hamilton.
Rhodes said many of the errors cited by Schirmbeck came from the police department’s monthly crime statistics report.
For 2009, the number of accidents listed in those reports was 400 less than the actual number investigated.
For 2007, the total was off by more than 1,200.
“We need to talk to somebody about that,” said Leiper.
Contributor Published December 30, 2009 The man leading the fight against the city’s red light cameras took another step Tuesday to convince city officials to do away with the program.
Byron Schirmbeck presented City Clerk Leticia Garza with a large stack of petitions signed by people who want City Council to either do away with the cameras, or let citizens vote on the program.
Schirmbeck and a team of volunteers collected signatures by going door-to-door in some neighborhoods and by setting up signing stations in several local businesses.
“We have a total of 1,324 signatures,” he said as he turned over the petitions.
The only signatures that city officials will accept are those of registered voters who live in the city, so Schirmbeck and his volunteers took care to check each and every signature.
“The number of valid signatures we got is 668 and the minimum we had to get was 620,” he said.
The City Clerk’s office has up to 20 days to check the signatures and certify the results to City Council at its next meeting.
Once the results are certified and sent to City Council, council members are required to consider the petition. The municipal code states that “… a proposed initiative ordinance shall be read and provision made for a public hearing on the proposed ordinance.”
The code requires council to take final action on the ordinance within 60 days. If council members fail to approve the petition as submitted, an election must be scheduled within a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of 60 days. The vote can be a regularly scheduled election or a special election.
“We still anticipate a legal battle,” said Schirmbeck, “but we’ll do whatever we have to do to see that the people get a voice in this issue.”
Safety or revenue?
Schirmbeck got involved in the issue after receiving a citation for running a red light at the intersection of Garth and Baker roads. He contested the ticket, claiming that the yellow light interval was too short. His ticket was dismissed, but his battle to do away with the cameras was just beginning.
The heart of Schirmbeck’s argument is a belief that the city cannot prove that red light cameras have reduced accidents. Revenue, rather than safety, is the driving force behind the program, he claims.
To prove his point, Schirmbeck requested detailed accident data from the city and gathered other data from public sources. He checked those figures, made comparisons and found some discrepancies.
“With millions in fines and public safety at stake, the analysis of the red light camera accident data needs to be approached in an accurate, honest and scientifically sound method,” he said. “Small, simple addition errors can be magnified when expressed in terms of percentages. If the data is mined or manipulated to reach a predetermined conclusion, then the integrity of those creating that conclusion or propagating it is impugned.”
City officials recently confirmed some mathematical errors were made when statistics were compiled. They also said they had to extrapolate some data to meet state requirements, but they deny that figures were “fudged” to make the red light program look better.
Deliberately
misleading
Schirmbeck claims the mistakes were “a deliberate attempt to mislead Baytown City Council and the public.”
“The manipulation comes from the dishonest comparison of data on the bar graph presented to council,” he said. “What was withheld from this chart is that it is actually a comparison of 18 months of pre-installation data to just 12 months of post-installation data.”
Deputy City Manager Bob Leiper disagreed. He said the state’s reporting procedure requires information from 18 months before and 18 months after the installation of cameras, but Baytown’s cameras have not been up that long.
Also, the state changed the method of reporting after the last legislative session.
“To make a comparison, I had to redo the first year’s report,” said police Corporal Randy Rhodes, who manages the camera-generated citations and keeps records related to the program.
The new state requirements include all accidents within 500 feet of a red light camera intersection, while the old requirements only reported what happened within the intersection square – from curb to curb.
At a July meeting, assistant city attorney Ford Hamilton said he provided City Council members with statistics based on the first year’s report (the bar graph that Schirmbeck alluded to).
That data changed when city officials revised the report to meet new requirements from the Texas Department of Transportation (TX DOT).
“The numbers we came out with are just the best estimates we can come up with … we certainly haven’t fudged on the figures,” said Hamilton.
Rhodes said many of the errors cited by Schirmbeck came from the police department’s monthly crime statistics report.
For 2009, the number of accidents listed in those reports was 400 less than the actual number investigated.
For 2007, the total was off by more than 1,200.
“We need to talk to somebody about that,” said Leiper.