After a series of tech and staffing difficulties, Aurora City Councilmembers agreed Thursday to end the current contract with a vendor for the city’s van photo speed enforcement program. 

The program, which uses vans to photograph and ticket speeding drivers, has lost about $500,000 since its beginning as a pilot program in July of 2022. 

At Thursday’s Public Safety Policy Committee meeting councilmembers agreed that a speed enforcement program is vital, but the current contract with vendor Conduent is not working. 

“This thing seems about as useful as a chicken wire raft to me and we’re going nowhere with it,” Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky said during the meeting.

The current contract is scheduled to end in July. But Conduent is in the process of being bought by another company. 

Aurora Police Department Interim Chief Heather Morris recommended the city use the company’s buyout as an opportunity to break ties and look at other options for a similar program.

“We’re just going to get more and more and more in the hole every month until we can get this sorted if we don’t take this opportunity,” Morris said Thursday. 

Since its beginning, the vans have generated more than 7,000 violations issued, with 241 additional violations currently being processed. More than 4,000 violations couldn’t be processed for reasons including glare on license plates and unclear photos. 

They have also had trouble staffing, with only one job offer going out since January — an issue staff attributed to the uncertain future of the program, and therefore its staffers’ jobs. 

Under the program, APD can deploy photo radar vans in residential neighborhoods with speed limits of 35 mph or less, school zones, construction zones and streets bordering municipal parks.

State laws cap fines at $40 in residential areas and $80 in school zones. Speeding 25 mph or more over the posted speed limit is considered a traffic offense, meaning police officers are sent out to issue citations.

In a January public safety meeting, the committee discussed getting rid of the program, with Jurinsky saying it seemed like an “epic failure.”

At that meeting, the committee did not move forward with breaking ties on the program, with the police chief noting that the program had been slowing people down in a city that had 65 traffic-related deaths last year.

Since that meeting, the program has cost more money. In January and February, the program generated just over $33,500 in citation revenue and spent almost $122,000, leaving Aurora at a deficit of over $88,000.

In addition to the costs in 2023, the program totaled at just over $75,500 in revenue and almost $611,000 in expenses.