Crossing guard Jen Johnson watches as Meridian Park Elementary students and parents cross 175th Street at Meridian Avenue. (The Osprey/David Mendez)
by David Mendez
The Shoreline City Council on Monday approved a new ordinance allowing the use of automated cameras to enforce speed limits in school zones. Should everything go according to plan, the cameras will be online and issuing citations to speeding drivers by January 2027.
“I’m absolutely convinced that there’s a safety crisis happening at that intersection, and that it is our responsibility to make this community as safe as possible for the people who live here,” Mayor Betsy Robertson said ahead of the vote. “Over the years, we’ve done several things to be a welcoming city in lots of different ways. I think we have to be a safe city and a welcoming city for the families who live here and are trying to get to and from school.”
The council vote came down 6-1 in favor of the camera program, with Councilmember Keith Scully as the lone dissenter.
“My big concern here is that, although it’s couched as public safety, it doesn’t do enough to accomplish that goal. But it does a lot to cause economic harm.”
The council’s vote approved a new ordinance creating and governing an automated traffic camera system program. It limits cameras to enforce only school zone speed limits, and restricts the cameras to focus solely on cars and their license plates. It also states that photos may not show the faces of drivers or passengers in a car photographed for speeding and that photos can’t be used for any reason other than enforcing speed camera violations. It also states that a speed camera vendor shall not use, sell or share data captured by the cameras.
It also sets the amount of fees for speeding in school zones. In the case of Meridian Park elementary, the school zone speed limit is set at 20 miles per hour. Drivers caught going between 4 to 9 MPH over the speed limit would be fined $50; drivers caught going between 10 to 13 MPH over the speed limit would be fined $130; and drivers caught going faster than 14 MPH or more would be fined $260.
A speed study conducted by the city in fall 2024 found that nearly four of every five drivers on 175th Street were breaking the school zone speed limit during morning rush hour, and that about 30% of all drivers were going faster than 35 MPH.
Shoreline’s newly-adopted speed camera penalty schedule. (City of Shoreline)
Scully’s nay vote, he said, was a matter of principle. He wanted two things: first, he wanted a lower fine threshold for drivers who break the limit at relatively lower rates of speed, which the council agreed to. He also wanted an amendment codifying the times during which the speed cameras are active.
“Because if it is simply ’when children are present,’ you can’t know what the speed limit is,” Scully told The Osprey after the meeting. “What in truth happens when that is set is that there are operating hours, because the camera can’t detect children. So you just have to guess, is this within the time frame that the camera is supposed to target?”
That addition failed.
In other words, Scully wasn’t against the cameras as a tool to encourage safe driving.
“My big concern here is that, although it’s couched as public safety, it doesn’t do enough to accomplish that goal. But it does a lot to cause economic harm,” Scully said.
State law does allow a person to request a mitigation hearing for traffic infractions like speeding tickets. In those cases, a person admits to the violation and essentially asks the court to reduce the penalty they were first assessed. However, state law appears to prevent a person from waiving, reducing or suspending a penalty for speeding in a school or playground speed zone.
While economic equity was chief of mind for most council members, a few members of the public were especially concerned about privacy in the age of Trump.
Shoreline resident Shannon Collier drew on her experience as a software engineer to argue that, despite assurances that might be set in contracts or an ordinance, a traffic camera may be collecting more data than intended.
“It’s pretty common for software systems in general to collect as much data as they can, and then they filter that down to what’s relevant,” Collier said. “That extra information is being kept even if you don’t see it…it’s probably not just the picture of the license plate, right? It’s gonna be the whole picture. This isn’t necessarily malicious, but it still matters.”
If data is collected, she said, it may be subpoenaed, and the company would be compelled to share it with entities like the federal government.
“You can decide that the benefits of this plan outweigh the drawbacks, but the point is the privacy risks here are real. Think carefully,” Collier said.
Councilmember Valerie Snider told The Osprey that she found the woman’s testimony compelling, and that those points can be used to shape the city’s request for proposals on the cameras: how data is captured, where data is kept and what rules they may have to follow with their own hosting service.
“Certainly we need to specify that Shoreline owns that data and that it can’t be distributed or sold to third parties regardless of any subcontractors they might be using,” Snider said. “The agreement needs to be between us and the contractor,” and any contract would also need to set up dates for purchasing data.
The city expects to issue a request for proposals from automated camera vendors this month.
Council votes to remove race- and development-restrictive covenants from North City pump station
Also on Monday, the Shoreline City Council voted to release a pair of covenants on city-owned parcel in the North City neighborhood.
Read more:Shoreline to discuss removing race- and development-restrictive covenants from city property
One covenant was racially-restrictive and sought to ensure that only white people could live on the land. Such covenants have been illegal and unenforceable for nearly 60 years, but still linger on property documents across Western Washington to this day. State law has simplified the process for land owners to remove such covenants from their properties.
Lots impacted by the 1947 covenants. (City of Shoreline)
The second covenant limits development on properties to one detached single-family home. Monday’s vote doesn’t automatically remove the covenant. Rather, the city is just one more property owner who has signed on to remove the covenant from all 30 of the affected lots. A covenant can only be removed from these properties if 75% of property owners in that tract agree.
Per city staff’s report, nine of 20 total properties owners have not yet determined if they’ll release their properties from the development covenant. But if they do, they may be in line for a call from a friendly developer looking to make a deal. The properties within the subdivision have been assigned MUR-70 zoning, allowing mixed-use residential and commercial building development up to 70 feet tall. Developers are almost assured to show interest, seeking to take advantage of the block’s location near the Shoreline North/185th metro light rail station.