The Report the RTM Never Saw: The Ticket Machine Runs at One Speed

This is an open letter to Fairfield's Representative Town Meeting, which voted 25 to 12 on August 24 to confirm the town's speed camera plan.

Dear members of the RTM,

On August 24 you voted to confirm the town's speed camera program. Eight days later, the Board of Finance received the program's first financial report, its hearing data compiled through August 26. By spectacular coincidence, the program's first full accounting was finished just late enough to miss the only vote that could have acted on it, and addressed to a board that cannot. I want to walk through what was in front of you that night, and what was not.

What you had was the police department's report, on scanned pages that could not be searched. It told you safety had improved 88 percent. That number compares launch week to late July, and in between, on June 16, the Town Attorney suspended the reduced school-zone speed limits for the summer. The 20 mph windows that generated most "speeding events" stopped existing. School let out. The measuring stick changed and the traffic changed, and the report presented the resulting drop as changed driver behavior.

Your packet also contained the number that measures the same thing all the way through: tickets. June, 25,458. July, 25,045. While speeding supposedly collapsed 81 percent, ticket output fell 1.6 percent. And your packet contained the report's most remarkable sentence: nearly 75 percent of the total reduction in speeding happened during the free warning period, before a single fine was issued. The signs and warning letters did the safety work. The fines added revenue. By the report's own numbers, they added nothing else.

Now, what you did not have. The financial report shows that violations entering review fell 24 percent from June to July while the police approval rate rose from 73 percent to 94 percent, holding output at 25,000 tickets a month. The input varies and the output does not. It shows the vendor collecting 29 percent of gross revenue. It puts a number, $1,355,492, on what the CFO told you at the August 17 informational meeting: the program's surplus is absorbed by roadway paving the town was already doing. And it shows that of the citations a hearing officer has actually decided, 73 percent were thrown out, including dozens where no one even appeared to argue.

Why did the legislative body confirming this program not receive the financial report that the Board of Finance received a week later? I would like someone to ask that question on the record.

The ordinance drafting committee the RTM created that same night now owns all of these numbers. I will be watching what it does with them, and so will all the households in all ten districts who used fairfieldspeedcams.netlify.app to write to you. So, I suspect, will the twelve of you who voted no, and whoever fills the seats of the eight colleagues who, as one of your own members noted on the record that night, have resigned since this program came up. The full roll call of both votes, member by member, has been published and is searchable here.

Sincerely yours,

Emily E. H. Hau

Emily Hau is a Fairfield resident and a filed candidate for state representative in the 132nd District. Sources for every figure in this letter are at fairfieldspeedcams.netlify.app.