Council Approves E-Ticketing for Police Department

The Chatham Borough Council voted Monday to sign a 3-year contrat for GTBM to provide the borough's police force with e-ticketing capability.

Police Chief Philip J. Crosson and Lt. Brian Gibbons discussed with the council whether a 3-year contract or a 5-year contract was more desirable. Most vendors who use GTBM for e-ticketing have a 5-year contact, Gibbons said, but Council Member Bruce Harris said the technology could change so much in 5 years that the council should give themselves the option of changing vendors sooner than that.

Gibbons likened the contract options to leasing a car, saying the council would pay less money per ticket if they paid a higher upfront fee. The contract stipulated a $15,000 fee upfront and then 29 cents for the first 3,501 tickets. All tickets over that number will be 26 cents each until the contract ends.

Gibbons urged the council to opt for an automatic renewal if they decided for the 3-year contract. Without the automatic renewal option, GTBM could renegotiate the rate at the end of the contract, possibly for a higher rate for more tickets. With the renewal GTBM could still renegotiate the rates, but Gibbons said the new rate would be only $280 to $300 more than the current rate. The difference without automatic renewal, he said, could be much higher.

"I don't think that the increase would be more than nominal [with automatic renewal] between the new average and what we currently have. Without the autorenewal, it could be a significant difference," Gibbons said.

Most of the council was in favor of the 3-year contract with automatic renewal, but Council Member Jim Collander said he preferred a 5-year contract. He was outvoted 5-1 and the council approved the 3-year option.

The contract requires 10 days notice or more for the automatic renewal.

All About E-Ticketing

. At that time, Gibbons said, about 60 agencies and municipalities in New Jersey used e-ticketing. By Monday's meeting, that number increased to over 70, with at least 57 of those opting for 5-year contracts.

The e-ticketing program automatically pulls information about a car from the car's license plates and the license of the driver, 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.

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]."

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

, 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 will 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.