Archive for January 6th, 2009

Times are tough, we get it. Belts are tightening both in the private sector and at every level of government.  In desperate times people (and governments) do desperate things. Today Pima County voted 3-2 to join the City of Tucson and State of Arizona by getting into the highly profitable photo radar business. Make no mistake this is nothing more than a tax on drivers, call is safety, call it law enforcement but we know what’s up. The three Democratic Supervisors voted in unison with the two Republicans, Ray Carroll and Ann Day standing up for civil liberties and seeing this new revenue stream as nothing more than a shake down. Surely there are other areas the county could cut back on before joining the speed enforcement bandwagon. We’ll put a list of suggestions together for another post.

The good news is, smart people are finding ways around the photo radar systems. I had a talk with Charlie the owner of  The Specialist this afternoon and learned that these things have become so bad in Phoenix that innovative entrepreneurs have used GPS technologies to outsmart the cameras. There are products you can buy that sync your GPS into a national database of speed enforcement cameras. My linking up daily even the mobile enforcement vehicles are being uploaded into your GPS system. When you get into the photo speed enforcement zone the unit starts beeping and letting you know to slow down. Seems like a lot of work and planning which could be avoided by simply slowing down but leave it up to good old ingenuity.

These things are getting out of control and based on the comments from the Star’s online version the people know what’s up.

Oh and if they don’t get you with the photo radar or the red light cameras the State will hit you with the new license plate frame law. They ding you $135 for the vanity coveryou got for fathers day that read ‘Worlds Greatest Fisherman’.  What next, dirty car citations, ridiculous spinning rims tickets, poor gas mileage warnings?

A bit more about photo radar tactics HERE 

More-enlightened police forces in North America are aware people do not deliberately speed out of malice or disregard for the law. They realize the majority of motorists speed because of inattention or distraction and that raising awareness is much more effective than punishment in keeping the roads safe.

If you travel Interstate 5 in Northern California, you will see a number of electronic signs along the highway at select locations. Wherever the posted speed is critical to safely negotiating a dangerous corner, the highway patrol have installed solar-powered, radar-operated traffic signs. Only instead of the radar taking your picture and mailing you a ticket 3 weeks later, it displays your actual speed immediately so you can slow down in time to negotiate the turns safely. Of course, the highway patrol doesn’t make any money from this technology but they do manage to save lives and protect citizens… which after all should be the primary purpose of any police agency.

In less-traveled areas, the California highway patrol employs the same technology effectively using mobile trailers. Called SMART for “Speed Monitoring Awareness Radar Trailers”, these solar-powered trailers can be towed wherever they are needed and can be set up in minutes to help motorists slow down. They are extremely effective at making drivers more aware of their speed.

 

PHOTO RADAR ISN’T ABOUT SPEEDING (EDMONTON STATS)
But, of course, Photo Radar isn’t about speeding, it’s about revenue. And we didn’t need this sorry episode in CalgaryAlberta to prove that.

It was announced on January 5th, that the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce(TMCC) has announced its Man of the Year and Founders award (Man of Year Larry Hecker and Founders Award Don Diamond). I know that anything that comes from the TMCC is not that important.  Camper has been there way too long and has guided the Chamber to shining example of irrelevance.  On the advocacy side of things, they seem to enable the status quo that the cloth in this town revel in.  As one of those sickos that actually goes to the various City, County and Town meetings, I have never seen a TMCC rep. there to call the electeds out when they make decisions that hurt small businesses(signage, p and z, development services).  But back to the awards.

We live in a city that was in a economic malaise long before our present national crisis.  We have some the highest crime(on a per capita basis) in the US. Our public school system is not very good.  We built a baseball stadium in the worst spot ever and lost a baseball team.  We have a tourism bureau with no accountability underselling our destination.  We lost a football bowl game.  Tucson was named the most unfriendly city to do business in Arizona.  We spent $80 million on Rio Nuevo with nothing to show for it.  The city hired Glenn Lyons out of Calgary with no visible means of paying him. They forced out the former director of the Downtown alliance and replaced him with the wife of Nina Trasoff’s chief of staff.  We have a county that spends hundreds of millions of tax dollars to buy open land. The list goes on.

Sad to say, the honorees are knee deep in some or most of the things mentioned above. If not involved, at least they are enablers for those that are.  They thrive on the confusion and infighting of all the electeds.  From what I see, the honorees actually have not done anything to help the small business community.  Their history is profit for themselves and the powers that be in this town.  Keep going the way they are and there won’t be any little guys and girls to lord over soon.  We will all have to move someplace else.

So, in retrospect, these are the perfect honorees for the TMCC.  Congratulations, TMCC you’ve screwed up again. 

Happy New Year.