CameraGate:  Red-light safety or city revenue?

This guest piece is by several local residents working as volunteers with the Transportation Safety Coalition (TSC).  They spent months of their personal time seeking the documents about the red-light cameras and, once they had them, trying to make sense of them.  TSC provided the authors with the supporting documents and made clear any conclusions the authors draw in the below article are just that - their own conclusions.  All these participants would welcome the opportunity for a public hearing on the red-light cameras in order to address any discrepancies in their conclusions. However, with the complete refusal by the city to allow for public discussion, this article is their story of how this process unfolded.  Comments and corrections are welcome.  NWCitizen is open to a guest article from city hall or someone else connected with promoting the red-light cameras for Bellingham.  - John Servais

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Ever see something that just didn’t feel quite right and nags at you for days or weeks on end? Ever wake up in the middle of the night, sure you have seen something important, but you just can’t put your finger on it? That feeling is what led a small group of local citizens to embark on a local democracy rescue mission that a year later may have uncovered the evidence to answer a national debate – are red-light cameras being installed for revenue or safety?

Just like one of those weeknight 60-minute crime shows, it takes a lot of work to solve the mystery of who did it, the weapon used in the “crime,” and who was behind it. Here in Bellingham though, it’s been a long year for the amateur sleuths, not an hour-long drama. All the main characters are your neighbors. There are no professional investigators, no CSI team doing the work. And while we can produce a paper trail of facts, hypothesize on some issues missing in the timeline, and feel we have the smoking gun, we still don’t know who pulled the trigger. We hope one day we do.

Background
For the Transportation Safety Coalition (TSC), it begins when founder Johnny Weaver, a Whatcom Community College student, heard about the “serious safety problem” requiring red-light cameras as reported in a Bellingham Herald article in August 2010. This “serious safety problem” was a surprise to Weaver, as it was to many local residents, since most of us had not heard of a serious collision issue involving red-light-running in Bellingham. At that point, Weaver began talking to local friends and concluded a local voice was needed to participate on behalf of the community. And that’s how TSC was born.

Bellingham Police Department appears to lead the charge
It was not much later, on September 27, 2010, that two Bellingham Police Department officers gave a PowerPoint presentation to the city council regarding the need to install red-light and speed cameras. The PowerPoint presentation, narrated by BPD Officer Snider, used some very interesting national data, with a little local data mixed in. If you watch the video of the council meeting, the red-light camera presentation begins around minute 115.

This is when the mystery really begins. By the time that council session ended, a lot of information about red-light cameras had been discussed, with the mayor, clearly well versed in the details, filling in a lot of the gaps and stating, “this is not about revenue generation…” The entire presentation looked well rehearsed (especially with the mayor filling in the gaps,) and the council did not sound surprised by the information they were provided. We wondered who was providing them with all this information. Were they already working with a camera company? Or was this all about the city researching a real safety problem? This was our first red flag.

The council decided a public hearing would be appropriate, and we fully expected the city to take an issue this important to the public. The red light camera equipment would require a private, out-of-state corporation to tie their hardware into existing city transportation equipment on public roads. The roads and existing equipment had been funded, built, and maintained by generations of Bellingham residents. This would also be the first time (that we were aware of) our city was willing to turn law enforcement duties over to the private sector. The idea of involving the public in a thorough discussion was not only reasonable, but also prudent.

Public hearing cancellation raises big red flag
Unfortunately, that hearing was canceled due to two local tragedies that took the lives of a child and a college student. We grieved along with the rest of the city at the loss of life.

We, like many in the community, waited respectfully. But after several weeks the hearing had not been rescheduled. The meeting, which was expected to draw a large crowd, never took place. Instead, then City Council Chair Gene Knutson declared (at the weekly council meeting?) the hearing would not be rescheduled and the council had already heard enough from the public to make its decision.

According to the Bellingham Herald (“Bellingham council to decide traffic cameras without hearing”, Nov. 13, 2010), Knutson was quoted as saying, "We just feel that after learning more, we're just going to go ahead and do it."

That was red flag number two. Better yet, as flags go, this should have been called a red banner. You do not schedule – and then cancel - important public meetings about major issues, such as the installation of red-light cameras by a for-profit corporation, unless you have something to hide. Period. What was it the city didn’t want to discuss? Why had they chosen to provide so little technical data to the numerous citizens asking for it? Where was the scientific analysis necessary to come to this significant conclusion? And again, who was providing their talking points?

