Let's get this part started.

Let's go.

So in addition to my colleagues that were here.

Last session, we were joined by counselors Moore.

And Hudson.

We are still here with Leah Whitmer.

But we're transitioning to the official title.

Parking Violations Bureau.

Parking Violations Bureau.

Thank you very much.

No problem.

So I don't know if you want to preface it with anything or if you think that was a complicated.

I'll just add for the counselors that just joined the packet.

I gave you page one just gives an overview of the municipal violations bureau as a whole.

And I'll point out what I'm really proud of that we are we have already done this fiscal year over 15,000 disputes.

Um with the caveat that some of those are still pending with decisions to be issued.

On the back of that is an overview of our org chart, and really our only vacancy is one of our two deputy director positions.

What this what these what is eight?

That's a break the health and sanitation violations.

I just tried to show the breakdown of what that 15,000 encompasses.

That's automated enforcement.

Automated enforcement, okay.

Yeah, if you look right up above that, the hearings, I put out the acronym.

No, no, that's okay.

Because I knew that question would come.

Yeah.

Um, page two was the BAA and a legal set out information that we covered last hearing, and that brings us to page three parking.

Um parking, the like I shared with um illegal set outs.

We rolled out the self-service portal.

Um, so people have the ability to scan and get everything on their ticket, view the evidence dispute, pick their hearing date and time, the volume of tickets has stayed on par um for the last couple of years, right under 65,000.

Um, and the dispute rate is hovering right around 10, 11%.

Um, so you can see I gave you a breakdown of you know, the tickets, what was paid, um, issued means that they're still in that 90-day period that somebody has to pay or contest before it goes into collections.

And then if you take a look at that disputed right there in the yellow, um, I gave you a breakdown of the tickets.

The majority are sustained.

Like I said, we do have a big hunk pending right now due to the influx with automated enforcement, and um there's a percentage every year that's dismissed.

Actually, a question.

Sure, about what we're seeing with the disputes, like with the uh stop sign with the school bus, right?

I've recently started like paying more attention of how our bus drivers are driving.

Sure.

And signaling people to make you, you know, saying, like, okay, what's really happened?

Are we finding a lot of people coming in or disputing the so yes?

If you flip to the last page, I just gave you a really basic overview of the dispute, the number the volume of tickets issued for each of the three programs.

And if we're looking at buses, I did the full program.

So it started in May after a 30-day warning period up through March with very little reported in March so far.

So just for school buses, just under 7,000 tickets.

Um, and it's almost a 50% dispute rate for school buses.

Um we see in like what is one of the it's really and it's not that I mean, we sustain most school bus violations.

That being said, um, they are the only ticket where you've got two driver behavior being evaluated, right?

You've got like you said, you've got the bus driver as well as the vehicle driver, and because it's automated in real time, usually the time when the two vehicles approach is like it's seconds, right?

My video length is almost always 11 seconds.

So I'm watching the whole violation occur in that period of time.

Um and so I think it's been a learning experience for everyone when I see things, or when um people bring up things, I report it back to the school district to the director of transportation and rely on the district to convey it to first student, right?

Because they're all all 213 buses with cameras are operated by first student, and so they're conveying the information to the drivers.

Um, so everything from okay, drivers, you really shouldn't be waving people on.

And when I do hearings with people, yeah, when I do it, and things like that are always gonna happen, right?

And that's why we have the dispute process.

Can we see that?

It depends.

You can see um the side mirror in the bus.

So sometimes you can see the bus driver waving it on, other times it's clear, you know, the person was coming from the rear of the bus, there's no way the driver could have waved them on.

Um they wait for the last second to throw the lights on, right?

When you're passing, yeah.

So and when we're looking, right, we're looking at the totality of the circumstances.

So the buses do have amber lights that are recorded and submitted as part of the evidence packet, and that's on the ticket that the vehicle, the registered owner gets.

So if I'm looking at it, I'm looking to see how long were the amber lights flashing, and how you know how was the interaction.

Um, I did hearings yesterday afternoon.

Somebody contested where it is close, right?

The stop arm is coming out, but we all know we're in an urban environment where you know you can't necessarily wait uh 300 feet for cars to be clear to pop out your stop arm.

Um, but the amber lights were flashing for 15 seconds.

So um I think a lot of people don't react to amber lights the way you would a yellow light when you're approaching a red light, right?

You're that should be a signal that you need to slow down and be prepared to stop or traveling at a speed where you can stop if you're passing the bus and the stop arm is deployed, because the intent of the legislation is not to inconvenience drivers, it's to protect children.

We've also a lot of the business.

Yeah, we're also seeing I mean, I've gotten a few calls and I told you about it of a third person managing traffic in front of the schools and they're telling people to to move, but the the um the cameras are active because the the stuffs are out.

