Smithfield Democrats in the General Assembly and on our Town Council created a Municipal Court that would fine our residents and expand the size of our government.

While we may have some zoning compliance issues, this court would handle mostly traffic and is designed to raise money through traffic increased fines and court costs. Our Police Department is not a revenue agency and our officers should not be pressured to write minor tickets just to raise money for the town. Residents should not be burdened with trivial tickets!

Council president Stephen Archambault said that he sees a municipal court as "a courtesy" to our residents. What? We don't understand how forcing our residents to pay tickets they would not have otherwise received is a courtesy.

Also, this court will cost our residents tax money in addition to unreasonable costs and fines. Democrats have said over and over that the cost would be paid entirely from court costs charged to those who come before the court.

They didn't mention a few other things, like:

• Even those found not guilty would have to pay costs, after they take a day out of work to attend court.
  
• All these extra traffic tickets will increase our insurance rates.
  
• Having our police officers write frivolous tickets will severely hard the relations between police officers and our residents.
  

And finally, they forgot to mention that when asked, they had to admit they did not know what a court would cost. When asked, they answered that they did not know what the judge and clerk of the court would be paid. They had not looked into the cost of a computer system for the court records, or the cost of security for the court. Really, they had not thought this through.

We believe that the entire point of this was to create a judgeship they could hand out as a political favor.

We won't do that. We put our residents over politics.