More California red light camera ticket issues.
The city of South San Francisco, California, failed to properly ratify its contract with American Traffic Solutions, the company in charge of automated red light camera traffic tickets. Thus, the 6800 tickets issued between August 14, 2009 and February 28, 2010 were declared invalid by the court.
The city council just agreed to pay the $250,000 bill submitted by the San Mateo County Superior Court to cover the administrative costs of processing $3 million worth of red light camera citation refunds.
The $250,000 bill is just an estimate. Refunds include the $446 cost of the ticket, plus interest calculated at a 7-percent annual rate, and the full cost of traffic school that any driver may have taken to avoid points on his license.
In California, the superior court system is responsible for dividing up the profit from each citation among a number of city, state and county agencies. Thus, they city will need to supply $1.5 million to begin the refunds. Court administrators will negotiate with the state for the return of its portion of the citation revenue. If the state fails to send a check, the court will withhold the correct amount from future traffic ticket payments.
Clearly it’s a messy situation no city wants to deal with.
For questions about this or similar situations in California, please contact a San Mateo traffic ticket attorney or other California traffic ticket lawyer.
