Stopped in Morristown: Are speeding tickets the price we must pay for budget cuts?

By Fran Wood

The other night I got stopped for speeding on a Morristown street I travel  frequently — a convenient conduit from I-287 to the old Rt. 24 West, which takes me home without going through the middle of town.

As the officer who stopped me noted, all streets in the municipality of Morristown have a speed limit of 25 mph – something I knew but, obviously, wasn’t paying much attention to, considering the 39 mph at which he clocked me.

In fact, I can’t swear I was moving any faster than I ordinarily do at a time of night when there are few cars on the roads. Since I’ve never been stopped before, over many years of driving that route, I figure I’m either lucky beyond the wildest odds or that there are more patrol cars parked where they can snag speeders.

My money’s on the latter.

In fact, as I thought back on it, for a week or more I had been noticing an increase all over Morris County in the number of patrol cars sitting at the roadside with radar guns locked and loaded.

I don’t think this has anything to do with so-called ticket quotas, nor do I think this is some enterprise with a sinister agenda. I suspect a stepped-up crusade for speeders may simply be a consequence of Gov. Chris Christie’s imposition of a 2.5% cap on increases in municipal budgets.

I think it’s safe to say this new cap, down from 4%, has put towns all over the state in the position of finding alternative ways to increase revenues.

Granted, municipalities can increase their budgets by more than 2.5% if the taxpayers vote that it’s okay. But as we already have the nation’s highest property taxes, I’m making a wild guess that few of us will vote to increase them further.

So most towns will pare their expenses to the extent that they can, then explore every possible means of finding increased revenue. Issuing more traffic tickets would seem to be one of the easiest ways to do that.

In any case, I’m now conscious of how fast I’m moving every time I hit the road — and doing my utmost not to exceed the speed limit.

This is proving to be very difficult – not because it’s hard to slow down, but because driving at the speed limit is infuriating the drivers behind me. When I’m doing 25 in a 25 mph zone, or 35 in a 35 mph zone, or 45 in a 45 mph zone, the drivers behind me are flashing their lights, blowing their horns, even making obscene gestures. It turns out nobody is satisfied with keeping to the speed limit.

Except me. I’m determined to drive at the posted speed, no matter how irate it makes my fellow drivers.

Mercifully, the officer who pulled me over only gave me a warning. But his message was clear, and I’m inclined to heed it.

Besides, I still suspect officers on the alert for speeders is the new order of the day.

I emphasize this is only a theory. I haven’t made a single phone call to see if there is, in fact, pressure on patrolmen to issue more tickets to increase revenues.

I’m just saying.

Fran Wood has never lived more than five miles from the Morristown hospital where she was born. A columnist for New Jersey newspapers for more than 30 years, she retired from The Star-Ledger at the end of 2008. She periodically blogs at www.njvoices.com. This is her first contribution to MG.