YMCA offering summer camp programs

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Happy birthday to Victoria Faith Yurkanin!

So, Leslie S. Richards, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, thinks eliminating the vehicle registration stickers is going to save money.In a recent <a href="https://www.timesleader.com/opinion/letters/515629/letter-to-the-editor-phasing-out-auto-registration-stickers-will-benefit-police-says-penndot-chief" target="_blank">letter to the editor</a>, she cites a $3.1 million annual savings in product and mailing costs. First, there will be no savings in mailing costs as the stickers are mailed with the registration document, which is still going to have to be mailed to the vehicle owner. The only &#8220;savings&#8221; is the pennies per vehicle cost of the sticker itself.Meanwhile, we are going to have to purchase plate readers such as the Mobile Plate Hunter-900. The device can cost from about $16,500 for a base system to upwards of $21,000, according to the manufacturer&#8217;s website.These systems will have to be purchased for every state police cruiser in the state. How far do you think the less than $3 million annual savings is gong to go for that, and who do you think will be picking up the tab for the excess cost?Meanwhile, we&#8217;ll be taking the patrol officers off of any real crime they may have to be patrolling for and turning them into full-time license plate scanners (local and state police officers to check thousands of plates in a single shift, the secretary claims) in search of a revenue stream to pay for the new technology and turn a profit above that.Then we get into the inevitable problem of false readings. No computer system is foolproof and government systems are as bad as any. Witness the great start-up of the Obamacare computer system, for example. How many people are going to be subjected to mistaken summonses and have to go to some local court or magistrate to prove they do indeed have a legally registered vehicle? Will the state reimburse the motorist for lost time and wages? Not a chance.Once again, our bureaucrats in Harrisburg are simply trying to disguise another revenue-raising scheme as a &#8220;savings for the taxpayer&#8221; when nothing could be further from the truth.Tom GunshannonLarksville

Letter to the Editor: Writer dubious of ‘savings’ in PennDOT’s plan to do away with vehicle registration stickers