Warren council puts a hold on traffic cameras

By Ed Runyan

Council approved the incentive for new General Motors workers.

WARREN — Councilman Bob Dean says he is hopeful that with some additional education, city council and the public will understand the benefits of the modified automated camera system for speeding tickets and allow it to be enacted.

On Wednesday, however, he asked for and got approval to put a hold on the legislation that would have enabled the system to begin.

Dean said he didn’t poll his 10 fellow council members, but he believes a vote on the legislation would have been close, and he didn’t want such a program to be instituted without a consensus on council.

Within the past week, Dean modified his proposal so that it would only involve cameras being placed in school zones and also placed restrictions on the revenue generated by the cameras so that it would only go toward the cost of gasoline and maintenance for police vehicles.

Dean said business people have lobbied hard against the camera system, saying a system like the one operated in Girard for a time would hurt Warren businesses that rely on vehicle traffic.

“People don’t like ‘Big Brother,’ but we have five new schools, and I don’t know how you can argue against safer school zones,” Councilman Vincent Flask, D-5th, said after the meeting.

Meanwhile, council approved an ordinance that would provide an income tax credit of $500 for employees of General Motors who buy a home in Warren.

The only people who would qualify for the credit are those transferred from another General Motors plant to the Lordstown assembly plant during the creation of the plant’s third shift. About 1,400 workers are expected to start work in August.

Council also gave a second reading to legislation that would increase the city’s storm water fees for homeowners by 15 cents per month for the final three months of this year; 30 cents per month in 2009; 46 cents per month in 2010; 63 cents per month in 2011; 81 cents per month in 2012; and $1 per month in 2013 and thereafter.

Those amounts are still being studied by the city’s water pollution control committee, which will meet at 4 p.m. Monday to further discuss the proposal.

Tom Angelo, Warren water pollution control director, proposed the increased fees as a way to improve city storm drainage problems that were identified in studies done around the time when 10-year-old Johnny Keytack drowned in a storm drain on University Street in 2003.