Camera delay won't put Naperville budget in red

Naperville has delayed the start of its red-light camera program but officials say they don't expect much of a hole in the budget.

Proposed cameras on Route 59 are expected to generate more money per month than they would on the city streets that were originally part of the plan, balancing out the late start.

"You lose some time of collections, however that's made up for basically in ... traffic volume," said Doug Krieger, director of finance.

The city had hired Maryland-based Traffipax, Inc. to operate cameras at the intersections of Fort Hill Drive and Aurora Avenue and 95th Street and Book Road. The cameras were expected to be installed in January, with the goal of issuing $100 citations to violators 30 days later.

The city initially expected to bring in $2.4 million in revenue from those cameras but had lowered that figure to $891,300 to account for unforeseen circumstances.

Those circumstances arose. After months of delays in getting the cameras up and running, the city terminated its contract with Traffipax and decided to instead pursue a new vendor to install cameras along state and county roads.

But doing so means the cameras will likely only be operational for three months of the current fiscal year -- February through April 2009.

However, Krieger's financial analysis shows that with cameras at two Route 59 intersections, the city will likely still be able to bring in $812,400 to $1.24 million during that time.

"That analysis is based on violation rates other communities have seen when they initially installed the cameras so we feel pretty comfortable surrounding those," Krieger said. "Probably the biggest risk associated with the total number of violations is related to the total number of months the cameras are in operation."

While the actual intersections that will get cameras is still to be determined, his figures are based at putting them at two Route 59 and North Aurora Road and Route 59 and 95th Street, which he says are representative of the intersections in that area. About 47,600 vehicles pass through each of those two intersections daily.

The analysis also takes into account a reduction in violations once the cameras are activated.

Vendor bids to install cameras for the city are due June 9. The city council will likely select a new vendor when it meets July 15.