City of Kent raises school-zone speeding fines to $136 from $124

Drivers who speed in school zones in Kent – many of them caught by cameras – will soon pay a higher price.

The base fine for speeding in a school zone will go up in early January to $136 from $124. The City Council’s Operations Committee voted 3-0 on Dec. 4 to approve the increase.

“When we started the program in May 2013, we started with $124 and that fine amount has not changed, so to keep up with labor costs and processing, we figure the $12 increase will help defray some of those costs,” said Kent Police Sgt. Todd Durham to the committee about the city’s school traffic camera program.

The city also will fine drivers who run red lights $136 when it installs cameras at six intersections in the next six to eight months. The Operations Committee adopted a revised ordinance because the measure it passed at a previous meeting listed an incorrect fine of $124.

Police will issue a $136 fine for a vehicle exceeding the 20 mph school speed limit by 1 to 9 mph. The fine will remain $248 for speeds of 10 mph or faster above the speed limit. The cameras operate for 30 minutes in the morning before school and 30 minutes in the afternoon after school.

Kent has cameras at four elementary school zones and will add cameras in January at Springbrook and Meadow Ride elementary schools. City officials initially planned to add those cameras earlier this year.

“The two new camera installations have experienced delays mainly due to timeline conflicts with the city of Kent and ATS,” Durham said in an email.

Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions (ATS), Inc., is the company that has contracts with the city to operate the school zone traffic cameras and the red-light cameras. Kent will pay ATS about $651,000 per year to operate the red-light cameras and about $550,000 for the school traffic cameras, which do not operate in July and August and the last couple weeks of December.

City officials expect annual revenue of between $1 million and $2 million from the red-light cameras. The fine of $136 rather than $124 will bring in about $150,000 more to the red-light camera program, Durham said. The city plans to spend revenue from its red-light camera program to purchase body-worn cameras for police officers.

Officers, who review the infractions caught by camera, issued a total of 9,342 tickets in 2017 at the four school zones. Based on an estimated 9,000 tickets in 2019, the higher fine would bring in about $108,000 more per year.

The city of Kent collected a record $1.2 million in 2017 from drivers caught speeding by cameras in four school zones, according to City Finance Department documents. Those cameras are at Sunrise, Neely-O’Brien, Meridian and Millennium grade schools. The city started the camera program at the request of the Kent School District to improve safety.

Durham said he didn’t have data for how much more revenue the addition of two more cameras would bring in to the city.

Kent has spent school traffic camera funds on numerous police programs, including nearly $1.8 million this year to buy 29 new police SUVs ($62,000 each) as part of a new car-per-officer, take-home program the City Council approved in May.

Kent has collected $4.2 million since the school traffic camera program started four years ago, not including collections for 2018.

Despite the higher fine starting in January, Kent remains lower than other nearby cities with school zone cameras, according to city websites:

• Seattle: school zone $234 fine; red light $136.

• Federal Way: school zone $210 to $250 fine; red light $124.

• Des Moines: school zone $210 to $250 fine; red light $136

The city of Auburn dropped its red-light camera program in 2014 after eight years because the system no longer covered the operation costs, according to the Auburn Reporter.