The Cobb Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved an agreement to continue a joint school bus camera program with county courts and public schools for another five years.
The automated enforcement system issues citations to motorists who ignore school bus “stop arm” signs. The cameras, equipped on about 100 of nearly 1,000 buses in the Cobb County School District, take photos of the license plates of violating vehicles.
The agreement (agenda item here, formal agreement doc here) includes the Cobb County State Court Clerk, the camera manufacturer American Traffic Solutions and the Cobb Board of Education, which also must approve the agreement.
The commissioners’ action comes after the original agreement was extended by a year.
Cobb State Court judges had not been enforcing the violations for a time earlier this year, questioning their legality. Enforcement resumed in February, but the county said the burden of handling stop arm violations required additional staffing.
In September, commissioners approved the creation of three positions in Cobb State Court and two more in the Cobb Solicitors office to start with the fiscal year 2019 that began in October.
County officials estimate more than 8,000 such cases are generated annually. Each violation comes with a fine of $300.
The fine money, which exceeded $2 million in 2017, is split evenly between the county, Cobb schools and ATS, which provides the cameras at no charge.
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