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NEW PORT RICHEY — The City Council gave red-light cameras another green light this week, signing a contract that all but ensures they'll start recording next year.
The contract with American Traffic Solutions, the Arizona-based company running all but six of Florida's 66 camera-mounted cities and counties, mandates the city will pay $4,750 a month for every three-lane intersection that gets the company's watchful eyes.
The company will review police data to find the city's most troublesome intersections, police Chief Jeff Harrington said, and make recommendations by year's end on where the cameras should go. Officers will get the final say.
Mayor Scott McPherson, a longtime opponent of the cameras, was the lone dissenter in Tuesday's 4-1 vote to sign the contract. McPherson said the cameras yield profits but not safer roads. Harrington has estimated the fines from each intersection could earn $500,000 a year.
State law sets red-light fines at $158 per violation, $75 of which is paid to the city. To break even with its monthly bill, the city would need two red-light runners daily per intersection to pay up.
City leaders in St. Petersburg and Daytona Beach voted this week to pursue their own red-light camera systems, which could be installed by next summer.
But the cameras aren't without opposition. In August, Brooksville officials ended their camera program due to public complaints.
And last month, in Los Angeles, a city controller study showed the city's 32 monitored intersections returned mixed results in stopping traffic crashes. While the total crash count had gone down, crashes at more than a third of the intersections had gone up.
Contact Drew Harwell at dharwell@sptimes.com or (727) 869-6244.
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