Jackson Police transitioning to electronic citations, with additional fee for offenders

JACKSON, Tenn. — The Jackson City Council held their regular monthly meeting Tuesday morning.

It was a fairly short City Council meeting with three council members absent due to illness.

The meeting began with the new class of the Mayor’s Youth Council being recognized and sworn in. The members are students of various high schools in Jackson. Their role includes learning all about local government, how it works, along with other duties.

“They get two years where they can learn from the previous group. So they can learn there,” said Mayor Scott Conger. “It’s an application process. They have to apply, they have to get references, and then we have a selection group that goes through them and try to be equitable on the distribution of schools to make sure at least every school that applied is represented.”

One of the items on the agenda that was passed was a resolution to authorize fees for electronic citations. The days of citations being on paper and printed out for you may be behind us. If you, unfortunately, receive a citation, it may be electronic. This vote means that the amount you owe, actually may increase, simply because it is electronic.

“This is a completely electronic version, that way they can send it there and send you the information,” Conger said. “So it cuts down on paper, it cuts down on time, and on cost. If the person is found guilty of the traffic violation, then on top of their fine they are charged an additional $5 to help pay for the software and the infrastructure for that.”

Finally, a vote was passed to have a new contract with Maxxguard, who do various things for the City.

“They close our parks every night. They go in and make the sweep, patrol, close the bathrooms, get people out. They also, we used them back last year for extra patrols because we are short on officers. So we use them for extra patrols on different things,” said Conger.

There was also a vote for the Sportsplex to get a weather system that can immediately alert everyone in the facility when games need to be halted due to the weather.

Finally, there was also an annual report from the Financial Empowerment Center. In the last year, 138 citizens were helped with this service.

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