REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Action on the Office of Traffic Safety Selective Traffic Enforcement Program Grant and Related Budget Amendment [Council Pillar - Deliver and Enhance High Quality Efficient Services and Infrastructure]
Report
BACKGROUND
The California Office of Traffic Safety's (OTS) mission is to effectively and efficiently administer traffic safety grant funds to reduce traffic deaths, injuries and economic losses.
OTS funding is generally connected with their associated rankings. OTS rankings were developed so individual cities could compare their City's traffic safety statistics to those of other cities within California with similar-sized populations. The rankings help cities and OTS identify emerging or on-going traffic safety problem areas in order to help plan how to combat the problems and help with the possibility of facilitating grants.
In recent years, following approval from the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, the Police Department has been the recipient of three previous OTS grants in recent years - $70,000 in Fiscal Year 19/20, $35,000 in Fiscal Year 17/18, $50,000 in Fiscal Year 14/15. These funds have been utilized to implement public awareness efforts and enforcement operations (e.g. saturation patrol, driving under the influence / driver's license checkpoint, bicycle and pedestrian enforcement operations, traffic enforcement campaigns, etc.).
DISCUSSION
The OTS Fiscal Year 2020/21 grant cycle included an opportunity for law enforcement agencies to apply for funding to provide traffic safety stakeholders with the ability to plan and initiate traffic records improvement projects, such as the purchase and implementation of traffic crash reporting systems as well as electronic citation equipment and software.
Our Department submits all of our traffic reports in Crossroads Traffic Collision software (Crossroads). Crossroads provides management for citations, collisions and driving under the influence report...
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