BERLIN – Speed cameras will be coming to Berlin following contract approval this week.
The Berlin Town Council voted unanimously on Monday to approve a contract with RedSpeed, a company that works with jurisdictions to provide automated traffic enforcement initiatives. Here in Berlin, the company will install cameras to monitor speeding.
“We will be consulting with council members about possible locations,” Chief Arnold Downing said.
Downing presented the council this week with a 34-page proposed five-year contract with RedSpeed, the company he’s been in talks with for months regarding speed cameras. He said during the term of the contract RedSpeed would build out the entire system.
“Why RedSpeed and not other vendors?” the chief said. “We actually had the opportunity to talk to other vendors. The technology’s totally different. Most speed cameras are actual photo cameras taking snapshots. RedSpeed actually uses video. We’ll be able to go ahead and look back, look at that video and actually do other things other than just capture speeders and violations.”
He said there were also benefits to the fine structure used by RedSpeed.
“This is actually a different payment structure than most of the others. A lot of the other ones are flat fee, in saying that, if you dot have enough tickets you might be in the negative,” he said.
With RedSpeed, however, the $40 fine is broken down so that $14 of it goes to RedSpeed and $26 goes to the town. If a citation isn’t paid and a motorist is flagged, RedSpeed will take care of that for an additional $3 fee.
“With each citation the max they will be getting is $17 out of the $40,” Downing said.
He said his department was required to have an authorized individual a sworn officer, vet the citations forwarded by RedSpeed. He said that individual would be tasked with sorting through the violations to ensure police officers or emergency responders on their way to calls weren’t ticketed.
According to Downing RedSpeed will assist the municipality with getting the necessary permits for the speed camera system. He said the only issue was expected to be getting Maryland State Highway Administration approval for cameras on Broad Street, William Street and Main Street, as they were state roads.
“We’d have to get permission from State Highway to put units on those locations,” he said. “RedSpeed does that for us, they do it routinely.”
He said the town and RedSpeed had to agree on sites for the cameras.
“Once a site is established that site has to be maintained for one year unless we mutually agree another site should be chosen because the site is not an appropriate location,” Downing said.
He said if it was underperforming in terms of the amount of speeding motorists it was recording, RedSpeed would want to move it to a site with more speeding.
Councilman Steve Green asked if the company had performed its trial analysis of potential Berlin locations yet. Downing said that wouldn’t take place until the contract was approved.
When Green asked what would happen if the company determined the speed camera program wasn’t lucrative in berlin.
“If that was the case we wouldn’t be out anything,” Downing said.
He added that the company was aware of the number of schools in Berlin and that the cameras in Maryland had to be near school zones. He added that Pittsville, which only had one school, was averaging revenue of $5,000 to $6,000 a month working with RedSpeed.
“That has been reduced from around $11,000,” he said. “It tells you the residents there have actually changed their behavior and the numbers have come down.”
He said that after the first year the town should experience a 20% reduction in speeding.
“At the end of the day, that’s the goal, not the revenue but the reduction in speed,” Town Administrator Mary Bohlen said.
Councilwoman Shaneka Nichols indicated she’d love to see a speed camera on Flower Street, where speeding is often a concern for residents.
Councilman Jay Knerr asked what happened if motorists contested the fines. Downing said RedSpeed would go to court to defend the camera system if that occurred.
Councilman Jack Orris questioned a portion of the contract that related to collecting delinquent payments. Downing explained that if a fine wasn’t paid, rather than send the unpaid fine to a collection agency RedSpeed would have the Motor Vehicle Administration flag the motorist.
“We don’t have a mechanism to go grab somebody and say you owe us X amount of dollars,” Downing said. “Taking tags is enough.”
Mayor Zack Tyndall thanked Downing and the town’s attorney for their work on the contract.
“I know it’s been a big lift trying to sort through legislation to make sure we can do something like this and then selecting the appropriate vendor,” he said. “You all have put a lot of work into this and we appreciate it.”
Downing said he was encouraged by the fact that local towns like Pocomoke and Snow Hill were already working with RedSpeed.
“All of our local partners are using this and they actually were references. That makes us feel good,” he said.