The city votes 6 to 1 to install cameras
The Bellingham City Council met on Nov. 22, 2010, to decide whether to move forward with the red-light camera program. Though a couple feet of snow had mostly shut down the city, the Bellingham council chambers were packed that night. Among the dozens of camera opponents were students, business people, regular citizens, an ex-police officer, and Tim Eyman. Opponents provided facts about American Traffic Solutions (ATS) the red light camera company, collision studies, personal stories, and information about cities dumping the cameras elsewhere across the nation. Everyone urged the council to re-schedule a proper public hearing. That evening Councilman Knutson said, “I don’t apologize for a minute for canceling the public hearing. Why would I want a public hearing if I’ve already made up my mind?” 

Every council member except Seth Fleetwood said the red-light cameras were not about revenue but about safety. The city moved to approve cameras on a 6 to 1 vote. Fleetwood was the only vote against the cameras.

Initiative begins
Johnny Weaver began exploring the possibility of starting an initiative to give the citizens of Bellingham the opportunity to vote on red-light cameras. He fully expected to go it alone. Some camera opponents did not want to pursue an initiative, and some reluctantly got involved because they were impressed by Weaver's tenacity. Most volunteers had never been involved in an initiative, and most were not excited about the prospect of losing their weekends. As there were no funds for a regular campaign, the group chose the Bellingham Farmer’s Market as the main location to collect signatures and educate the public about the camera program.

Enter Tim Eyman
While there are some who believe Tim Eyman led the entire Bellingham initiative effort, nothing could be further from the truth. But we would not have succeeded without Eyman's willingness to advise us on how to start the initiative, how to organize local citizens to help, and at times offer technical support along the way. This was a Bellingham/Whatcom County grass roots effort, run by a college student and a ragtag team of local residents from across the political spectrum. Our volunteers have given almost a year of their lives to try to stop something we feel goes to the core of our democracy. Eyman helped give birth to Initiative 2011-01, which we are truly grateful for, but democracy learns quickly to walk on its own. And that’s what we did.

Documents revealed and deleted from city website
As the election approached, the Herald reported on a number of issues pertaining to the red-light cameras here and elsewhere around the state. Our own research hadn’t stopped. In fact, we discovered a city webpage, with the title, “Fiscal Alternatives For Stability Taskforce (FAST).” This taskforce included city department heads, managers, and city council members Stan Snapp and Gene Knutson. Pike appointed the group in November 2008 to find new ways of doing business that would provide sustainable, lower-cost approaches to meeting the City's mission. 

Attached to the webpage was a 74-page financial document. Both the webpage and financial document were dated May 2009.  The opening paragraph of the webpage stated, “An internal study group identified City deficit reduction ideas totaling more than $8 million in a report provided this week to Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike. The recommendations focus primarily on spending reductions, though a few describe options for increasing revenue.” One of the 34 recommendations FAST suggested was, “Install a limited number of automated citation cameras in school zones with high levels of infractions and intersections with the most accidents due to drivers running red-lights.” 

For the first time we knew revenue was a big part of the red-light camera program, if not the biggest. What was intriguing was that the 74-page document contained some interesting messaging about red-light cameras as well as anticipated annual revenue to the city of $500,000. This document was revealing and raised another red flag. How did they know they could generate a half-million dollars per year as early as May 2009?

Then, on Sept. 25, 2011, the Bellingham Herald posted the article, “Bellingham council, candidates weigh importance of anti-traffic camera initiative,” wherein council members each stated it was never about revenue. That afternoon a comment was posted on the Herald's online comments section in response, and urged readers to "Google: FAST and City of Bellingham." The post directly scolded council members for their comments in the article. Before posting the comment, which led to the two COB financial documents, the poster verified the documents were still available on the COB website. 

Within 24 hours, the City of Bellingham removed the FAST webpage. The document had been online for roughly two and a half years. Our emails to the council and the mayor asking who had authorized the removal were ignored. Then last month, during the KGMI mayoral debate, the mayor commented that the documents were "taken offline because we automatically take things down after a year."

By this time, everyone on our team realized we were missing something big. What could be so important in that document to make it worth removing after being brought out in the Herald? We still aren’t really sure, except the messaging is similar to other messaging quoted by the mayor and others in media, online, and in meetings. And the messaging included a cost estimate, which the city could not have produced on its own. Like K-9 dogs picking up a scent, we became more focused on the trail and began scrutinizing every document and news article quote. Our research efforts became a major priority. And so the disappearing document leads to another…

Disappearance leads to more documents: Police Protection 2030 Task Force

The FAST report led to the discovery of the Police Protection 2030 Task Force commission, appointed by Mayor Dan Pike and also found by methodically sifting through documents on the web. This document revealed more about the camera program and made it clear a serious amount of work was already underway on the project. “Recent collections of data gathered from observations of select intersections and school zones revealed a large number of law violations…”

What were we missing? Where was ATS, the red-light camera company, in all this? Were they already under contract? Had they been feeding the city information all along? We were beginning to realize that ATS must have been involved since at least mid-2009, more than a year before the public meeting. As the campaign ground on, we continued to seek the missing piece of the puzzle. 

