Dear Editor:
RE: County council approves new speed camera revenue policy, May 1.
Wellington County’s new policy on speed camera revenue guides them to spend money on studies to identify streets that have speeding problems.
Didn’t the county raise $1.5 million in four months and yet they predicted only raising $1 million in a year? What does this data tell us? Our county staff is not aware of the breadth of our speeding issues, and we have speeding issues on four roads in Wellington County.
This new policy also says staff could spend money looking for more roads in the county with speeding issues and spend money on capital projects fixing them.
That’s similar to our local food bank spending money they raised looking for places to help while a line up of people in need are at their door.
If speed camera roads, like Belsyde Avenue in Fergus, don’t get needed design changes that fit a 40km/h road, then I am starting to feel that maybe speed cameras are a trap and a form a taxation.
I typically trust the intentions of our local government but this change in how I feel matters.
This new policy, I hope well intended, demonstrates how government can sometimes make things too complicated and this complication makes us distrust government, which causes a whole host of other problems.
So, keep it simple: build Belsyde better and build it now so we can see that you really do care about safe streets! That is good governance getting things done.
John Scott,
Elora