I've been so focused on the legality and necessity of the cameras I never really looked into the times the cameras are turned on and off.

My neighbors, Samantha and Christine, pointed out that the cameras are turned off in the mornings 1/2 hour AFTER school starts.   And they pointed out that they are turned on in the afternoons 1/2 hour BEFORE school is let out.

I remember seeing emails between city staff member Jeremy Metzler and an employee of Verra Mobility about programming the times but never really put it together.

At the last council study session, the city accountant had a graph which showed the city collected about $500,000 in fines.  It also included expenses which was listed as payments to Verra Mobility at $400,000.

That's about $100,000 left over for the city.  So my claim that the residents of Edgewood haven't really benefited at all from the camera program and that Verra Mobility has enjoyed being the largest recipient of the funds collected can't be denied.

So lets do some math.  Samantha noted that half the monies collected were during those times AFTER school started and BEFORE school ended.  That means that $200,000 of the money the city sent to Verra Mobility was collected when students were sitting at their desks.

One of the criticisms of traffic camera programs is that it encourages writing more tickets to pay for itself.

While I watched the Northwood school zone I noticed all the commotion and activity at the Northwood driveway ended about 4:05 or 15 minutes after school ended.

Anyway, lets just take the $250,000 collected when kids are sitting at their desks out of the equation.  That would mean the city would have "only" collected $250,000 instead of $500,000.  That wouldn't be enough to cover the Verra Mobility costs.  

And that's also why the city has to issue citations for 24 to 25 mph.  That would be an additional 28% off the collections (about 85,000).  The city would have only collected $165,000 for the year.

I know for a fact that officer friendly in Edgewood doesn't write tickets for 4 over, he doesn't even pull them over.

I was watching "The Rookie" the other night and he wanted to pull over someone who rolled through a stop sign.   His training officer stopped him and said "Is this why you became a cop? To harass hard working people who are trying to get by? Doesn't sound very guardian like to me."

How can the city claim they are saving children's lives when those kids are sitting at a desk almost 1/4 mile away from the cameras?