Thank You Franklin County Sheriff

[Henry]

When I went up to sneak a peek at The Vermont Breakfast Company, on my way home coming down the hill past the Mini Mall, I noticed the Sheriff's car parked at the edge of town near the Lamoille River Bridge.  Like anybody else, looked down at my speedometer and was going about 43 MPH in a 25MPH or 30MPH zone.  I don't really remember the speed limit there.  Thought, Oh Crap!!  43MPH, what a familiar number.  I have gotten two speeding tickets in my life, both for going 43 MPH in a 25 mile zone.  One was in Essex Center back in 1957 in the area where Price Chopper is, on February 22nd and the other was one summer going down by the Kerbs Hospital - Actually today, the Sheriff didn't stop me, maybe I was just lucky.

[Chris Santee]

Speed Limit 40MPH downhill from Fairfax Commons.
Speed Limit 30MPH in front of Steeple Market.

The carwash is another good spot, so when you're passing by, don't.
Put your blinker on and stop in for a wash.

[Henry]

Thanks Chris - I will try to shape up - Interesting when you travel a road a lot, you don't even notice the speed limit signs unless they put a blinking light over it.

[cedarman]

I thought the 30 started at the bridge (or immediately before it).

I think 25 mph zones anywhere other than in the immediate area around a school or playground are just revenue generators.

I'm also irritated by the 40 mph on "County Road" going from St. Albans to Swanton. The 40 starts at the Swanton Town line and continues through farm country with all open fields until you get closer to the village where it turns to a 30 mph.   It is all open, paved road (nothing but fields on both sides for a couple miles), with VERY few houses.

Thankfully, we don't have any foolish zones like that in Fairfax (none that I'm aware of anyway).

[Mummy]

Every time I am in Milton, I think of VTGrandPA and check my speed limit.  I remember you sharing how the "really" enforce their speed limits in that Town.  Late one night after getting off the ferry, I was driving through Milton at 2:30 am and passed the Milton Police going the opposite way and thought I was good to go fast but I was a little tired to do more than what I was doing.  Any -way within two minutes, there were blue lights and a white spot light behind me!  Yeah, the Milton Police looked in his rear view mirror and noticed my license plate light was out and stopped me at 2:30 a.m. after turning around to chase me down.  Guess I was the only exciting thing on the road at 2:30 a.m. and he wanted to know where I was going and where I was coming from ... which I answered but really was that necessary?  No ticket just a written notice that I had to get a .38 cent light bulb and I had to go to the Police Station to prove that I replaced the light bulb.  Of course, I thought of Vtgrandpa ... no speeding in Milton or they will get ya!

[Henry]

When I go the Milton/Westford shortcut, my cruiise control is set at 40mph, but it does go faster down hill especially around where they used to make pallets and that was one of their favorite places.

[DrewCrash]

so you drive by a police officer going 72% above the speed limit in one of the most critical concerned traffic safety areas in Fairfax and the Sheriff didn't do their job?

Your honor, I rest my case.

[Chris Santee]

Negative on the math.
The zone was a 40, so about 7% over.

[Stand Alone Defense]

I'm sure the deputy could write a ticket for 3 miles over but the cost to process the ticket would cost more then the fine itself.

[DrewCrash]

thank you for the clarification. I thought Henry was further down the hill and had entered the 25 mph zone.

Although I think that a law enforcement officer has the right to provide citation to any motor vehicle violator and that there should never be a cost benefit analysis applied to such an event, there is certainly more prudent ways to use a law enforcers time.

[Chris Santee]

Drew, how much extended coverage were you talking ?
We have now, I believe 40 hours a week for $82K from FCSD.

[Chris Santee]

$82K annual.

[DrewCrash]

Chris - I actually have a very specific ideas on this topic to double the coverage to not exceed 80 hours a week, and am confident that it could be well executed with minimum to no impact on the taxpayer. The plan would require a review of the current scheduling process of how and when the Sheriff's office is present in town and the end plan could very well be done with possible 60 hours.

I know there are solid solutions to navigate through this event by providing cost downs in our largest expense, the school department. I am not going to share my plan publicly on this message board, in order to be prevent confrontation and arguments to erupt. If you have noticed from my more recent posts, I am trying to bring humor to the boards in order to defuse emotional anger towards each others comments.

I will say this though, the mere mention of a cost down initiative from the school department is likely to spark enough debate. I believe we could easily find $80,000 to support doubling our patrol coverage. And before anyone attacks me for being anti-school let me state the following: I was an education major, my wife is a teacher, and I would even support an increased property tax rate for Fairfax to have a full-time preschool / kindergarten options.

What I truly believe is missing, is an acceptance to the fact that the Sheriff's office is a supplier to the town of Fairfax. As a supplier, there needs to be improved supplier management driven by continuous improvement processes that should be led by appointments from the town selectmyn to a community police board. As I am confident that the town is likely managing the Sheriff's department to an extent and likely has good communication with the department, it is not transparent enough to the citizens of Fairfax. I look at the Committee for the community center and my thoughts aside on this topic, they are doing an excellent job at communicating, opening themselves up to input by all, and running a truly transparent operation. I believe the school department and its programs as well do an excellent job at this too, as does our amazing volunteer fire department. The FCSD is completely absent when compared to the other two pillars (fire, school) that are critical to our town's success as a community.

I am, in no way, advocating for a full-time police department at this time. I truly believe increased patrols, improved communication between FCSD and increased accountability through a community police board will help drive improvement and eliminate the concerns that continue to be vocalized by the residents. We all know the FCSD is more than capable and able to meet our needs, but we should not ignore our rights to be able to hold this department accountable to the standards we require for our community.

I will ask this simple question, do residents of Fairfax believe that speeding is an issue throughout our community and we would like to see a reduction in this? I believe the answer is yes. In review of the Sheriff's web page, they publish the list of traffic violation citations per month. What the information does not share with you, is how many of these violations were generated from a single traffic stop. In addition, you can see that we go from months in which there were only 3 violations for the entire month to 26 violations the next month. Why such a large delta month to month? What statistical analysis is being done here? Officer on duty? Time of day? etc...

I see a statistical problem when you look at the standard deviation in the month to month # of tickets being issued. How do we have months of 3, 5, & 7 and then other months of 25 and 26? Are you telling me we only speed that much in July and October but not in May or June? The FCSD is issuing one citation every 12 hours. Once again, we all know we can get multiple citations on a single traffic stop. But still, one every 12 hours? Is our crime rate that bad in which the other 11 hours they are solving the great dilemmas of Fairfax? Speed traps can not solely be set up at the car wash!

I don't mean to focus on one single problem, but I am trying to highlight the need for accountability. It makes no sense we can a have a month with only 3 - THREE - traffic citations and another month with 26. This makes ABSOLUTELY no sense. That month, the FCSD issued a ticket every 57.77 hours. Are you kidding me? In that same month, there was 8 listed incidents and 2 arrests (one of which was excessive speed in which had to have been one of the 3 traffic citations.) What was the FCSD doing the entire month?

I just don't accept the notion that there job is to solely patrol. There needs to be more enforcement and if we don't think there aren't opportunities for improvement on 104, 104A, Buck Hollow Road, Carroll Hill Road, Fletcher Road (& others) then we are simply tossing our money away by not holding more accountability. This is not a knock against the individual staff members, nor is it a knock against their abilities, but merely an observation that there are discrepancies that should and need to be addressed.

[mirjo]

What does that $80K go to, do we know?  I'm sure it's not a deputy's yearly salary.