The Baltimore City Board of Estimates has agreed to buy out a contract with an Anne Arundel County firm to operate its problem plagued speed and red light cameras.
The board voted 4-1 in favor of the agreement Wednesday morning to pay Hanover-based Brekford Corporation $600,000 to get out of the five-year contract. The contract was originally awarded in November 2012.
Comptroller Joan Pratt was the lone no vote. The Baltimore Sun reported Pratt argued the city could have declared Brekford did not deliver on services in the contract and therefore would not have to make an additional payment.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said the decision to settle with Brekford allows the city to move forward in picking a new contractor to provide “the type of program that is right for Baltimore.” She did not detail the city’s problems with the contractor, citing the agreement made with Brekford, but she did say both sides worked on fixing the problems, which included inaccurate speed readings.
City officials have begun drafting a request for a new contractor to develop a new enforcement camera program. Transportation Director William Johnson said there is no schedule for when the cameras will be online again but added that it is a “high priority” of the department.
Johnson said the program will not include the “bounty system” that paid vendors based on the number of tickets issued. That system had been highly criticized.
“One of the major recommendations [of a speed camera task force] was to evaluate how we can move forward without the bounty system,” Johnson said.
The mayor said one recommendation from Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke - to do away with the traffic enforcement cameras and use police officers – will not be considered.
“I am pretty convinced that the citizens would much rather us having police officers patrolling neighborhoods and working on reducing violent crime rather than being in fixed positions at intersections,” she said.
The cameras were turned off in April because of the problems, costing the city $14 million in projected revenue from fines this fiscal year.
In addition, Rawlings Blake said Monday the city will have to close an estimated $20 million budget shortfall in the next fiscal year. But she said she is confident that city services will be protected.
“We’ve had to close budget deficits that are larger than that before in the current budget year and moving forward to plan for the next fiscal year,” she said. “We’ve done it before; we’ve done it in a way that continues to move the city forward.”