Yeah, when the stops are there, but they're telling you move because they're creating traffic in you know, areas that they need to move the traffic.

Yeah, so like I said, I report that to the district, yeah, but because it's automated, you're gonna get a ticket.

So when people in front of me, I tell them, don't drive by.

And if someone a bus driver waves me on, I just sit there and wait.

And like no, I'm good.

Um that being said, through the dispute process, um, myself and my judges are gonna weigh all of those pieces that I just walked you through and make a decision.

So if that happens, people should actually go for the dispute, and just like we talked about for our um city constituent self-service portal.

Even if you go to that portal, you can get to the traffic safety citations.com portal, which is specific just to automated enforcement.

All of the tickets have the link to get there as well as a QR code that'll take you to the home page.

And now, just like we have for parking and illegal set outs, you log in with your citation and pin number, you can see all the still photos, the plate crop, the videos, and then you have the option to pay or dispute, and you can dispute right online.

Oh, yeah.

Of yes, so first for school bus, there are three videos because there's two cameras, one from the top bird eye view that's the best one, and then there's two low ones, one facing the front and one facing the rear.

And then the other two programs, red light and speed, there's one video.

There was a situation where the bus driver put out a stop arm without putting out any ember lights.

So that does happen.

And it got this risk.

Yes, I know.

And we again we're weighing the evidence.

If it's very close and the vehicle had no time to react, then it would likely be dismissed.

If you know, it really depends on everything.

I think the school bus drivers that I've said this, they really have to be trained really careful because sometimes they'll put their stop arms out before they get to a corner, and then people are hesitant, even when it's leaving, and he's got the lights and the arms still going and they're afraid to go.

So, you know, stop understood.

And when I just watched, that was what I was gonna say.

That was a good segment coming.

I watched a school bus, and this is not Italian by, but I just want to know how it works with BAA.

Yeah, they were still driving, they asked already stopped for the kid, but they were still driving with the stop sign, like it took a few to go, right?

So if anybody that went on the opposite side of them, the stop arm is deployed, people get it.

But they were already on they had stopped.

The kid got off the bus.

Yeah, but the stop sign that was still going.

Because it's it's automated, right?

And that's why I'm saying I think these have the highest dispute rate because it's not only the vehicle owner or operator, sorry, but it's also the bus driver, right?

So there's two humans interacting that create the ticket, and because it's automated and isn't an officer issuing it, um, you know, that's why there's a higher dispute rate.

We're constantly evaluating the data that's coming in and working with the police department and gen optic, the vendor on our business rules, and have the ability to shift things so that more or less cases get pushed to PD for review because they're the ones doing the final review and issuing the tickets.

Um, and so we're using that data to evaluate it.

Yeah, are the uh are the out of time or holiday weekend?

Is that capture in the school speed zone?

Um 45, 4600 disputes.

You mean if somebody got a ticket on a day school was not in session, we've um those were administratively voided, so they're not in here.

Oh, they're not in here.

Those were um voided and dealt with very quickly.

Um, so those were captured.

But you expect that ongoing or no.

The issue of that happening, I don't expect it.

No.

We the vendor has um both the Syracuse City School District and the Blessed Sacrament calendars.

Um, they're looped in on the district communications now, and I usually send personally send them a reminder.

Okay, because I know because my kids aren't gonna be in school, um, or if there's a snow day or something.

So we're I think we've got enough mechanisms in place to ensure that um we've crossed that hurdle.

So, what about early dismissal, you know, water main break or you know, something like that.

Yeah, those again, they're looped in on the district comms, but I mean, for a lot of them, legally, those still are valid school days, right?

So I I think we get a little into the weeds and trying to monitor each one.

That's why we're doing the 7 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

Uh, because you know, at the start, I went through and made a chart of every school session if they have before school care, after school's care, the activities without flashing beacons that are controlled by the school and operated, you're limited to those hours.

Um, but I mean, we're doing our best, and if somebody, if there is a water main break and the camera is not turned off, people can dispute oftentimes, you know, with the um some of the no school days where people got tickets.

What I can void them on my end um once I know that that's happened.

We have you know uh charts in our office where we're you know filling them in and pen, they're on um our knowledge hub on ChairPoint.

Um, so we'll make sure that you know people are taken care of in those, but those numbers aren't included in this.

This is probably not your department, but um any updates on the replacement of the 13 that 10 speed zone locations, it was it 10 or 13?

It was 10.

Okay, yeah, so we've been meeting regular about those.

Um, they had shifted to focus on installation of red light cameras over the winter.

Um, because those, you know, you don't need to drill in and whatnot, I guess.

Um, but now we're confirming, you know, the process is still going through permits and the locations verified.

Um so still working on those.

Okay.

