School zone cameras bring this Pierce County city $500,000 a year. Where does it go?
When you get caught driving more than 20 miles per hour in a school zone, you have to make a choice about how you want to deal with the ticket.
You can pay it, you can set up a payment plan, or you can go to court.
Or, if you are Edgewood resident Michael Stanzel, you set up a campaign to try to get the cameras removed completely.
Stanzel has received three tickets through the school zone by Northwood Elementary School. The first ticket was on Oct. 14, 2022, for driving 24 miles per hour, the second ticket was on March 5, 2024, for driving 26 miles per hour and the third ticket was on Dec. 18, 2024, for driving 25 miles per hour. Each ticket was $166, though he filed an affidavit for the third ticket saying he was not the one driving, which meant he didn’t have to pay it.
It was the March ticket, he said, that spurred his campaign.
“It was in the evening, there wasn’t a car on the road anywhere. I hit the brakes and I knew that I was going to get that ticket,” Stanzel said. “I started looking into it a little bit more.”
Stanzel started putting up signs around the school zones advocating for the cameras to be taken down. He also started a petition on Nov. 11, arguing that the cameras bring in money for the city without making school zones safer. It has since received 664 signatures.
“Not everybody is from Edgewood,” Stanzel said. “Some are from Fife, some are from Auburn. I’d say a minimum of 50% are from Edgewood.”
Edgewood has seven school zone cameras around three schools — Hedden Elementary School, Edgemont Junior High School and Northwood Elementary School. The city installed the first cameras in 2019 and added the Northwood cameras in 2021.
How much does the city make from its school zone cameras?
At a March 5 study session, Police Chief Jason Youngman said the cameras issued about 4,910 tickets in 2024. Youngman later told The News Tribune the cameras only issue tickets to those going 24 miles per hour or more. Drivers who go 24 to 30 miles per hour through a school zone are issued a $166 ticket while drivers who go 31 miles per hour or more get a $250 ticket.
Dave Olson, the mayor of Edgewood, told The News Tribune that the city makes roughly $500,000 a year from citations in school zones. However, $400,000 — or 80% — of that goes to the operator of the cameras, Vera Mobility.
Olson said later in an email to The News Tribune that the $400,000 is “a yearly total based on a monthly rate for the 7 cameras that are in operation.”
The News Tribune asked what another local city, Fife, pays for its traffic cameras. Kelsey Geddes, a spokesperson for the City of Fife, said they received $387,025 from school zone tickets in 2024 and gave their operator, Nova Global, $155,948, or 40%.
When The News Tribune asked Olson why Edgewood gives 80% of its revenue to Vera Mobility, he said the city signed the contract before he was elected mayor, and that the city has considered changing vendors.
“Since the cameras are not a money-making focus, we’ve been fine with the $500K revenue and $400K expenses for a $100K net,” Olson wrote. “I’ve asked some local cities to find out who they use, because if we can find another vendor that will provide service for our city for less than $400K, then perhaps that would be [a] prudent budgetary move.”
Olson said the $100,000 mostly goes toward Edgewood’s $3.5 million contract with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement, though the city has also spent the money in the past on “speed signs, flashing stop signs [and] mobile speed limit sign trailers.”
Do the school zone cameras help safety?
At the March 5 study session meeting, Youngman argued that the cameras make school zones safer.
“The purpose of these cameras is to calm traffic through those areas,” he said.
Youngman noted that 77.4% of citations were for people driving between 24 and 30 miles per hour. 82.5% of all violators have only received one citation.
“This data point suggests most people learn after the first citation,” Youngman said. He also noted there was only one crash in a school zone in 2024.
Olson also said the cameras prevent speeding and increase safety.
“We get a lot of people complaining about speed in Edgewood,” Olson said. “There was a public safety town hall meeting last year run by our police chief and the most frequent audience comment was in regards to speeding and we actually had people asking about additional speed cameras.”
Stanzel argues that the bus stops are far away from the intersections where the cameras are at, that cars slow down when they see children, and that the cameras operate during times where children are not walking along the road.
Youngman said the cameras run in compliance with the Puyallup School District’s hours. Cameras generally start issuing tickets half an hour before start time to 15 minutes after school starts — and then again from half an hour before school ends to half an hour after it ends.
At Hedden Elementary, for example, school starts at 7:30 a.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and ends at 2 p.m. The cameras issue tickets from 7 a.m. to 7:45 a.m. and then again from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Olson also said the city keeps the bus stops away from the intersections because of an incident in 2002 where a girl died. The News Tribune reported at the time that 13-year-old Mary Ianuzzi died while waiting for the bus at Edgemont Junior High School. A car ran through a stop sign, hit another car and crashed into her.
Olson said residents ask: “Why did you move the bus stops away from the intersection?”
The answer, he said, is that: “We did it because we had a death in our community.”
What can you do if you get a ticket?
One of the biggest missions of Stanzel’s campaign has been educating people on their options when they do get a ticket.
Olson said drivers who get tickets can pay the ticket, set up a payment plan, go to court to explain their situation, contest it in court or submit an affidavit saying they weren’t driving the car at the time.
Both Stanzel and Olson mentioned that since the start of Stanzel’s campaign, the city has changed its tickets to make the affidavit option more clear to people.
”The driver could have been my kid, my next-door neighbor,” Stanzel said.
Olson said the city has since put text on the back and front of the ticket making it clear that drivers can send in an affidavit.
The city’s FAQ site about the cameras at cityofedgewood.org has additional information, including links to affidavits.
This story was originally published March 20, 2025 at 10:00 AM.
