TEMPLE TERRACE — Temple Terrace will move forward with school-zone speed cameras, but after council concerns over privacy and enforcement, the city will seek competitive bids instead of using its original vendor.
The City Council voted 4-1 last week to approve the first reading of an ordinance designed to deter speeding at five area schools.
The city will be putting out an RFP for a vendor. When originally presented last month, the city had planned to “piggyback” onto an existing government contract between the city of Plantation and RedSpeed rather than seek competitive bids, as allowed because there was no cost to the city.
But some of the other changes requested by council represented a significant change from the piggyback agreement.
“As a result, staff can no longer use this agreement for this project,” said police chief Rob Staley.
A new contract will address concerns raised by the council regarding ticketing windows, data sharing and data deletion.
“We’re writing the RFP that will clearly establish the data retention period and require permanent deletion of all data once the period expires,” Staley said. “The vendor will also provide a survey and evaluation of the process and measure the program’s effectiveness at six months, one year, and annually thereafter.”
Violators are mailed citations, with no officer required at the scene. The fine is $100.
A final vote will be held Aug. 17.
A 2023 state law allows cities to use radar- or lidar-based cameras to catch speeders in school zones all day during school hours. Temple
Terrace intends to limit that window to roughly 30 minutes before and after morning drop-off and afternoon pickup times only.
While there was no disagreement on the need to solve the problem of speeding, several councilmembers said they worried that the enforcement windows described by staff needed to be more clearly defined in the ordinance itself.
The push for the ordinance followed a three-day traffic study conducted in February by RedSpeed, which found a concerning number of speeding violations at five area schools.
The ordinance, modeled after the same one used by Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa, would authorize automated speed detection systems at five schools: Greco Middle, Woodmont Charter and Temple Terrace, Lewis and Riverhills elementary schools.
The RedSpeed study recorded more than 20,000 vehicles over three days.
When narrowed down to the proposed school zone enforcement hours only, Greco Middle had the highest violation rate, with 1,130 of the 2,302 vehicles recorded (49%) traveling more than 10 mph above the posted 15-mph limit.
Woodmont Charter showed 48% of vehicles traveled at 26 mph or faster in the 15-mph zone. Lewis and Temple Terrace elementaries were also over 30%.
If approved Aug. 17, staff will issue the RFP and return with a recommended vendor before any cameras are installed.