City switching to electronic ticketing

Traffic tickets and other police citations will soon be issued in Holton using an electronic ticketing system instead of traditional paper tickets, according to action taken on Monday by the Holton City Commission.

Commissioners approved a “pay-for-use” contract with Saltus Technologies of Tulsa, Okla. for police use of two DigiTicket mobile electronic ticketing systems, which are also in use by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and the Kansas Highway Patrol, as Holton Police Chief Steve Frederick told commissioners.

The monthly contract will entail the use of two DigiTicket systems at a total cost of $812 per month, or $9,744 per year, which will be paid out of the city’s equipment reserve fund, commissioners noted. Those systems, Frederick said, would go from patrol car to patrol car.

“These systems would eliminate some time on traffic stops, and it will be faster to process them electronically,” Frederick said. “It will also enable us to collect bias-based policing data, and that’s information state and federal governments want to know from our traffic stops, such as the reason for the stop, the time of day, the race of the people in the in the car and where the actual stop was.”

Holton City Manager Kerwin McKee added that in addition to the monthly $812 cost, there would be an additional $2,500 one-time cost and an annual fee of $785 paid to Huber and Associates of Jefferson City, Mo., to build and maintain an interface that would connect the DigiTicket system to the city’s record system.

Commissioners were also presented with an option to purchase the DigiTicket systems outright and own the equipment and software licenses with a purchase price of $22,535, along with $3,300 in annual maintenance and support fees starting in the second year of the systems’ use, as well as the aforementioned interface system costs to be paid to Huber and Associates.

But through Saltus’ “pay-for-use” contract, McKee noted, “if their equipment goes bad, they replace it.” With the option to purchase the systems outright, he added, “if the equipment goes bad, we replace it.”

Frederick confirmed that Saltus would replace the systems if necessary due to regular use, adding that the contract would include the use of “ruggedized tables” for issuing citations. The only exception, he said, would be if the systems were “lost or stolen,” in which case the city would have to pay for replacements.

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