By Adam Swift
The city and schools are one step closer to allowing school bus violation detection cameras in Revere.
Monday night, the city council approved accepting the provisions of state law that allows municipalities to use a school bus violation detection monitoring system to enforce traffic violations and fine violators.
Immediately after the approval, the council also approved a motion filed by Ward 3 Councillor Anthony Cogliandro requesting the mayor investigate the feasibility of installing stop arm cameras on the city’s school and transportation vehicles.
Revere Policy Writer and Analyst Claire Inzerillo said the acceptance of the provisions of Massachusetts General Law is only the first step in the process.
“There will be a conversation with the police department, the school committee, the school department, the city council, and relevant public safety officials, and probably the PTO, any parents of school children or concerned residents who might have had difficulty with school bus violations,” she said. “With the council adopting this law, it authorizes the municipality … to adopt provisions and policy procedures to install camera monitoring on school buses that use a type of artificial intelligence to automatically trigger a recording when a car or vehicle overtakes a school bus.”
Inzerillo said similar laws are already enforced in New York and Florida, and were recently adopted in Massachusetts.
“The mayor is asking that we all start taking a look at this, I think Councillor Cogliandro has already looked at this in-depth, and so the request is to adopt the enabling law first and then to move forward with what that would look like and when that would happen in the city of Revere,” she said.
Ward 6 Councillor Chris Giannino said he supported the motion, and as a former Revere police officer involved with traffic enforcement, said he would like to be involved with the implementation.
“I spent many hours in my career working with the school department and school buses and school buses and school bus safety, so I would appreciate you including me with any planning being done,” he said.