Um, yeah, with the tickets and disputes, you can see um red light um has not a huge dispute rate.

Um, and then the school speed zone again, the dispute rate isn't high, it's under 10%, but because of the volume, it's a significant number of hearings that we're doing.

Is it is it possible to at some point get for the red light cameras?

Can we get a breakdown of where that is happening, occurring the most, like the highest rate to the lowest rate, which is the same thing.

Like the actual light for the tickets or the disputes, the tickets, yeah.

I think that we have that.

Um I don't have it with me today, but I'm pretty sure that we have that available, and I can tell you I do have the number of red lights somewhere.

Oh, I don't need it right now.

I just want to oh, okay, yeah, I was just giving you for context.

I think 27 of 74 are operating.

So there's still a lot more that need to go.

Also, um, you know, same thing like you just brought up with speed.

There are once those others go back online.

Um, you know, I I anticipate the volume for these things will again be much higher, which has the biggest impact on my department and our ability to feel the constituent questions about it as well as adjudicate the disputes.

Okay, so on the position portion, because you said that you're constantly putting out um uh proposals for new positions, but um, or ads or whatever, but I don't see any zip zero uh empty positions, so are you just need one of those.

Sure, so the only empty positions would be the temporary services ones, and again, it says 12 and 12, but I don't have all of those full.

It just shows, you know, I'm still expending money out of the budget because it's an hourly rate for them.

Um the rest I've done on this budget line, I've done a pretty good job of keeping everyone with the volume for automated enforcement, in my opinion, it's not enough positions because the volume is so high.

Hopefully, at some point the volume will go down, as you know, recidivism rates are likely to be low with this program.

Um, but like I just shared, we still have a significant number of cameras for both speed and red light to go online.

I would anticipate over the rest of this year.

And so the volume of tickets is gonna go up.

We're fielding um just I don't even know the volume of calls and emails and walk ins, but a lot, right?

We're we're very heavy on the constituent services facing side right now.

We try to push people, Gen Optic does have a 1-800 number that's on the ticket.

Um, so we're trying to, you know, get people to call them first and then they redirect to us.

Um, but it's a high volume, and you would think like, oh, I got one ticket, that's all.

We have people that come in that you know, dispute 26 feet tickets.

So your client services minus we think.

I'm sorry, what maybe decline service minus we think on the zero from general.

Yeah, yeah.

So that we did.

We took our number off of the initial ticket to try and get people to call them to help manage that call volume, and then um, if you're disputing, you'd get redirected to us.

So just so yes, I'm sorry, this is just real quick.

Just so I'm clear on that um temporary services line.

You the 12 is do you have 12 and looking for more or you don't have 12?

I don't have 12.

You're hoping to have 12, so that's captured already.

Yes, okay.

It's captured, it's just it's the pot of money that goes with that on the next page that's the more important number because that's what I'm pulling from.

I would have more if I could find people to hire and give hours to.

Quick question for you.

Sure.

Um, do you you guys actually issue the tickets and fines, or is that coming from another department?

It's coming from the department.

So for parking and automated enforcement, those tickets are coming from the police department.

Okay, because I got a um complaint yesterday, someone got a um notification on some junk they had left outside, but they said where they had stuck it, he never saw it.

So that would probably be in a legal set out, and those are issued by DPW.

Okay, DBW.

That's what I wanted to know.

He he did call DPW head, but I'll take care of it later.

And the one thing that we didn't get to that were past um illegal set outs, but we did launch Seer Notify.

So the um you can tell that person or any property owners they can go online and sign up for almost real-time email notifications for a legal set outs.

So that is available now, and I have the number somewhere, but I think it's almost 2,000 properties have signed up since we rolled that out.

So that's really exciting.

I want to say that because we have a lot of these speed limit signs in the areas, but these are also a neighborhoods.

And I get criticized because why are they flashing if school is closed?

And we don't know that.

And they say they and they'll contest the physical certain hours.

How we respond and what we can do in all of our neighborhoods, the cut down on speeding.

So you're talking about the school signs that have the flashing lights.

Like Le Moine School on Wadsworth Street, uh, Webster School on Wadsford Street.

Yeah.

And Eve would support like a Lincoln School on James Street, though.

You know, so those are controlled by DPW, and the technology with those right now is they're you have to turn them on or off.

You can't the schools can't individually program them.

So they're on Monday through Friday, 7 to 6.

Okay.

Obviously, some of them aren't active right now.

I did work with DPW to ensure that this portion of the sign that says active while flashing is no, I don't know if they blocked it off or what they did because that came up right.

And for me, that would be a reason I would dismiss a ticket if it wasn't flashing, but said active while flashing.

Okay.

So with that, I'm gonna adjourn.

Um if you have additional operational questions, feel free to reach out to Leah.

Yep, we appreciate it.

And then we have