See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Will Bredderman
Brooklyn Daily
It’s not picture day yet, but Community Board 10 wants cameras at Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights schools.
The neighborhood panel called for the city to install speed cameras at six intersections near the neighborhood school — and blasted the Department of Transportation for not including the board in the process of placing the devices.
The state legislature approved a pilot program last month that would let the city select 20 schools across the five boroughs to receive the devices, which snap photos of speeders’ license plates and automatically mail them tickets.
But the city is not saying where it will put the cameras, and has not sought community board input — much to the chagrin of some CB10 members.
“I think it’s wrong,” said Doris Cruz, chairwoman of the board’s Traffic and Transportation Committee. “We should be part of the process. The community board has been asking for them. The community board has been discussing significant speeding issues for some time.”
Cruz’s committee requested that the city place one of the gadgets on 86th Street near the corner of Ridge Boulevard, close to PS 185, Adelphi Academy, and the Dimitrios and Georgia Kaloidis Parochial School.
The city has long recognized 86th Street as one of the more hazardous thoroughfares in the borough, and convinced CB10 to approve a redesign of the corridor last year.
The committee also called for cameras on Fourth Avenue — where the city is pushing another controversial traffic-slowing overhaul — at 72nd, 82nd, and 89th streets to protect the more than half-dozen schools along the route.
The panel also backed putting one of the units outside Christa McCauliffe Intermediate School on 65th Street between 11th and 12th avenues, where educators have long complained of dangerous drivers.
It requested another for William McKinley Junior High School at 73rd Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway.
But CB10 and the schools it represents could be waiting quite a while for the devices.
The Department of Transportation gave us a list of 44 Brooklyn schools it said were candidates for the cameras, based on the high percentage of cars clocked speeding nearby. Just one Bay Ridge school was on the list — the Brooklyn Community High School of Communications on Fourth Avenue. The city said the cameras would rotate locations, and that it would look at other suggestions.
“DOT has received numerous requests from residents, community groups and community boards themselves,” an agency spokesman said.