Bill Ryan/The Gazette The City of Frederick has six speed cameras near schools. This one is in the 1400 block of North East Street, near Gov. Thomas Johnson Middle School.

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If the number of speed camera citations mailed is any indication, speeders in Frederick could help the city bridge its budget gap next year.

Since July 5, when the city started mailing citations from its speed cameras, it has netted $216,000 in fines, said Lt. Rich Hetherington of the Frederick Police Department.

Six cameras are snapping pictures of speeders near schools, and the Frederick Police Department plans to have 18 working by the end of the year.

Citations are issued to any driver caught on camera going 12 mph over the speed limit. The fine is $40, of which the city receives $31.25. ACS State and Local Solutions of Dallas receives the other $8.75 per citation, as well as $3,000 a month for operating the cameras.

Hetherington runs the speed camera program for the police, and is the arbiter of who receives a citation and who doesn’t. “I think I am the most hated man in Frederick these days,” he said.

He said 6,922 citations have been mailed or are in the process of being approved. The number of citations approved, and those in process, from each of the cameras are:

Westbound Hayward Road: 3,079

Opossumtown Pike: 2,807

Butterfly Lane: 438

North Market Street at Gov. Thomas Johnson High School: 396

Cameras also were installed July 28 on southbound and northbound East Street. Within two days, those cameras caught 202 speeders.

State law allows speed camera monitoring, and sets the maximum civil penalty at $40. Local jurisdictions can earn up to 10 percent of their total annual revenue from the cameras. Anything above that cap goes to the state.

Katie Barkdoll, the city’s budget director, said Frederick city’s total budget is $114 million, which means it can earn up to $11.4 million in speed-camera revenue.

Hetherington said the city estimated the first-year revenue from the cameras at $450,000. That number was purposely conservative, since the cameras are new to Frederick. He based the estimate on $425,000 in revenue projections from red-light cameras this fiscal year.

But he wants drivers to understand that if they received a speeding ticket from a police officer in the same location, the ticket could cost $275 and two points on their license.

“We are not demanding that people go the exact speed limit, but don’t do more than 12 miles over,” Hetherington said.

He also errs on the side of caution, he said, in issuing the citations because he wants drivers to know that they were caught fair and square.

Hetherington said he cannot predict any trends since the system only has been in place for a month, but he has seen evidence of people slowing down, especially around Hayward Road and Opossumtown Pike.

The goal is to change behavior, he said; if people are not consistently speeding 20 mph over posted limits, that will be a positive outcome.

kheerbrandt@gazette.net