Smith: Photo Radar Cutbacks...

Newton's 3rd Law of Motion

By just the heading alone…I know that a lot of heads will be scratched wondering just what in the hell I’m talking about…

Most at least are familiar with Newton’s Third Law, if not by name, by rule:

For every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.

But still not having any idea of how this relates to Photo Radar…

You see…Premier Smith and the UCP have decided to cut the Cash Cow that is Photo Radar, by 70% in the province - because when comes down to it…these are just a taxation, that offer no actual safety, to drivers on unfamiliar patches of roads - where these cams are set up at intersections for both speed and as Red Light Cameras including the numbers of locations where police will park roadside for easy pickings where lights may not always be favorable.

This will absolutely be welcomed by Albertans - myself included - who use tools like Waze on their cellular devices to avert the fines with notifications lent by fellow motorists.

But what does this mean for the budgetary shortfalls created by cutting these programs?

Both major cities in Alberta - Edmonton and Calgary - are run, predominantly, by fools…they don’t seem to understand that we don’t have a taxation problem, people already struggling to feed their families…we have an out of control spending problem.

Where Calgary has around a ratio of 9 Communications Personnel for every every councilor we have, with an additional $60k in spending on Communications in the budget…just watched as one EV Bus company went tits up only to invest in another, for buses that are impractical and unproven in Calgary…that ballooned spending from $10 Million on Fluoridating the water to $28 Million and tried to rationalize a shorter Greenline - that could never pay off it’s costs - for an increased budget, to Hose Calgarians an additional $600 Million in Property Taxes for 2025.

Where we need to borrow $1 Billion Dollars to fix our water infrastructure, that the city taxes around $1 Billion per year to maintain…

It’s pure lunacy.

But a lot of folk don’t seem to remember back in 2019, when Calgary City Police were facing a budgetary shortfall and needed to add more officers and the city told them that they’d have to raise these revenues through writing tickets.

So…during the Spring Street Sweeping of 2019, April 1st to July 30th, 23,762 fines were issued which was close to double this amount (12,119) from the year previous.

Now, as close as I could find, for municipal and provincial revenues from Photo Radar, there was $203 Million - speed and intersection ‘safety’ cameras - this from 2019/2020.

That’s not total fines…these are just the cams.

And with the potential increase, given the population increase of around 5% for the province of Alberta…and a 70% decrease in these fines…the money will have to come from someplace or we’ll be running greater shortfalls on our city policing services.

As this is set to begin on December 1stn 2024 and finish the cuts by April 1st, 2025…this will absolutely have an impact on our budget that will of course be pushed onto property taxes, driving up the cost of living and rentals for next year.

I get it…

Photo radar sucks…was only meant as a temporary program, was supposed to make the roads more safe and never actually did this.

Photo radar has been added where for the almost 5 million Albertans we have 2200 photo radar locations where the 16 Million population of Ontarians only have 600…needs a reduction and shouldn’t be used as a funding tool for our police services.

But in grand scheme of things…where crime has increased proportional to poverty in the city and through the federal - catch and release programs - the equal and opposite reaction to this is, we’ll be paying more in taxes, where revenues will still have to be generated by turning more police officers into traffic cops, while we could potentially see an even greater decline on policing for safety and security of the properties we’re being taxed on as both poverty and crime will continue to rise.

More policing will result in less actual policing…

Less revenues will result in higher taxations…

And this folks, wraps up my thoughts on Newton’s 3rd as applied to photo radar ticketing in the province of Alberta, in that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

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