An ordinance to end Lafayette Consolidated Government's contract with red-light camera/speed van operator Redflex was shot down by a 6-3 vote Tuesday night.
Photo Illustration
An ordinance to end Lafayette Consolidated Government's contract with red-light camera/speed van operator Redflex was shot down by a 6-3 vote Tuesday night by the City-Parish Council, but amendments to the ordinance authorizing a new four-year contract with the company mean the expansion of the program will be modest than planned and the cameras will no longer snap photos of drivers' faces. The council also voted to move oversight of the program from the Traffic & Transportation Department to the Police Department.
Tuesday's sequence of votes, which included a handful of amendments, ended with the council deciding the program would be expanded for the time being to only four more intersections from the current 12; backers of the program were eyeing 17 additional intersections including state-administered city streets like Johnston Street as new cites for cameras.
The ordinance to end the SafeLight/SafeSpeed program was sponsored by Councilmen Jared Bellard, Andy Naquin and William Theriot - the only three councilmen to vote for the ordinance and against the amended ordinance authorizing a four-year extension. Naquin was also unsuccessful in an amendment to increase the yellow light time at intersections and Theriot failed to push through an amendment reducing the Redflex contract to two years.
View the Redflex portion of Tuesday's council meeting on-line here.