Alders Advance Plan For School Bus Cameras, Fines

Erick Jusino has been a bus driver with First Student for roughly three years. Every single work day, he told alders at a committee hearing about a new camera-and-fine proposal, he has worried that a car speeding around his bus will hit a child in his care. 

“It is nerve wracking,” Jusino said. ​“It happens all over the place, all over the city. And nobody thinks about it, that you’re putting a child’s life in danger.” 

He offered that testimony at a Board of Alders Legislation Committee hearing about the Elicker administration’s bid to install cameras on school buses and automatically fine those who illegally drive past them when they’re parked by sending out $250 tickets.

The committee alders unanimously endorsed the proposal, sending it to the full Board of Alders for further review and a potential final vote.

Jusino isn’t the only one worried about the harm presented to kids by reckless drivers behind school buses. He and his colleagues experience that fear daily, when drivers ignore the stop sign and flashing lights on the school bus and put the lives of school children in jeopardy. The drivers are instructed to, if possible, write down the license plate, make and model of the car, but dealing with that on top of everything else can get overwhelming for the drivers.

“I’ve experienced kids getting hit because someone ran the stop sign,” said Shevette Rogers, assistant location manager with First Student who has 20 years of service under her belt. ​“I’ve had to console drivers because they witnessed their student almost getting hit.”

Jusino and Rogers brought that testimony and those experiences to the Board of Alders Chamber on the second floor of the New Haven City Hall Tuesday night, hoping to get the Elicker administration’s proposed ​“School Bus Violation Detection Monitoring, And Enforcement System” approved.

The proposal is detailed in an ordinance amendment from Mayor Justin Elicker that aims to install cameras on each city school bus that would take pictures of cars that illegally drive around parked school buses. 

On Tuesday, the Legislation Committee of the Board of Alders recommended approval of the ordinance amendment, which was presented by Deputy Chief of Staff Haley Vincent Simpson, Assistant Corporation Counsel Micheal Bowler, Assistant Corporation Counsel Elias Alexiades and Deputy Director of Transportation, Traffic and Parking Eric Hoffman. 

The committee alders met the presenters with a variety of questions about the details of these proposed cameras and fines.

The proposed cameras would be mounted to the stop sign on the school buses and will only activate once the flashing lights start when the bus stops to on- or offload children. The cameras are also meant to serve as a deterrent to bad-driving behavior. 

The picture of the violator’s vehicle will be sent to a hearing officer — an unpaid position that cannot be held by city employees and would require proper training provided by a city-hired vendor — to be reviewed for a fine of $250. The car owner would then have 30 days to appeal the ticket. 

The money collected from the fines would go towards long-term public safety efforts, including paying for the system itself. It is unclear yet what the total cost of this project will be as there is currently no vendor selected. 

The pictures of the violators and their vehicles will only be held for 90 days and can only be used for that specific violation. 

Board of Alders Majority Leader and Westville/Amity Alder Richard Furlow raised the concern that police officers might stop monitoring this violation as closely due to the new cameras. The presenters couldn’t provide a detailed answer yet as the New Haven Police Department has not been brought to the conversation as of this time. The hope is for the department to closely monitor the distributed tickets. 

When caught by a police officer, the current fine stands at $475, but the officer has to directly witness the illegal act in order to issue the ticket. 

Hoffman noted that Bridgeport has done a similar school bus-camera pilot program and during their research that city found around 10,000 violations in six months. 

Simpson admitted that the original timeline of having these cameras up and running before the 2025 – 26 school year was slightly ambitious, but the hope is to still have them functional in October.