Politics & Government

Borough Council Prepares E-Ticketing Contract

E-ticketing automatically fills in information on traffic tickets.

Council Member Jim Collander said the Chatham Borough Council is preparing to approve a contract for E-ticketing on Sept. 26.

The contract with vendor GTBM spans a three-year period.

"I personally think we should about a five-year contract," Collander said.

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The E-Ticketing program automatically pulls information about a car from the license plates and puts the information directly onto the ticket, rather than the police officers copying the information by hand. The information is taken from state motor vehicle records from New Jersey and other states.

Chatham Borough Police Chief Philip J. Crosson and Lt. Brian Gibbons . Gibbons said the E-ticket system would likely result in "increased productivity and much greater efficiency and reduced errors, because we are no longer hand-writing [tickets]."

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The program also automatically issues "an appropriate court date" if necessary that would help cut down on administrative time and money, Gibbons said.

Another benefit of E-tickets, according to Gibbons, is "a dramatic reduction in time" versus paper tickets. Paper tickets take between 12 and 15 minutes to write, but e-tickets take only two to three minutes to complete and fill out, and any subsequent violation in one minute.

"[So] not that we would, but we could theoretically write six or seven or eight E-tickets in the same amount of time it may take an officer to complete one ticket and process it," Gibbons said.

The police department would lease equipment from GTBM, which left that company responsible for all maintenance and repairs necessary. The cost would be taken out of fees collected from traffic violators, Gibbons said.


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