AURORA | Aurora city officials are considering a less-than-graceful exit from a pilot program that uses vans equipped with radar and cameras to automatically ticket speeding drivers after police reported the program is more than $350,000 in the hole.
“This seems like an epic failure to me,” Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky said during the Jan. 11 meeting of the council’s public safety policy committee. “I’m not sure I’m interested in even continuing the pilot program after this initial period.”
Aurora’s City Council voted in July 2022 to launch the photo speed enforcement program through a partnership with technology vendor Conduent.
A year later, the city rolled out a trio of vans capable of photographing drivers, with the Aurora Police Department mailing tickets for driving less than 25 mph over the speed limit and sending officers to follow up with people who drove 25 mph or more over the limit.
State law allows police to set up the vans near schools, city parks and ongoing road work as well as in residential neighborhoods with speed limits of 35 mph or less and in areas where police have recorded a high number of accidents or complaints about speeding.
By the end of 2023, the program had resulted in about 1,128 tickets being mailed and 26 high-speed violations that would cause officers to contact drivers in-person, Lt. Chris Amsler told the council committee Jan. 11.
Another 2,358 violations were recorded but couldn’t be followed up on due to poor picture quality, invalid license plates, user error and other problems.
According to Amsler, Conduent told the city that the number of violations that are being thrown out because of user error is decreasing.
City officials envisioned the program would pay for itself through fines collected from speeding drivers. with any surplus revenue being set aside for other traffic calming programs.
But Amsler said the program has been in the red since June 2023, losing a total of $352,861.06 through December. Interim deputy police chief Heather Morris said the city would need to receive the equivalent of 2,200 paid fines per month for the program to break even.
While police initially described the program as a “force multiplier” that would allow the department to crack down on speeding without burdening its dwindling officer force, Amsler also said the city is struggling to staff the vans.
“Currently, this is where we’re having the biggest issue with the program, is with staffing,” Amsler said.
He said the temporary nature of the pilot program has made it difficult to hire and hang onto a full staff of six technicians to operate the equipment in the vans every day.
The city’s contract with Conduent — under which Aurora owes $83,400 monthly for the three vans, which cost roughly $35,000 per month to fully staff — is scheduled to last through August 2024.
The program’s supervisor also plans to step down and accept another job with the city in the near future, Amsler said, in part because “there is no guarantee that her position will be there in six months.” He said a sworn police officer is being trained to take over the supervisor’s job.
Amsler said the department’s recruiters have been told to promote the technician jobs and that APD is working with the city’s Human Resources Department to push cop candidates who were rejected for physical fitness reasons to apply to become a technician.
Jurinsky, who chairs the council’s public safety police committee, called the news delivered by Amsler “alarming” and asked city staffers how Aurora could avoid losing more money on the pilot program.
Pete Schulte of the City Attorney’s Office said the city would be on the hook for about $1 million if it decides to terminate its contract with Conduent early, which Jurinsky said was “uncalled for.”
Interim police chief Art Acevedo suggested Aurora guarantee technicians another job with the city after the expiration of the pilot program to help with recruiting if the city decided to manage its losses by fighting to fully staff the vans.
“I can’t seem to figure out what the qualifications would be to sit in a van all day. I just really can’t wrap my brain around that,” Jurinsky said, questioning why the city rejected six applicants for a lack of job experience.
Jurinsky said she would rather see the city invest in enforcement actions by traffic officers. Acevedo, too, said he thought the city should cut its losses and floated the idea of retirees staffing the vans on a volunteer basis.
City Manager Jason Batchelor told Jurinsky that staffers will evaluate what action the city could take to avoid losing more money on the program.
I’ve never lived in a City or area where there is so little traffic enforcement! Please understand I’m not blaming the police department. I don’t know that they have adequate funding. My opinion is that without radar and Police vehicles the reckless speeding will continue as it has since I moved to Colorado a few years ago.
This is the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard. The program is failing because there are not enough people speeding for it to pay for itself. Did you read the article??
Sometimes the obvious eludes people. Good of you to attempt to bring this point to their attention.
