The College Park City Council is rushing to meet a state deadline for allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars made issuing speeding tickets to drivers caught on camera. Council members said they are working to determine by June how to spend the estimated $600,000 the city will net from the newly implemented speed camera program, which mails $40 tickets to speeders.
“I wouldn’t say we’re in a scramble,” said Marcus Afzali, one of the city council’s members. “I wish we would’ve started a little earlier, but I don’t think we’re in any panic mode or something.”
The city brought in about $2.4 million from the cameras since implementing the program in the fall, though much of the money goes to the company that operates the cameras and to the Prince George’s County police.
Maryland law mandates that the money the city receives be spent on public safety and must be allocated by June 30 — the end of the fiscal year — or the state takes the money. Council members just began looking at how they want to spend the money.
“I think that no one really knew exactly how much this money was going to be and so I think making decisions without knowing is difficult,” Afzali said of the council waiting until now to start deciding how to allocate the funds.
“There’s a lot of different things we’ve been throwing around and one thing we definitely are moving forward with is putting money in the budget for a public safety coordinator,” College Park Councilman Patrick Wojahn said.
College Park started placing speed cameras near schools in October. Despite the millions of dollars raised this year, council members expect the city’s revenue from the tickets to drop as speeders notice the cameras.
“It’s doing exactly what it’s designed to,” said Councilman Mark Cook, noting he was surprised at how many speeders the cameras have caught. “We’ve seen a significant drop in the number of speeders in the city.”
About 60,000 citations have been mailed to speeders, based on the $2.4 million city officials have said was collected from the tickets.
Opponents of speed cameras say the program is about making money for cash-strapped municipalities and not about improving safety.
Only towns and cities in Prince George’s County operate the cameras. But the county government would start using them as well under a plan by County Executive Rushern Baker to buy 72 portable cameras to be used in school zones.
Baker’s proposed budget expects to bring in $4.3 million in fiscal 2012 from the cameras.
