Company overbills Mesa by $300K

Mesa police revealed last month that the photo enforcement system was losing roughly $100,000 a month because of everything from flawed images to delays in camera installation.

But in recent weeks, police financial services manager Lisa Quedens discovered another cause for the deficit: overbilling.

American Traffic Solutions, the company hired last year to install and operate a system that tickets motorists based on photo evidence, has overbilled the city by more than $300,000 during the current budget year.

Quedens said the overbilling likely began in October. The error was discovered during a routine contract review.

Joanie Flatt, a spokeswoman for ATS, said the company believes it accidentally overbilled the city by about $366,000. It plans to deliver a check to the city today for about $260,000. To make up for the remainder of the funds, ATS will not charge the city for its May bill.

“The minute we were made aware of it, then of course we went through and checked it out with the accounting department and figured out what had happened,” Flatt said.

The error was a result of some confusion in the billing process, said both Flatt and ATS President James Tuton.

When Mesa first signed a contract with ATS in January 2006, it paid the entire bill directly to ATS for both the service and the leasing of the equipment. Around July, however, the city decided to pay for the equipment lease through LaSalle Bank, a municipal lending agency, instead of through ATS.

When the city began to make the lease payments to LaSalle, however, ATS forgot to deduct those lease payments from its monthly invoice. In other words, Mesa was paying twice for the same equipment.

Quedens said it’s “too premature to say” exactly how much the billing error added to the photo program’s overall losses, but she suspects it will help narrow the deficit.

March was the first month in which all 35 cameras began functioning at once, although the program kicked off last July. As such, she said there isn’t enough data yet to know how much money Mesa is losing. Since July, Mesa has lost between $53,000 and $245,000 a month. When all cameras began operating in March, the city lost more than $125,000.

ATS has recommended that the city consider repositioning some of its cameras at intersections where there are more red-light runners to help make up the deficit. The program was supposed to pay for itself.

Councilman Mike Whalen, who heads the city’s Public Safety Committee, said he was unaware of the billing errors.

Whalen said he’s pleased the mistake was caught, but he doesn’t think it will cover the entire deficit.

“Obviously, mistakes happen and it sounds like it may be reasonable,” he said. “But I would think in the first month when we got a big bill, we would have questioned that.”

Committee meeting

What: Mesa Public Safety Committee meeting

When: 3:30 p.m. today

Where: The lower level council chambers at 57 E. First St.