They each work about 30 hours a week. They have one computer to share and an office with some file cabinets and a kitchenette.
At a salary of $30 per person, per month (plus mileage), the 19-member Napa County grand jury is the best value you will find in local government today — a fact the 2010-11 assemblage has further proven with its report this week targeting Napa’s overpriced red-light cameras, which have missed their intended mark of improving safety.
The grand jury’s diligent research and presentation (available in full at napavalleyregister.com) brings the program’s deficiencies into stark relief, specifically the problems associated with the red-light camera at the intersection of highways 29 and 121.
The cameras were installed to improve safety, but this intersection’s camera instead flashes most frequently on right-turn violations that pose little to no safety risk.
An astounding 3,251 of the 4,143 tickets issued in the jury’s studied 15-month window at this intersection were for right-turn violations.
The grand jury takes particular issue with the inconsistency of the right turn’s yellow light in that time frame.
Caltrans, which has jurisdiction on the intersection, did not use approach times to set the interval for the yellow as required by California Vehicle Code, the jury found.
The yellow light interval has been adjusted from
3.2 seconds to 3.8 to its current, yet unofficial,
5.4 seconds, according to the jury’s report.
“How are drivers expected to comply with the law when the experts responsible for the traffic signal timing and enforcement must incrementally make adjustments to ‘get it right’?” the report asks.
As such, the grand jury is calling for refunds to all those who received right-turn tickets at that intersection while the yellow light did not meet California Vehicle Code for Automated Red Light Enforcement Intersections. That’s about 1,000 tickets or nearly $500,000 in fines.
Of course, the city — again, as the jury diligently details — received nowhere near that much in actual revenue after red-light vendor RedFlex, the state, the county and the court system got their shares of the pie.
The base fine for a violation has remained $100 for the last five years, but additional penalties and fees have steadily increased that sum to total a minimum of $475.
While the number of injury accidents in Napa has decreased from 1,154 in 2007 to just 606 in 2010, most of that improved safety occurred before the red-light cameras were installed in 2009, according to the report.
Only one right-on-red accident was reported in the five years prior to red-light camera installation at the intersection of Highway 29/121, the report states. None were reported since the camera was installed.
But that hardly justifies the $3.2 million in right-turn violations at the intersection assessed in that span of 15 months.
The city’s contract with RedFlex states that right-turn citations must be issued in order to guarantee “cost neutrality,” which is essentially a guarantee that the ARLE system will generate enough money to pay for itself.
Even still, the grand jury is calling for a moratorium on all camera-generated right-turn citations at the 29/121 intersection “until legal requirements for yellow light intervals are firmly established and in place.”
The jury’s findings and its recommendations are required reading for anyone interested in debating the red-light cameras’ merits ahead of the city’s potential contract extension with RedFlex this summer.
If its first report is any indication, this year’s grand jury is invested and concerned with improving the daily lives of Napa residents.
The red-light camera report and its recommendations are very citizen-friendly, even to the point of raising concern over contracting with companies outside Napa County and fees paid by Napa residents heading outside the area.
“It may be the most impactful report we do,” said jury forewoman Judith Bernat. “Because these cameras have impacted so many members of our community.”
Traditionally, the Napa County grand jury has released its yearlong findings at the end of its term. This year, in the hope of drawing more attention to each issue it addresses, it is releasing each topic separately.
While we won’t know what else the grand jury has been working on until it releases those findings, its first effort and its potential implications build great anticipation for those future reports and reflect the hard work and vigor put in by this group of concerned citizens.
http://napavalleyregister.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_84face24-5821-11e0-aa0c-001cc4c002e0.html
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