One of the cameras keeping an eye out for red-light runners on Queen Avenue at Geary Street, photographed on Dec 14, 2023.
What do you think the Albany city government makes off the two cameras that catch red-light runners at Queen Avenue and Geary Street? Go ahead, take a guess.
As it turns out, in comparison to the city’s budget of more than $100 million per biennium in the general fund, ticket revenue from the cameras ranges from modest to minuscule.
The numbers are not easily found. I asked Jeanna Yeager, the city’s finance director and always a helpful and knowledgable source, for Albany’s red-light camera ticket revenue for the last two fiscal years.
“We don’t currently have a good report that pulls data specific to Redflex, so I had to compile information from different sources,” she told me by email. Redflex is the Arizona-based vendor that operates the cameras and processes what they record before an Albany officer reviews each case.
People getting tickets can pay them off over several months. The numbers Yeager reported were those for citations that had been completely paid.
For each ticket, the city pays Redflex $60. As provided by state law, $50 goes to the state, and $16 to the county.
Here’s what Yeager determined in reply to my question.
In fiscal 2022, there were 409 completed tickets, and revenues totaled $106,081. Minus the vendor’s cut and the state and county fees, the city’s net revenue that year was $55,036.
In fiscal 2023, 630 completed citations yielded a total of $168,706. Minus the payments and fees, net revenue to the city was $89,956.
The city council on Wednesday authorized the installation of red-light cameras at three more intersections and the addition of photo speed enforcement at all four. Police Chief Marcia Harnden said she expected this to result in 15,000-17,000 additional traffic tickets per year.
If you get caught running a red light, the presumptive fine is $265. Municipal Court Supervisor September Ridgeway told me the Albany court will lower the fine to $220 for people who submit a written explanation or appear in person.
For speeding, the presumptive fines range from $115 to $440 depending on the speed. Again, violators can lower their fines by sending a written explanation or appearing in court.
Harnden didn’t mention an expected ratio of speeding to red-light violations in her estimate of 15,000 to 17,000 tickets. So figuring out the added revenue amounts to a guess.
But if the number of camera-generated tickets soars from 600 to 15,000, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the amount of money paid by Albany drivers and received by the city will jump 25 times as well. (hh)
Well, 25 times $89,956 “ain’t chicken feed.” It is a pretty substantial amount of money.
(Of course, I worked for “chicken feed,” for years, so I would be happy with the $89,956…
$89,956 being the net amount the city of Albany made in 2023 off the red-light cameras aimed at drivers at 1/3 of the intersection at Queen and Geary.)
Thanks for the time spent digging these figures up, Hasso, and for the math.
Even if paying the $265 or $220 fine, depending on whether you write a letter defending yourself and/or appear at a court date, is not a hardship for you (it was for me), your citation is placed on your state driving record, and the cost of your automobile insurance rises. Also, your name is on that record of having a traffic ticket for 3 whole years, so your automobile insurance will reflect that higher cost for 3 years. But, I don’t think the City Council gives a damn about that.
Easy fix….don’t speed thru intersections and don’t run red lights! Then your insurance and driving record won’t be impacted!
Dee-Dee, I did not speed through an intersection or run a red light. Thank you very much!!
I find it funny most of these companies and devices are banned in alot of cities and 8 states in the US. There are several ongoing and convicted cases of these companies offering illicit incentives, and wining &dining city officials to get their devices installed. There is no maintaining these or daily testing like what is required of dashboard radars on police vehicles, these are money grabbers for companies out of state, city officials are complicit in ripping off the community in my opinion.
And ya just gave everyone a legal defense in these tickets…
Go to court and asked for data…what are the number of false reports? And when was the last time the cameras were calibrated?
That’s gonna create A LOT hassle for the city and the vendor.
These will go by the way of the dodo, if enough subpoena the data.
Government doesn’t like you in their business too much.
Personally, I have sat at the intersection on numerous occasions and seen those defective cameras go off for no reason at all…there was not a car doing anything illegal. And, I have seen them not go off when a car did roll thru the red light making a rt hand turn.
