Cameras will soon be on the watch to catch more than speeders in school zones and drivers running red traffic lights at select intersections throughout the city.

Assistant School Superintendent William McCaffrey, who is filling in for Superintendent Lynn Dambruch during her personal leave, said last week that the district has signed a no-cost, three-year contract with BusPatrol to install cameras on school buses that will record motorists traveling in either direction who violate state law to pass a bus that is stopped with flashing red lights. The exception is when motorists are traveling in the opposite direction on a divided highway.

McCaffrey believes installation of the cameras on all 55 First Student buses used to cover Warwick could start within a couple of weeks. Under the agreement, he said, 12.5% of the fines, which can run from $250 to $500 per offense, would go to the city, with 12.5% to the state and the remaining 75% to BusPatrol to pay for and maintain the system.

McCaffrey said “it’s not about the money. It’s about the safety of children.” The camera system would also provide interior footage of the bus, which McCaffrey said would go a long way in resolving bus incidents.

He said that should the district hire a vendor other than First Student before conclusion of the three-year camera contract, BusPatrol would relocate the cameras to the new vendor at no charge.

Meanwhile, the installation of 24 school-zone speed cameras and 15 intersection cameras is still not up and operational. The city is leasing the cameras from Altumint Inc., a Maryland-based technology company, for five years. When first proposed last year during city budget deliberations it was suggested the cameras could be operational by last December or January of this year and generate $1.3 million a year in revenue. That was later revised and the budget amended to remove the $1.3 million.

Police Maj. Andrew Sullivan said Monday the expectation is to have the intersection cameras operational in June and the school zone cameras by the time schools open in the fall. Two cameras will cover each school speed zone – one for each direction – for a total of 12 schools. Two and possibly as many as five red-light cameras may be installed per intersection. Those intersections were not named.

The fine for speeding in a school zone is $50 and $85 for running a red light.

Based on a monthly lease of $2,000 per red-light camera and $2,485 per speed camera, the annual cost to the city would be $1,025,690. Sullivan said the lease cost was taken into consideration when the department calculated city revenues of $1.3 million in the current budget, which won’t happen.

He said the projection is for the system to yield $4 million in fines annually, although, he adds, “this is not a money-making venture.” He expects driver behavior to change, and once motorists are familiar with camera locations, violations will drop.