Extremely small jurisdictions (populations of fewer than 1,000) that are incorporated as cities are highly entertaining...They get all the minimum level of bureaucracy and powers of big cities, but not necessarily the qualified people to fill the elected or hired positions.
At the Sacramento newspaper that I used to work at, we had a river city of about 750 residents that often merited a reporter or two to cover the flurry of governmental activity (and grand jury investigations) that came out of there. One of the ongoing situations was that, as a city, it had its own police chief, which meant that it could dispense conceal-carry-weapon permits -- to basically anyone in the entire county. So the city could fund a substantial amount of its yearly budget by just selling permits to people who couldn't get them from bigger cities who were more reluctant about CCW applications.
Where I live there are tons of small 600-1000 person cities, there is even a nearby county where the largest city (the county seat) is ~3,000 people. They all seem operate without issue. I think you are just biased living in an area with much larger metro areas. One small city near me has been stable at around 600 since the 1860's...
Isleton, the city of under 1,000, is one of seven cities in the county, the next smallest of which is 60,000+. It is about 1.5 magnitudes smaller than each of its neighbors, which means some of its professional staff (such as the manager) are likely to not live in the community and will have a different dynamic.
(I'm also from a rural state where the average city/town is probably about < 2,000.)
I went to school in Florida a while back. The nearby city of Waldo was then notorious for being funded by speed traps. It went as far as people making T-Shirts saying "Don't speed in Waldo" and the AAA buying a billboard on both sides of the town warning about it. Maybe they need to rework the law so that traffic fines go to the state instead of the city.
Waldo, Lawtey, and Hampton are the speed traps along that stretch of road between Gainesville and Jacksonville. There was a big uproar to take those signs down a few years back. The signs actually slowed people down... which I THOUGHT was the safe thing to do. But apparently, nobody really wanted to keep children that had wandered off the Super Wal-mart parking lot to be safe. They wanted a bigger fireworks display on the Fourth of July.
If anyone had actually challenged a speeding ticket, the scam might have been caught earlier. I doubt anyone there had any training or probably even understood calibration. But people generally just pay it and move on.
Generally that's because to fight it, they'd have to visit the town's courthouse or spend money on a lawyer. If I were the one choosing the fines, and I lacked a soul, I'd choose a fine amount that maximized #speeders * $cost * %fighting.
Once you've got all 3 town employees, the police force/posse and half-to-all of the town council in on it, it's not like it's impossible to get a particular judge elected. Get an extreme hard-ass, a crook, or just someone's lawyer cousin on the bench in a lightly-contested non-partisan election, and it'll be basically impossible to get a ticket thrown out.
It's even worse than that. I once got pulled over in a small town for a rolling stop, and the officer basically said that I had two options — either he could write me three tickets — one for running a stop sign, one for disregarding a mechanical signal (flashing red light), and one for speeding ("nearly 25" in a 20, he claimed) — that added up to nearly $400 in fines and several points on my license, or else I could agree, right then and there, to show up in person at the county courthouse within 30 days and pay a $100 "fee", that "wasn't a fine", so, while it couldn't be contested, it also wouldn't show up on my driving record.
In other words, if I was willing and able to show up in court, I may as well just agree to pay the $100, because, bullshit speeding ticket aside and regardless of the truth of the matter * , it's sort of pointless to argue in court that, in spite of the officer's testimony, I did, in fact, come to a complete stop — the only way I could have avoided >$100 in fines is if the officer hadn't testified at all, which, without familiarity with the particular jurisdiction or considerable research, isn't a very safe bet, and certainly not one I was willing to make on the side of the road at 3:00am with no time to think it over.
* Truth be told, I may well have roll-stopped, as I was making a right turn at a four-way stop with no other traffic and perfect visibility in a 20MPH zone at 3:00am, and I probably was driving 25 in a 20 at some point, because I don't regularly calibrate my speedometer or watch my speed that closely, and it was one of those small towns where the speed limit drops from 55 to 20 in the course of a few blocks.
I guess we're a bit less vindictive in Missouri. We didn't dissolve Macks Creek, we just redirected traffic fines to the local school district and let it wither away.
"Even State Representative Charles E. Van Zant Sr., who represents Hampton and spearheaded the audit, got a speeding ticket here in 2011. (He said his speeding ticket — which he paid — had nothing to do with ordering the audit.)"
I'm not sure his statement is quite true.
I'm still convinced that no money from speeding tickets or fines should go to the city's budget, and I am more and more sure that city cops shouldn't be allowed to ticket anyone on a highway, even it goes through their town. The temptation to pull this stunt is too much.
A friend commented on Facebook as I posted another story about this town in Florida, "Strongly supports sending all traffic fines to help repay the federal deficit. End of corrupt traffic stops."
gives a lot of details of the history of the town that gains most of its revenues from traffic stops, with a lot of on-the-ground reporting about local conditions.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 44.0 ms ] threadAt the Sacramento newspaper that I used to work at, we had a river city of about 750 residents that often merited a reporter or two to cover the flurry of governmental activity (and grand jury investigations) that came out of there. One of the ongoing situations was that, as a city, it had its own police chief, which meant that it could dispense conceal-carry-weapon permits -- to basically anyone in the entire county. So the city could fund a substantial amount of its yearly budget by just selling permits to people who couldn't get them from bigger cities who were more reluctant about CCW applications.
in small cities these issues are just more noticeable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramento_County,_California#I...
Isleton, the city of under 1,000, is one of seven cities in the county, the next smallest of which is 60,000+. It is about 1.5 magnitudes smaller than each of its neighbors, which means some of its professional staff (such as the manager) are likely to not live in the community and will have a different dynamic.
(I'm also from a rural state where the average city/town is probably about < 2,000.)
In other words, if I was willing and able to show up in court, I may as well just agree to pay the $100, because, bullshit speeding ticket aside and regardless of the truth of the matter * , it's sort of pointless to argue in court that, in spite of the officer's testimony, I did, in fact, come to a complete stop — the only way I could have avoided >$100 in fines is if the officer hadn't testified at all, which, without familiarity with the particular jurisdiction or considerable research, isn't a very safe bet, and certainly not one I was willing to make on the side of the road at 3:00am with no time to think it over.
* Truth be told, I may well have roll-stopped, as I was making a right turn at a four-way stop with no other traffic and perfect visibility in a 20MPH zone at 3:00am, and I probably was driving 25 in a 20 at some point, because I don't regularly calibrate my speedometer or watch my speed that closely, and it was one of those small towns where the speed limit drops from 55 to 20 in the course of a few blocks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macks_Creek
I'm not sure his statement is quite true.
I'm still convinced that no money from speeding tickets or fines should go to the city's budget, and I am more and more sure that city cops shouldn't be allowed to ticket anyone on a highway, even it goes through their town. The temptation to pull this stunt is too much.
The CNN story
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/09/us/hampton-florida-corrupt...
gives a lot of details of the history of the town that gains most of its revenues from traffic stops, with a lot of on-the-ground reporting about local conditions.