Three vans? Three hundred vans wouldn’t be enough to stop those that drive through Aurora and blatantly disregard speed limits. Tickets being tossed out because tags are expired? Well, put more police on patrol and issue tickets with mandatory court dates for cars with expired tags. That should generate enough funding to pay salaries for 20 police officers. Chief Acevedo, it is time to stop the lawlessness (not only speeding) in Aurora and prove your worth. If you can clean up Miami, you can clean up here.
Your priorities are gravely out of whack! You shake your fist at the speeders while violent crime and theft go unchecked. Get a grip.
This program doesn’t work because people are not speeding anywhere near enough for it to be viable. Also, it’s absurd the city locked itself into a year-long deal with a $1 million dollar early termination agreement. Absolute joke, and gross mismanagement of funds by Aurora government. There need to be consequences and accountability for squandering taxpayer money like this.
I worry when it is more important that an enforcement program be a revenue enhancer, than a safety enhancer. I saw where vans were to be located “in areas where police have recorded a high number of accidents or complaints” but didn’t find anyplace in the article that changes in accident rates or numbers of complaints were even being LOOKED at. Doesn’t ANYONE’s life matter here?
Aurora is obsessed with “DIVERSITY” and doesn’t promote any activity that can’t be linked to “DIVERSITY” in some way.
Lmao another brilliant idea by our city council who seems to waste money left and right on their pet projects. Maybe if they focused on representing the citizens instead of trying to show how important they are we wouldn’t have these issues. But I guess anything to distract from their own misconduct
Aurora’s City Council needs to be sacked and replaced with people who won’t sign bad contracts with abusive vendors. Radar vans are a cancer on society.
Start handing out tickets for all the expired license plate/temp plates that are in the Aurora area. I see at least 20 a day. You know if the tag has expired more than likely so has the vehicles insurance!
I agree, after your 30 day ”grace period” start towing the vehicles and give them 30days to renew with proof of insurance and a valid DL. If not,
every 3 months auction these vehicles and put the money back into the towing program to fund it
This is a very good point. It is likely a safe assumption that anyone who is negligent enough to ignore their vehicle registration for months has probably disregarded the insurance requirement as well. Those drivers put us all at great financial risk when they are driving without insurance.
It is not suprising that police would keep a money losing project going. Their blueline gang unions need the number of gangsters to justify their existance. Where is the fine revenue being spent. Waste generated by government agencies is often directed to corrupt purposes. The police everywhere are no different.
Start impounding and auctioning the cars of the most egregious offenders.
Caught doing 70+ on Alameda or Havana? You lose your car.
Caught fleeing from cops? You lose your car.
Caught doing doughnuts in an intersection? You lose your car.
When neighbors hear the stories of cars disposed of, they’ll start respecting the law again.
Trying to build a better traffic mousetrap takes a little more planning than what the city seems to hold the capability to do. For example, we see the obvious violations of expired tags every day the city either can’t, incapable, or is unwilling to get a handle on. APD gave us a whole week last year they told us they would crack down on the expired tag violators. So- we are back to seeing the same ole vehicles with tags far out of compliance every day. We doing anything about that? That same complaint is a common thread in the comments here. Is the city listening? Hello! We need some confidence in APD or whatever city department runs this to do the simple things in traffic before they dive into the high- tech approach to this speed problem begins. And short-term city employees some kind of pseudo APD technician of the sorts. What is that? I guess it’s akin to Park Aurora, kind of a outsourced mall-police in a city owned car using a contractors patented ticket issuing system. Do these city geniuses even know what the biggest city complaint year after year citizens call in and identify a problem car to ticket? It’s doubtful. But nevertheless, we sure got us into a smart sounding high-priced fancy contract to do more speed demon enforcement … too bad it doesn’t. Seems par for the course.
So why is the emphasis on how little money the program is making and not on whether or not our streets are safer? Was the point to make the streets safer or to make money?
do you really need to ask? It’s always about the money.
who would sign a contract that stipulated
one million dollars to cancel?