Red-light camera contract renewed in 3-2 vote by Citrus Heights City Council
Update: The Citrus Heights City Council voted 3-2 on Thursday night to approve the contract’s renewal, with Mayor Steve Miller, Vice Mayor Porsche Middleton and Councilwoman Jeannie Bruins voting yes; Councilmen Bret Daniels and Tim Schaefer voting no.
Original story: The Citrus Heights City Council will vote Thursday on renewing the city’s red-light camera contract. But a changing makeup of the council could permanently eliminate the controversial program.
The five-person City Council adopted a red-light camera program in 2007, and then renewed their contract in 2015 by a unanimous vote. Since its adoption, the program has been run by Redflex Traffic Systems, an Australian traffic enforcement company whose United States program is based in Arizona.
In 2017, the council voted 4-1 to add red-light cameras to two more intersections in the city.
Mayor Steve Miller — who sits on the City Council — and Councilwoman Jeannie Bruins both voted in favor of the 2015 contract renewal and the 2017 red-light camera expansion.
Vice Mayor Porsche Middleton publicly opposed the cameras during her 2018 campaign, telling the Citrus Heights Sentinel in a 2018 interview that the cameras ”have been proven to be ineffective and only serve to send our tax dollars outside of the city.”
Councilman Bret Daniels voted against the 2017 expansion, and told The Sacramento Bee that he continues to oppose the program headed into Thursday’s planned vote.
“I still find the red-light camera program troubling,” Daniels said in an email Monday. “I’m not certain it does anything other than send a bunch of money out of our state to the private vendor. I think it’s time to look at more positive ways to ensure people are stopping for red lights.”
Councilman Tim Schaefer, who was elected in November, has not publicly stated an opinion on the cameras. This sets the council up for a split vote on keeping or dropping the program.
Daniels was the only council member who responded to The Bee’s request for comment ahead of the Thursday vote.
The contract and its controversy
The council will vote on a recommendation from the Citrus Heights Police Department, which calls on the city to renew its contract with Redflex for the next five years, at a cost of $492,000 a year.
In its report to the council, the police department said that “since the photo enforcement program began, collisions at the monitored intersections have decreased significantly.”
Collision data compiled by the department in 2017 corroborated this drop in collisions at all intersections with red-light cameras, the Sentinel reported. However, the incident data also showed that the number of collisions resulting in injury actually increased at the majority of the sites with red-light cameras.
“Our goal is to use technology as well as patrols to try to reduce fatal accidents and collisions in the city,” Citrus Height police Commander Jason Russo said. “We have found that overall, since 2007, the majority of our intersections had a reduction in collisions.
“And we believe that is in relation to our overall efforts as a police department and our use of red light camera technology.”
But Citrus Heights’ red-light camera program has not come without controversy. In 2015, a Sacramento County grand jury report said that Citrus Heights had mismanaged its program by not adequately timing yellow lights nor providing comprehensive accident data.
“Citrus Heights chronically and systematically ignores its own policies for oversight, testing, monitoring, maintenance and record-keeping,” the report stated.
In its official response to the grand jury report, the police department disputed some of the claims made, but agreed to correct issues regarding maintenance and testing.
Redflex itself has faced a federal investigation, with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2016 finding its former CEO guilty of paying bribes to Chicago city officials. The former CEO was sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay upwards of $2 million in restitution.
In a report following the sentencing, the Department of Justice said that Redflex had made adequate adjustments to address the issue.
What other cities have done
If Citrus Heights were to vote Thursday to end their contract with Redflex, they would join a growing group of California cities that are eliminating red-light camera programs altogether.
Nearby Roseville and Rocklin both once had contracts with Redflex, only to dissolved them in 2009 and 2011, respectively.
In Roseville, the city cut back on the program because Redflex could not find an intersection with enough violations to ensure the company would not lose money.
In Rocklin, the cameras were eliminated after the police department claimed that the cameras had “done their job” and decreased traffic incidents at all intersections due to a “halo effect.” The decrease in traffic incidents meant the company operated both cities’ cameras at a loss.
The city of Davis eliminated their red-light camera program in 2015, citing a desire for a more personal form of traffic enforcement. Rather than red-light cameras, the city shifted resources to police enforcement at stoplights.
“With red-light cameras we really do miss the opportunity to educate as well,” then-Assistant Police Chief Darren Pytel told the Davis Enterprise at the time. “It takes two people talking, and I think people do appreciate a face-to-face interaction.”
But the city and county of Sacramento continues to run a robust red-light camera program, with cameras at 11 intersections within the city limits and 25 total throughout unincorporated Sacramento County. In August 2019, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors approved a two-year contract with Redflex for $1.7 million.
This story was originally published June 24, 2021 at 5:00 AM.