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When taxes fail, Liberty turns to fees

If use of speed cameras really is being adopted in local communities for safety reasons — not for the significant financial gain camera use brings — then why is Liberty Township’s board of trustees adopting policies about ticketing unsuspecting motorists on Interstate 80, and then practically salivating over how to spend the money they are anticipating?

Why did the two newest Liberty trustees, Arnie Clebone and Greg Cizmar, call for the resignation of longtime law director Mark Finamore whose legal opinion was that Ohio law does not allow township police departments authority on interstates, only to replace him with local attorney Cherry Poteet who had opined conversely in speed camera advice for another local township.

Poteet has now offered an opinion that Liberty Township police may ticket speeders on I-80. She says although townships don’t have arresting authority on interstate highways, civil traffic violations sent through the mail do not constitute an arrest. Therefore, let the ticketing begin!

In the first week of doing so, Liberty Township generated $11,678 in fines, township officials said.

An opponent of the idea of policing for profit with use of speed cameras, Trustee Jodi Stoyak said this: “In my opinion, the police force has more important things to do than take pictures of traffic. We have an excellent police force, and they have better things to do than push a button and write a ticket.”

But Clebone, seeing dollar signs, pointed out that neighboring Girard had already generated $1.2 million by using speed cameras on I-80 last year. (We would argue that was $1.2 million sucked from the local economy that could have been spent in local businesses.) Clebone said, however, that Liberty was struggling financially and needed to pursue every opportunity for generating revenue.

Clebone and Cizmar approved splitting the money raised by the speed cameras for the next six months with half going to the police fund and half going to the general fund.

Stoyak, who voted no on the decision to replace Finamore, did not vote on the distribution of speed camera revenue because the meetings where discussions and the vote were held were at a time when Stoyak said she could not attend.

So, now it appears we’ve come full circle with many local communities consistently arguing that the traffic cameras are being used for increased safety measures to now admitting that they are being used to generate revenue in a money grab from unsuspecting motorists, many passing through the township from out of the area.

Perhaps that’s their way of avoiding a pushback from ticketed local constituents who we’ve been hearing from in a chorus of vows to vote no on all future levy attempts.

It appears to us these trustees have adopted this adage: If you can’t tax your way out of a fiscal difficulty, simply create new fees.

editorial@tribtoday.com

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