Documents create more questions, TSC pays for answers
The documents on the city webpage, video of council meetings, and quotes by public officials in newspapers created a paper trail showing a lot of repeated talking points, but very little proof or tangible evidence regarding safety. But there was a lot of “selling” the public on red-light cameras through a limited amount of traffic analysis. We had questions about the data, and the city refused to answer. Having researched how data should be compiled for such a massive undertaking, and having researched the problems other city’s were having proving or disproving the need for cameras, we started to pursue a secondary strategy of researching red-light camera safety on our own. We decided it was time to bring in the professionals.

According to the Federal Highway Administration (http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/redlight/cameras/ipl_guide.cfm), “A red-light camera must work in harmony with the traffic signal at an intersection. It is therefore essential for traffic engineers to be involved in determining whether or not the existing signal system at a particular intersection is compatible with red-light camera applications or if it needs to be modified. Research shows that yellow-interval duration is a significant factor affecting the frequency of red-light running and that increasing yellow time to meet the needs of traffic can dramatically reduce red-light running… In a similar vein, once problem intersections are identified, it is advisable that a traffic engineer be called upon to review the intersection and approach geometry, signal timing details, and other relevant engineering features to ensure that the red-light running problem is behavioral and not the result of an engineering shortcoming. Cameras should be considered/installed only after engineering solutions have been proven ineffective where there is a red-light running problem.”

The city refused to show the public any data proving a serious safety problem (collisions causing injuries or deaths), and we found this refusal to show data had been a problem other cities had experienced. So we hired a well-respected engineering firm to research one proposed intersection in Bellingham. It was a choice of spending our limited funds (mostly our own) on a small advertising campaign, or giving the public some actual science. We hoped the media would pick it up and force the city to respond. It was a gamble. 

We chose Gibson Traffic Consultants Inc. of Everett because they were well respected and had worked for the state and multiple municipalities. The research involved using both Washington State Department of Transportation data (collected by the Washington State Patrol) and city crash data obtained through public disclosure. Guide Meridian was chosen because of the high volume of traffic and the 35 mph speed limit. The other intersections considered were 25 mph, so the Guide should have had more serious collisions.

The report concluded, “the collision data does not support the introduction of red-light cameras.” Specifically, the study determined that photo enforcement had the potential to reduce right angle red-light running collisions by less than one per year, while increasing rear end collisions by an average of nearly five per year for this particular intersection.

Their review of the data showed that in the most recent five years for which data was available, only one collision was caused by red-light running, but none of the right-angle or stop light collisions resulted in any injuries. During that time period, roughly 3.65 million vehicles drove through the intersection. One fender-bender per 3.65 million vehicles should bring the integrity of this entire program into question and bring this project to a grinding halt.

The report also quoted a 2010 Institute of Transportation Engineers Journal article which stated red-light cameras are normally installed after a traffic engineering evaluation showed all reasonable countermeasures - such as increasing yellow light timing and improving visibility - have been tried. It further noted the reason to “conduct such investigations and corrections before resorting to additional enforcement” is that research has shown the cameras can increase collisions.

We felt we finally had all the proof we needed. Unfortunately, the report would gain little traction with local media, though it did make news in other papers around the state, and was posted internationally by the National Motorists Association of Australia. It was also referenced in the just-released WashPirg report titled, “Red-Light Cameras Ahead: The Risks of Privatizing Traffic Law Enforcement and How to Protect the Public.”

Our research leads to one unavoidable conclusion: we, the citizens of Bellingham, were being duped. But what could we do to prove it, when our adversary was a multimillion dollar company, backed by a multibillion dollar bank, and we believed the city was helping them cover their tracks?

Where does ATS fit in?
Roughly five weeks ago the question of what role ATS played became clearer. As we sifted through the remaining data we had, and pondered the timeline, someone realized there had been an early Public Disclosure Request that had been quickly browsed, but never really reviewed. That was when the pieces fell together.

The PDR was 115 pages of emails, mostly between ATS’ Bill Kroske, Vice President of Business Development, and the Bellingham Police Department. And the emails dated back to June 2008 - a full year before we thought ATS had “boots on the ground” in Bellingham. (Editor's note: Bill Kroske was caught posting to the Everett Herald recently under the name JHoward from the ATS Arizona office, and may have been dismissed from office.)

What we found in the emails was disheartening and appeared to prove revenue was the primary focus.

Here are a few samples:
Page 3. June 9, 2008: Kroske makes travel arrangements with Bellingham Police Department Sgt. David Richards, to fly to Bellingham on the 17th.

Page 22. Aug. 18, 2008: BPD to Kroske: City council is aware of red-light camera program two years before first public meeting and has questions about revenue.

