RedFlex to take ticket holders to court

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - RedFlex Traffic Systems Inc., the Arizona based company that owned and operated the red light cameras in Albuquerque plans to take outstanding ticket holders to court.

News 13 learned of the decision Monday, nearly a year to the day after the cameras at intersections across the city went dark.

"It's hard to say what exactly will happen once the process starts to go through," said City Councilor Ken Sanchez.

At this point there are more than 127,000 outstanding red light camera and speeding citations totaling about $13 million.

RedFlex is in charge of collecting that money but their collection efforts are only now getting started.

Jody Ryan, Director of Communications told News 13 in an email it took a while for things to get underway because, "we’ve been working on getting the data into a workable format – which is now complete."

Councilor Sanchez said the city council decided to work with RedFlex again after the voters nixed the program because the company hit them with a $4.5 million demand letter, that's what RedFlex says its owed in unpaid citations.

"We kind of felt and I felt that if we didn't give them that authority that the city could potentially be sued and the taxpayers would end up having to pay for those fines," Sanchez said.

The city said RedFlex will go after the worst repeat offenders first.

Ryan told News 13 they plan to move forward with the collection process soon.

"Over the next few weeks, in coordination with the courts, Redflex Traffic Systems will begin filing for default judgments in District Court," Ryan said adding that they will do so on behalf of the City of Albuquerque.

The current contract with RedFlex runs for four years.

Any money collected will be split between RedFlex, the city and state.

"I think its going to be interesting to see what RedFlex will collect," said Sanchez.

State law requires the city to go after those outstanding ticket holders.