The New Orleans City Council will introduce an ordinance today to allot 40% of the city’s school-zone ticket revenue to the NOLA Public Schools district.
The ordinance institutes a 60-40 split between the city and schools, finally freeing up fines that have collected for nearly a year in an escrow account.
“(The money) should flow as soon as the mayor’s signature hits — but if there’s one thing I’ve seen around here — that doesn’t happen all the time,” said Councilman Joe Giarrusso, who authored the ordinance to push city officials to distribute ticket money to schools.
After its introduction on Thursday, the ordinance will be heard at the council meeting on July 10.
In May 2024, Gov. Jeff Landry signed Act 103, requiring that local governments share school-zone ticket revenue with local school districts – specifically, “the governing authority of the school where the traffic citation was issued.”
The law required that the municipality and the school district implement a cooperative endeavor agreement about the ticket money “prior to implementation of automated speed-enforcement devices.”
But in New Orleans, officials from the city and the school district couldn’t agree on how to split the fines. Despite that, Mayor LaToya Cantrell made the decision to switch on the ticket cameras last fall, as school began. For the entire 10-month school year, fines were collected in an escrow account.
Some critics believe that all of this year’s school-zone tickets should be considered void because there was no agreement in place.
Reasons for delay unclear
The city and school board’s discussions have not been public. It’s unclear why it’s taken so long to finalize an agreement.
Giarrusso’s ordinance directing the cooperative endeavor agreement does not address private schools, though city officials have said they are working with the Archdiocese of New Orleans and other private-school operators.
NOLA Public Schools officials will have to determine how to divvy up the fines for the schools with school-zone signs but no cameras and for the schools with speed cameras. Education officials have raised the idea of a per-pupil split across the district, which would give schools an equal share, rather than awarding a windfall to schools on busy streets — but the money’s distribution is up to the district.
Tickets given for violations outside of school zones in New Orleans must go to the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans, according to the new law, bringing in another set of negotiations.
The stalled city-school negotiations mirror a much bigger struggle.
The City Council is also trying to play peacemaker in that struggle, over a rejected $90 million settlement between the city and the Orleans Parish School Board over the city’s longtime practice of skimming money from the district’s property-tax payments.
Cantrell backed out of the settlement reached late last year, citing a municipal financial crisis of its own, partly because of a forecasted decline in camera-ticket revenue. The City Council later determined that there was no crisis.
But there has been a drop in camera revenues in recent years. While last year’s city budget included $17.1 million from traffic cameras, this year’s projected total was only $14.7 million.
Money-making safety program
School-zone cameras make up a portion of the city’s traffic-camera system, which started in 2008. Nearly every year since then, more cameras have been added across the city, building ticket fines into a reliable source of income for the city.
It’s not always been clear that the camera program’s ultimate goal was safety. In 2019, in the name of safety, she said, Cantrell quietly dropped the ticketing threshold for 20 mile-per-hour school zones from 26 mph to 24, prompting a flood of new tickets.
Broken flashers have also been a sore spot. In January 2014, The Lens found just 41% of the amber flashing lights were working properly. But at that time, the city – in an effort to appease drivers – had standardized school-zone speed limits across the city — enforced from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.
The new law required the city to tailor school zones to each charter school’s actual beginning and closing times. The zones now cover a grab-bag of enforcement windows between 6 a.m. to 5 p.m.