{"id":6511,"date":"2015-10-12T05:29:12","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T09:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=6511"},"modified":"2015-10-12T03:28:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T07:28:22","slug":"brick-council-candidate-im-not-in-favor-of-red-light-cameras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2015\/10\/brick-council-candidate-im-not-in-favor-of-red-light-cameras\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick Council Candidate: I’m Not in Favor of Red Light Cameras Returning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A \u201cGood Riddance\u201d sign displayed by Assemblyman Declan O\u2019Scanlon at a Brick Boulevard intersection that formerly was equipped with red light cameras. (Photo: Declan O\u2019Scanlon)<\/p><\/div>\n

A candidate for Brick Township council has responded to a letter to the editor which was sent to several local publications last week, including Brick Shorebeat. In the letter \u2013 which was not<\/em> published by Shorebeat due to a company policy that requires letters to be vetted for factual accuracy \u2013 the writer accused Republican candidate Charles Bacon of favoring the return of red-light violation cameras at Brick intersections. The letter, however, was published on another website.<\/p>\n

Bacon, over the weekend, released a statement saying he does not favor the return of cameras, but instead spoke at a candidates debate at a senior citizen community only about the revenue that was lost when the cameras were removed. He said the revenue that was lost should have been made up through spending cuts.<\/p>\n

Mayor John Ducey, a Democrat, pledged during his campaign for mayor in 2013 that he would remove the cameras if elected. Shortly after taking office in 2014, when a contract with American Traffic Solutions expired, he had the cameras taken down from three intersections, making Brick the first municipality in New Jersey to opt out of a pilot program that allowed the cameras to be installed.<\/p>\n

Bacon\u2019s letter appears below:<\/p>\n

To the Editor:<\/em><\/p>\n

As you know I am a Republican Candidate for Brick Township Council. As such, I am compelled to respond to the incorrect statements made by John Alemeida about me in a letter to the editor of the Brick Patch published last week.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Alemeida makes the claim that I made it clear that I would bring back red light cameras because I want the revenue.<\/em>
\nWell Mr. Alemeida you did not pay attention.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

I am not in favor of traffic cameras, I never was in favor of traffic cameras, and I will never be in favor of them.<\/em>
\nThe point that I made that evening is a fact: The elimination of the traffic cameras caused an approximate $750,000 shortfall in the budget.<\/em><\/p>\n

This shortfall was never offset by spending cuts by the current all Democratic council and as a result the all Democratic Council raised our property taxes again!<\/em><\/p>\n

You called my comments \u201cShameless.\u201d
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Almeida, when I am elected to office I will watch where every tax dollar is spent. And I can certainly tell you that if I was on the Council with my Republican colleagues that we too would have eliminated the cameras, but we would have found a way to make the elimination of the cameras revenue neutral.<\/em><\/p>\n

In my view, for the current all Democratic council to simply pass this cost onto our already burdened taxpayer is \u201cShameless.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Respectfully submitted,<\/em><\/p>\n

Charlie Bacon<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A candidate for Brick Township council has responded to a letter to the editor which was sent to several local publications last week, including Brick Shorebeat. In the letter \u2013 which was not published by Shorebeat due to a company policy that requires letters to be vetted for factual accuracy \u2013 the writer accused Republican […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15,2],"tags":[24,1157,1168,722,154],"class_list":["post-6511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brick-elections","category-government","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-charlie-bacon","tag-election-2015","tag-red-light-cameras","tag-township-council"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/oscanlon_ducey.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-1H1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}