by Kenneth Balog

The latest project of the Clueless City Council to bite the dust concerns the traffic cameras that were supposed to end accidents and other violations on city streets.  Also, it has apparently become evident that the project has cost we taxpayers another bundle of money, rather than ease the burden of paying taxes in the first place.

So, are we going back to the days when police officers and deputies and constables issued traffic tickets for violations?  If so, wasn’t the idea of the cameras a waste of time and money?  Sure it was, and I wonder if the cuckoos on the Clueless council will admit that they made a mistake.  I wouldn’t bet on it.

I am not surprised that the Camera project failed, but I am surprised that no one has yet called for an audit or investigation of the financial part of the operation.  For some reason or another, I, being a suspicious sort of person, got a whiff of something rotten as far back as when members of the Council started batting the camera idea around.  Back then I wondered how the anticipated revenue would be spent or wasted.

Maybe waste is not the word needed to describe what happened to the money – that will take an audit, because, for some reason, when it comes to talking about the number of violations that were recorded by the cameras, city officials want to talk about speeding violations, which have nothing to do with the cameras.

Aside from the fact that confusing information has been published in a local newspaper, there hasn’t been much put out by the Council.  It is probably because the members of the Council don’t know what is happening, but I think someone has been manipulating the system.  The same way that the Mayor and the Council members have manipulated things to fund an airport, Greenbelt, mitigated wetlands and a bulldozer.

Like I say, I am not going to be surprised should an audit indicate that someone has dipped a finger in the Traffic Camera funds.  I am going to be surprised should an audit indicate that our local Utility is not somehow involved in funding part of the Camera Project.  Camera Collusion would be a fitting term.  Then again, maybe the Utility has ear-marked its surplus funds just for the Airport project, the Greenbelt project, a tree project or Wacker or Olin or  … !

I really don’t know.