Jacobs on The Repeal of School Cameras

The following was submitted by Leg. Judy Jacobs, who represents the 16th district.

On Monday, Dec. 15, 2014, the Nassau County legislature voted unanimously to repeal the school zone speed camera program. This program was flawed from the beginning, even though representatives from both the state and the county, and from both parties, voted for it. It was presented as a school safety issue. At the county level we insisted before we voted that there would be proper signage and flashing beacon lights, as well as prior warnings to residents that the program was being initiated. We were assured by the administration that all of these measures would be put in place, but, unfortunately, this was not the case.

First of all the initial roll out of the program was done during the summer when most people had no idea that certain schools had summer programs. Add to the above the fact that most municipalities give out ‘warning’ tickets, first, to make people aware that the implementation with fines will follow. This created a situation whereby the county executive granted amnesty to all the August tickets. However, when he rolled the program out again in September, it was done exactly the same way. The only difference was that the schools were now open. Please realize that another flaw were the locations chosen, in all instances with no input from the school districts or their respective legislators.

Due to the lack of transparency, I immediately called for a suspension of the program and submitted corresponding legislation. That plea was disregarded and I repeated my call for suspending the program for the next two months, to no avail.

Finally, with no other recourse left, the Democrats filed a bill which called for a total repeal on Dec. 3, 2014. This was quickly followed by an announcement by Suffolk that they would be cancelling plans to initiate this program. While we were waiting for the official report from the office of Legislative Budget Review, the Republicans joined with us and filed their bill also demanding repeal. The unanimous vote to repeal occurred on Monday, Dec. 15.

As your legislator, I quickly realized that we were unfairly surrounded by cameras. The sad truth is that of the 400,000 tickets given countywide, approximately 90,000, or about 25 percent, were in the 16th legislative district.

My final thought on the program is that it was seriously flawed. However, speeding is a serious problem and the statistics proved that. In my estimation, we must all be aware of the need to respect a school zone and to alter our driving as responsible residents.

Please drive carefully.

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