Second Texas City Initiates Traffic Camera Referendum
Inspired by the success of the College Station, Texas initiative banning red light cameras, activists a hundred miles away in are collecting signatures to do the same in Baytown. Officials in the Gulf Coast city of 72,000 allowed American Traffic Solutions to set up the cameras in April 2008, but resident Byron Schirmbeck is circulating a petition in the hopes of giving voters the opportunity to take them back down. “The response has been absolutely overwhelming,” Schirmbeck told TheNewspaper. “I am conservative in saying that I have had less than ten percent of people I asked at public places refuse to sign because they support the cameras. The usual response to the question, ‘Would you like to sign the petition to ban the red light cameras?’ is ‘Hell yes’ and ‘Can I get my wife to sign it too?’”