You be the judge…
It is legal to make a right hand turn on a red stop light.
The meeting materials for the Dec 13th council meeting indicates that they pay the company $20 “per paid citation” – is that in addition to the $60 you mention? There’s also the cost of the camera systems per month, which is $3000 per “system” (not sure if that means per intersection or per approach monitored), is that also accounted for in the net revenue numbers provided by the finance director?
For those who are also attempting napkin math at home, Harnden also mentioned that there will likely be the need to hire an additional FTE to handle the increase in citation quantity. There’s also the existing personnel costs for the current workload, if not already accounted for in the numbers above.
The numbers I reported were for the last two fiscal years. A new contract will govern the financial aspects of the new systems. It has not yet been negotiated. We’ll all get those numbers once the details are known.
So let’s use your numbers and guess the expected “revenue” and then compare it to a few existing sources of “revenue” in the General Fund.
For 2023 your guess is $89,956 x 25 = approx $2.3 million, or about $4.6 million of new “revenue” added to the 2023-2025 budget.
The City Services Fee (tax) for 2023-2025 is $4.4 million.
The Public Safety Levy for 2023-2025 is $5.1 million.
The Municipal Court Fines for 2023-2025 is $1.4 million.
Yeah, this new dope should provide a nice buzz at City Hall.
Oh my, some other way to help enforce the law without having to add police officers.
Why do we have speed limits and red lights if people just do whatever they want? (or no parking zones or no passing zones …. and on and on)
I get pretty tired of people whining about how awful it is that they got a ticket and their insurance went up. Then don’t do it. How hard is that to understand.
You all seem to want everyone else to obey the law, but apparently they don’t apply to everyone.
A voice of common sense & reason. Thanks Michele…
Ray, K. the glorious and supreme spokesperson for the Council: You or Michelle weren’t there when the red light camera photographed me. But, of course, you are both holier than thou! Give us a break, will ‘ya? (How stupid of me to even type that request!!)
Does that mean we the citizens may a formal complaint for citation, when an officer travels over the speed limit or rolls thru a stop sign? Witnessed a Community officer doing just that the other day, when she ran thru a stop sign around the American Legion, just before the Veteran’s Day Parade.
You guys see those metal bars beneath that green bike sign in the photo there? If you walk up to them and look down, there’s garbage that’s been there for literal years. I’ve done some picking up of random bits of trash around my neighborhood (and yours), but I’ve always skipped that to see if that area ever gets cleaned thoroughly. That makes me believe there is zero funding for the Periwinkle Bike Path. (An official City Park.)
If the city wants to continue letting people sleep there, they can at least set up a trash can in the vicinity. The closest one is in the middle of Kinder Park and every time I’ve cleaned up anything around, it’s always full and overflowing.
I have a feeling any revenue generated from these cameras won’t be spent on making this area nicer or safer. They already blew way too much repaving that sidewalk.
The initial report showed NO improvement in safety. This is purely a revenue generating system for the company and forrvthe local government. The sole purpose of these cameras is to create revenue. NONE of these pictures prevented an accident or saved a life.
A simple google will show that Traffic Cameras rarely work out well. It’s not just one city either. It’s as corrupt revenue generating system. Those tickets need to be processed through the court system, which will need more staff.
The real answer is to vote the entire city council out. That’s were I will start. Hasso please publish the names of the city council that voted for this revenue generating system. At 15,000 to 17,000 tickets per year, I can see a lot of inconvenienced people might what to use that list when voting this year.
Well Craig, in a previous post Hasso opened with this damning statement!
“There was no debate and no disagreement on the Albany City Council Wednesday as members unanimously voted for new traffic cameras likely to yield a massive increase in revenue from fines.”
A recent investigative report; maybe 60min found money paid comes from lowest income drivers which means equity standards are not being met.
