School zone speed cameras coming to Sarasota

Seventeen thousand, four hundred and forty-five. That's the number of drivers who exceeded the school zone speed limit on Fruitville Road at Cardinal Mooney High School over a five-day study period.

And although that was far and away more speeders than were recorded at any other school zone in the city of Sarasota, other numbers were eye-popping as well.

On three streets surrounding Tuttle Elementary, for example, 10,946 violations were recorded over five days. At four streets around Southside Elementary School, there were 10,138 violations. And these weren’t vehicles traveling at five or six miles per hour over. All of the violations were recorded at 10-plus mph over when the school zone speed limits were in effect.

To mitigate that, the Sarasota City Commission, at the request of the Sarasota Police Department, acted on enabling state legislation that authorizes counties and municipalities to install speed detection systems in school zones. The commission unanimously approved two ordinances at its Aug. 8 meeting authorizing the placement, installation and operation of speed detection systems at select school zones, establishing traffic enforcement procedures for violations and creating procedures before a local hearing officer.

Photo by Andrew Warfield

On July 1, the SPD made a presentation to the City Commission, which included the five-day study report that demonstrated significant incidents of school zone speed violations. At that time, commissioners unanimously approved directing the City Attorney's Office to prepare the ordinance.

Per state statute, details of the ordinance include:

• No citations will be issued until a law officer first reviews and confirms the violation.
• A county or municipality must spend at least 30 days educating the public about the new enforcement measures and only issue warnings before they are allowed to levy fines.
• Only the most egregious violators will be cited — those going at least 10 mph above the speed limit.
• No points will be assessed.
• Insurance companies will not be notified.

Commissioners swiftly passed the both ordinances with no discussion, plenty of which occurred on July 1. 

“Our goal is to reinforce the school zones because our officers can't be in every school zone,” said Demetri Konstantopoulos, captain of SPD’s support services division at that previous meeting. “We do have a very robust traffic unit, however we just don't have the manpower to be at every school in the morning.”

Whether a school zone warrants speed detection is based on the benchmark average of 100 violations per day, and not just 5 or 6 mph over the speed limit, but rather 10 mph or more. 

In addition to Cardinal Mooney, the schools that exceeded that daily average are Sarasota Military Academy, Sarasota High School, Southside Elementary and Alta Vista Elementary.

To enforce the new school zone speed detection law, commissioners approved an ordinance designating the city’s code compliance special magistrate to serve as the local hearing officer and authorized City Manager Marlon Brown to assign existing staff to serve as special magistrate for school zone speed limit violations. Sarasota Police Department existing staff will serve as clerk to the local hearing officer.

The fine for school zone speeding, per state statute, is $100. Of that, $60 may be retained by the city to administer the program. Of the remaining $40, $20 is assigned to the state general fund, $12 to Sarasota County Schools for safety programs, $5 to school crossing guard recruiting and retention and $3 to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.