Former Baldwin Councilman Jeff Parrish approached the Baldwin City Council Monday night to discuss issues he, and other citizens, have with the city’s speed zone outside of Balwin Elementary School.
Parrish told the council that many citizens have come to him with their frustrations surrounding the speed zone, which issues tickets during school hours to people driving 11 miles per hour, or more, over the speed limit during school hours. Those concerns surrounded citizens contesting tickets, the revenue generated by tickets and a lack of protection for school children.
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The police chief at the time the cameras were installed told the council that if a person wanted to contest their ticket, they could do so in the city’s municipal court. Parrish says that wasn’t true.
“That’s clearly what we were told, [but] that’s not what can happen,” he told the council.
Parrish says that when people receive those tickets if they want to contest them they have to go through the speeding camera company, Blue Line Solutions, which determines the validity of their contested ticket.
“This is a civil ticket. The only thing a person can do is expect to get a civil hearing, it’s not even referred to as court. So if they feel like they got the citation in error, what they can do once they’ve gotten the citation is they can contact Blue Line by filling out their forms and writing their narrative, and then Blue Line gets to decide whether they can have a civil hearing or not.”
Parrish, who was on the Baldwin City Council when the speed zone cameras were approved, says that they were given inaccurate information and that that inaccuracy sets a precedent for other issues, like the revenue generated by the tickets, coming to light.
Protecting Baldwin Elementary’s children
Willingham Avenue runs parallel to Baldwin Elementary School’s playground separated from the road by grass and a chainlink fence. The speeding camera was presented to the city as a deterrent to drivers who would drive unsafely by the school, but Parrish claims that the speed zone wasn’t about protecting children— it was about making money off of Baldwin’s speeders.
The council disagreed.
“This was the [former police] chief’s idea and my idea, and it was all for the safety of [those] kids hanging on that chainlink fence,” Councilman Larry Lewallen told Parrish. “If these people can’t abide by the law and do what the law says, that’s like somebody out here running drugs. If they’re doing something illegal, they need to be caught.”
Parrish says the council should have looked at adding infrastructure around the school to slow cars down, like speed bumps in the roads, or building a barrier in between the road and the playground to keep cars that go off the road away from the children. He also said the school could move its playground behind the school.
“First of all, we as a council, myself included, should have considered alternatives to the safety of those children at school,” Parrish said. “That speed zone camera is not going to stop one DUI driver, or anybody else speeding through there, if it goes off the road and hits those children.”
Councilwoman Alice Venter and Councilman Lewallen told Parrish that those ideas were easier said than done.
Lewallen said that due to the roads surrounding the elementary school, the students couldn’t all be moved behind the school to use the playground. Venter said the road is county-owned, and that any changes to that road would have to be done by the county, not Baldwin.
The meeting began to get heated when Councilwoman Venter brought up that the only reason people were frustrated with the speed zone was because they received a ticket for speeding in a school zone, something that she called “disturbing.”
“If you were speeding in a school zone, you are breaking the law,” Councilwoman Venter said. “And you are upset that you got caught endangering children?”
Parrish agreed with Venter that speeding in a school zone was wrong, but continued to show disapproval for the school zone speed cameras. The issue he continued to bring forward was that the council needed to use the ticket revenue to protect the elementary schoolers.
“I think the problem people are having with revenue, is that it appears . . . it’s all about safety for the kids, but we’re not spending the revenue on safety or the kids,” Parrish said.
Speed zone revenue
The city receives the majority of ticket revenue from the speed zone, with a portion going to Blue Line Solutions per their agreement with the company. Baldwin currently uses speed zone revenue to supplement the city’s public safety department needs, like upgrading fire department gear and purchasing new equipment for the police department.
Parrish argues that money shouldn’t be given to the city’s public safety, and should be improving safety around the school, either by investing in infrastructure changes or giving those funds to the school system to implement safety changes.
Parrish also brought up that he believes the city is illegally running the speed cameras because the city does not have a 24/7 police department, which he says Georgia law requires cities who run radar speed-checking technology to have.
The city says they will have their attorney look into the legalities he brought up, but their police chief, Jeff Branyon, who was present at the meeting says they are in compliance with laws surrounding radar technology.
Hearing concerns
Even with tensions running high as Parrish and Councilwoman Venter argued their positions, the council listened to and responded to the concerns he presented.
“Through the thinly veiled allegations and the insults, I do see some validity to this,” Councilman Maarten Venter told Parrish. “First off, understand that I come from a police state originally. I abhor cameras and abhor everything associated with surveillance. That being said, the decline in the number of feed trucks barreling down Willingham Avenue, which have nearly hit me several times, is welcome.”
Parrish suggested the council should change the protocol of the speed zone to make the first ticket a warning, and any subsequent tickets would be fined. The council did seem interested in looking into changing the speed zone’s protocol to fit a first-time-offense warning system.
“I do agree, I’ve always thought the first ticket should be a warning,” Councilman Venter said. “With that being said . . . a lot of people are happy to spout off on social media and run their mouth, but when the rubber meets the road and they can come in here and talk, like you did today, to the council, the decision-makers, nobody wants to do it.”
Councilman Venter and Mayor Joe Elam both encouraged concerned citizens to share their concerns with the council so that they could get a better understanding of the community’s concerns with the speed zone.
The city’s attorney is looking into the legal issues Parrish raised, and the council expressed interest in further discussing changes to the ticketing process to make the first ticket a warning.
