Politics & Government

Council Discusses E-Ticketing for Chatham Borough

System automatically inserts a driver's information onto a ticket, cutting down on human error.

Chatham Borough Police Chief Philip J. Crosson and Lt. Brian Gibbons asked the Chatham Borough Council to consider instituting e-tickets as a way of writing motor vehicle tickets.

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 vendor is GTBM, Gibbons said, and its e-ticketing program is "the only program in New Jersey where ... the [public] information from the state auto-populates onto the ticket, which allows us to print those tickets rather than handing out the triplicate forms," which cost 50 cents each.

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The e-ticketing program automatically pulls information about a car from the license plates and put 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.

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

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Gibbons said e-tickets showed "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.

Gibbons said most contracts for e-ticketing services that he knew about lasted for five years. Councilman Bruce Harris said he was concerned that the contract could not be canceled at will.

"I think the system makes [a] great amount of sense," Harris said. "The only question I have is what kind of contract we should enter into."

Crosson and Gibbons explained that there is a reduction in cost of 2 percent for each year of the contract, and a price-drop built into the contract once a certain number of tickets have been issued. By signing a shorter contract, they said, the borough could end up paying more in the long term.

Councilman James Collander agreed with Crosson. "If you look at the math, and we'd have to look more closely, [but] I think a short-term contract would be short-sighted at this point. Once you cross that threshold, then you realize greater savings."

Crosson also said that, in part because of a reduction in staff, the police department had issued a smaller number of tickets over the past year. Police departments that use e-ticketing, he said, show between a 10 and 20 percent increase in the amount of tickets issued.

Council President James Lonergan and Harris said they were still uncomfortable with with a five-year contract that could not be terminated upon notice.

Collander said the e-ticket program has been approved by the state and by the Joint Court Administrator Ray Codey in Madison, and that it has been under a review by Bob Falzarano, the Chatham Borough administrator, the police department, the Budget Committee and the Public Safety Committee.

"We have also had a dialogue with Florham Park, who has [already] adopted the program," Collander said.

Gibbons said the contract does allow the borough an out if the company does not perform up to expectations. Crosson said in his discussion with other departments, he "did not hear anything negative" about the service or response time.

The council agreed to reach out to some of the approximately 60 municipalities that already use e-ticketing to explore why they chose to sign the contract, the life of their contracts, the impact that e-ticketing has had on their departments and other relevant information before they vote on issue.

Collander said by the next meeting the council should be in a position to make a decision by the August meeting.


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