Jan. 28, 1999

FOUNTAIN HILLS — Maybe it’s that he’s a retired insurance adjuster. Or it might be that he’s 71 years old. But John O. Gabbert of Fountain Hills said when he steers his car onto busy Fountain Hills Boulevard, his life flashes before him.

“It’s like getting onto a freeway from a standstill,” said Gabbert, a winter resident from Bellevue, Wash. “I just take a good look before I get onto the road.” Living in Fountain Hills for the last five or six years, Gabbert has noticed more people doing their best impression of race car legend Mario Andretti.

Local police agree.

Speeders, officials say, are more prevalent now than the lizards and snakes that slithered along town roads before the population boom of the last few years.

“From a law enforcement standpoint, yeah, we have a speeding problem,” said Deputy Ken Martinez, traffic safety coordinator for the Fountain Hills Marshals Department. “The fact of the matter is that people speed. They’re in a hurry.”

In 1998, 742 moving violations — most of them speeding tickets — were doled out to driving scofflaws in the town, according to the marshal’s records. That’s about 85 percent more than the 401 issued in 1997, figures show.

Deputies with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, who patrol much of Fountain Hills, also scrawled out about 3,000 tickets last year.

Part of surge, Martinez said, can be attributed to the appointment of a town deputy to exclusively handle speeders and other traffic enforcement. Approved by the Town Council in 1997, last year was the first full term of the position.

Population increases in both the town and the Valley are also to blame for the increase, Martinez said.

“You’re seeing more people and more cars,” he said. “It’s just the nature of the beast.”

From trailers that flash a car’s speed from the side of the road to photo radar, cities and towns are struggling to find new ways to combat speeders.

Like Fountain Hills, Cave Creek and Carefree hired more deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to set speed traps and monitor traffic last year.

The towns have been resistant to follow Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and other cities in the East Valley to use photo enforcement.

Fountain Hills rejected buying into photo radar in May 1997 over council members’ concerns the town would not issue enough citations to pay for the system. And between the marshal’s office and the sheriff, councilman Sid Apps said there were enough methods to chase down speeders.

“Cops are cops and cops write tickets,” said Apps, a frequent critic of the town’s dual police force. “Is it necessary that we have to write 300-plus tickets a month in Fountain Hills for a population of 18,000 plus? I think it’s pushing the envelope.”

Martinez said there is room for the traffic division to grow if other methods of curbing speeders, like speed humps, fall by the way side.

“If accident numbers increase, I’m sure the enforcement will become tighter and more officers will be dedicated to that,” he said.

A stricter and heightened enforcement policy is just what Gabbert said he wants so he can drive off his street without fearing for his life.

“I don’t go looking for accidents,” he said. “But if I pull out in front of someone that’s going 50 or 60 mph, well ... I just think if they have a speed limit, they should enforce it.”