Page 26. Oct. 14, 2008: Kroske to city: “We are working hard to get the Eyman proposal killed - hope the people up there are two. Once that is defeated I hope we will be able to move forward on a program for Bellingham.”

Page 37. Dec. 24, 2008: Kroske photo, decked out in Santa hat, Christmas card to city: “Have a wonderful holiday season! I'm looking forward to our working together in 2009...”

Page 41. Jan. 23, 2009: Kroske to Snider: “The income issue really relates to the numbers of intersection violations, and schools on busy streets... which create the most significant numbers.”

Page 44. April 21, 2009: Snider and Kroske plan to meet: “Chief Ramsay and City CAO Webster would like to meet with you about our photo enforcement plans.  I think they may bring other City officials to the meeting too.”

Page 59. May 7, 2010: BPD to Kroske more than six months before first hearing: “As we discussed, the city is moving forward with plans for photo enforcement, but it has not passed through the city's political process and you are assuming some risk of financial loss (site survey expenses), if for whatever reason, the plans for photo enforcement don't work out here in Bellingham.”

Page 65. July 15, 2010: Kroske to BPD; “… as you can tell by the numbers these sites generate substantial returns.” 

Page 85. Sept. 28, 2010: BPD to Kroske: "Bill, Do you have any suggestions for published study results to use in regards to the argument that intersection photo enforcement increases accident rates.”

Page 89. Oct 1, 2010: Kroske to BPD: “As a vendor the media doesn’t want to hear from us, but they are anxious to hear from the city and public. If you agree, we will prepare some letters for submission to the press by people in the community. Attached is a sample letter designed to come from the chief or other senior PD staff. We can do the letters if you can arrange for people to submit them.”

Page 91. Oct. 8, 2010: Kroske to BPD, wants to send pro-camera responses to newspaper: "One negative blogs had a list of ten challenges to the camera program. I have prepared a response to each (attached). I am sure Jarred would print it if you wanted to submit it.”

Page 96. Nov. 18, 2010: Kroske email to BPD: "I understand Eyman is planning to come up to the meeting to support the local college group of agitators (the name sounds like a collage age group at least!). Here is a link of what Eyman had to say in Monroe, and noting he was heading up to Bellingham (click on Speed cameras). What a megalomaniac - he is eating up all the press he is getting.”

Where do we go from here?
We now feel we have the majority of the mystery solved. However, we still don’t know who pulled the trigger. We've heard that in other cities it is typically the mayor, not law enforcement, who receives the first sales pitch. That makes sense, since the mayor would be the starting point for a discussion about revenue. If it were strictly about safety, we would have expected the discussion to begin in the Bellingham Traffic Engineering office. We don’t know if that was the case in Bellingham, though it has been clear for some time (in our opinion) that our mayor was heavily involved from the very beginning. We also feel strongly that this work should have been done and brought forward by the traffic engineering department and not our police department.

It’s hard not to feel our BPD were pawns in a very high-stakes game. We respect our police department, and are concerned the public doesn't understand that licensed engineers are responsible for roadway design and safety changes, whereas our police are responsible for enforcement. We believe this misunderstanding is intentionally used as part of the process to get the camera programs pushed through the process and installed without questions.

What happens now is out of our hands. Now that the election is over and the public overwhelmingly approved our initiative, we expect a thorough review of the entire process. We expect the document generated by Gibson Traffic Consultants of Everett to be read by the council and mayor and action to be taken, either agreeing with or denying its findings.

Furthermore, a clear baseline for determining success or failure of the entire camera program should be determined before moving forward - if we have no choice but to move forward. Hopefully, this time it will be done by certified traffic engineers from the City of Bellingham as we trust they will put our safety first. That is what they are paid to do and are most likely to understand the science of our city’s traffic safety concerns.

We strongly believe installing cameras where there is proof a collision problem does not exist will actually create more collisions with the potential to seriously hurt Bellingham drivers. If there is a serious collision safety problem – prove it – and let’s look at fixing it. If not, let’s not hurt people just to make the city extra revenue.

While we await an answer from the city on their next steps, we are not sitting idle. On Tuesday, November 14, a letter was mailed to the state Attorney General and State Auditor asking them asking them what the appropriate process would be to initiate a complete review of the steps taken between American Traffic Solutions and the City of Bellingham. We believe the city has not worked in the public's best interest and our rights were intentionally compromised during the last three years, yet we also know we are not the experts to be answering such complicated questions. We can only hope that we will get some assistance, and we can work together with the city to put this behind us.

Finally, we also hope a couple lessons have been learned: the public process should not be thwarted; and when used properly, the right of initiative has an important place in our democracy. We should never allow our constitutional rights to be privatized when entering into a public/private partnership.