At Lorain City Council meeting last night, Nestor Traffic Systems presented a sales spiel about how wonderful these red light cameras are. It was an hour long presentation and after a little research proved to be the presentation of their lives.
You see Nestor is having severe financial problems. They had some major losses to the tune of 33.8 million dollars and are currently $27.2 million in debt. It's so bad, the NASDAQ is threatening to drop them from their stock exchange because they've gone below their lowest threshold of stock value at one dollar. It gets worse, Nestor stock is at 3 cents today. That wasn't a misprint. What can anyone get for 8 cents these days, ok you got me, Nestor stock, baa boom.
But what we have to remember, the city is having financial problems so any port in the storm might be appealing to generate revenue, even with a company ready to fold. But we have to view ourselves in future tense, how will this bode in the long run? We have such a wealth of information laid out by those who have been there and done this already. Please review the links on the left.
One after another cities, getting sued, having to pay back millions of dollars in fines, total state bans of these things. Is it any wonder this company is on the verge of bankruptcy? Must we dredge in the mud, knowing where it will eventually take us? Can we learn from others mistakes?
The presenter last night kept mentioning the City of Akron. Funny he didn't mention they are being sued in federal court over their system and it's legality. I imagine this company is named in the suit. Kind of an important detail as well as the financials. But then our City should be checking these companies out too. They have an obligation to determine solvency if they are considering a relationship that will involve millions of dollars. According to the plan, they will be collecting the money generated from tickets and paying us our portion.
So please review the information provided here. Think of Lorain in terms of the future. Think of yourself in the future paying bogus ticket after ticket. Waiting in line at the grocery store complaining to your neighbors about these cameras and then finally deciding to do something about them like so many other cities have. And realize right now we don't have to go down that path and repeat the history of so many cities. We don't have to enter this blindly in the name of revenue. Lets save ourselves the heartache and say no to this poor excuse for a money grab.
No comments:
Post a Comment