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Traffic cameras planned near schools
By DAVID SKOLNICK
YOUNGSTOWN
City administrators expect to have traffic cameras to catch speeders near schools by October.
The expectation comes despite no authorization from city council to use the cameras, a proposed contract still in the discussion stage and no study done as to where the cameras will be placed.
Members of city council’s safety committee met Tuesday with Police Chief Jimmy Hughes, Law Director Iris Torres Guglucello and Deputy Law Director Dan Pribich to discuss the cameras.
After meeting with officials from five companies, Hughes selected Redflex Traffic Systems of Phoenix in April as the firm that would partner with the city to place cameras by schools.
But a deal with the company is not done.
“There were a lot of questions with the proposed contract,” Guglucello said.
The contract, about 40 to 50 pages, doesn’t include a price, if there is to be one, as well as the split of the revenue between the city and Redflex, she said.
“There is a lot of information we’ve yet to gather,” she said.
When asked by safety-committee members about a time frame for the cameras to be up and ready, Pribich said it should be by October.
The city needs traffic studies to determine the locations of the cameras but expect everything to be done by October, Pribich said.
Enough council members support traffic cameras by schools but haven’t formally voted in favor of them.
Council needs to approve the use of the cameras, which would not be manned. City officials want the cameras primarily because of speeders in school zones.
Also Tuesday, committee members and Lyndsey Hughes, the city’s downtown director of special events, special projects and marketing, told the police chief that they’ve seen an increase in the number of vagrants, including those drinking beer, during the day in downtown.
The worst time, Lyndsey Hughes said, is between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
She also said she hasn’t seen a police officer walking downtown for a while.
The police chief said there is a regular car patrol in that area during the day, but having an officer walking downtown has “been sporadic” since about mid-April.
That’s because extra officers have been assigned to walk downtown during the evening hours, the police chief said.
He added that he’ll “step up enforcement downtown” during the day, but the problem isn’t that serious.
“We don’t want them to run people away” from downtown, said Councilwoman Annie Gilliam, D-1st. “It’s very annoying for them to beg for money. If we don’t stop them, it will get worse.”
Also, Howard Tattrie, a programmer who works downtown for Turning Technologies, said the vagrants are “getting worse. They’re getting more flagrant.”