Since they made everything that the homeless do legal, the jails have lost the amount money reported to house the offenders. Now the city is making up that lost funding by aggressively pulling the ruins in on the working people and keeping the homeless population high to rake in continuous funding. The government is making the homeless crisis then being paid to fix it. Your kiddos wouldn’t get their butts off the sofa and make a life for themselves if kept buying them soda and chips so they can play video games or watch netflix all day. Why would the homeless be motivated to better their lives when we pay their bills and take away their accountability? We are not helping them. We are keeping them down in the gutter.
We don’t need more traffic cameras, we need more middle class jobs!
Stop the Red Light Camera’s in Albany
As I mentioned in the other post by Hasso regarding this same subject, I used to work for the city of San Jose CA and was assigned to work with the photo speed radar program. It’s very similar technology to the red light camera system used in Albany. The San Jose system was not 100% accurate as Redflex claimed. At times it issued citations to people who had not actually broken the speed limit.
The program I speak of was named NASCOP (Neighborhood Automated Speed Compliance Program). Much like the red light camera program here in Albany – but different in how violators were caught or accused. We operated from within a white unmarked van with extremely sophisticated equipment inside and outside. The van was parked in a designated neighborhood with one operator inside the van. As the vehicle passed by the van, it took a photo of the drivers face and the front and rear plates of the vehicle. It also recorded the date, time, location and the speed plus other information. A citation was automatically sent to the registered owner (RO) of the vehicle. If the RO fought the citation in court, and if it was clearly him/her behind the wheel in the photo, the case was over and he/she had to pay the fine. There are legit defenses to use in court which I wont go into here.
Also: As I recall, the reason the city of San Jose finally did away with NASCOP and Redflex was because the citizens were fed up with Redflex and big brother ambushing them. As far as I know at this time, Redflex is no longer allowed to do business in San Jose.
Also: Another reason the city did away with NASCOP is because it automatically caught government officials as they sped through neighborhoods. City council members, the mayor, and other government officials complained when they had to pay huge fines…then, magically, Redflex packed up and went to another city. Many people in government feel they are above the little people and shouldn’t be held to the same standard.
Albany city officials, think about this carefully before you sign with Redflex. YOU VERY LIKELY WILL BE THE VICTIM OF THIS TECHNOLOGY. YOU BETTER PAY YOUR FINE BECAUSE WE THE CITIZENS OF ALBANY WILL BE CHECKING. OH, AND DON’T TAKE YOUR GIRLFRIEND/BOYFRIEND FOR A RIDE IN YOUR CAR…photos. Internet.
I don’t trust Redflex. I know how they do this stuff from personal, inside, hands on experience. It’s a money grab that will be almost impossible to stop if once started. Governments love money.
Not that I would encourage anybody to do this, but at least on the Southbound direction at the intersection pictured above, if you stop abruptly just shy of the crosswalk, the camera flashes.
The system is not perfect with the flash or when photos are snapped. The mathematics involved in this process is very advanced and some times the engineers get it wrong. Unless you can convince a judge of an error, you will be forced to pay the fine.
The person making the legal right turn while the camera flashes is the one to deal with it.
I’m not in favor of speed cameras, mainly because I tend to drive a bit fast. But red light running is starting to get out of hand and I am not begrudgingly admitting that we need even more red light cameras than what they are proposing.
Red light cameras are like self checkout at most stores, most people don’t like it, stores say they have a hiring problem, so is this what’s happening in Albany, can’t hire police, I don’t think so, just look at the raises management has gotten over the last 5 years, even due the pandemic, city
Manager went from $145k to aprox $201k , so I say everyone just pay up, for now until we have a different governing body
The city manager controls the city council which in turn decides who is successful living here and who is not. If we want a town that cares about the people that live here changes need to be made. All the new projects that will dry up Albany for working people will continue. Soon all that will live here is government workers, people with money and the homeless. It is rotting from the inside out. All the migrant workers they think will become the workers to support all the manual labor and service jobs send their kiddos to school so they will not have to work in the fields, fast food, etc. their whole lives. Our family values and commitment to the community have been bought and paid for. Shame on the people of Albany who are smitten by the shiny baubles the city offers them in exchange for what should be done to benefit the whole community.