As state lawmakers gear up for the 2024 legislative session, it’s incumbent upon representatives from Seattle to hold the cost to tweak state regulation to maintain kids protected whereas using the varsity bus.
Proper now, odds are in drivers’ favor; in the event that they blow previous a faculty bus with its cease paddle prolonged whereas kids are boarding or exiting the bus, nothing will occur to them. That’s as a result of between the Seattle College District, the Seattle Police Division and the Seattle Prosecutor’s Workplace, site visitors security involving college buses has slid down the precedence record.
For years, SPS and the King County Prosecutor’s Workplace labored beneath a contract to ensure violators paid a hefty tremendous for ignoring a bus’s cease paddle. At $500 per ticket, the concept was to make such violations a onetime offense. Whereas most motorists paid what they owed, SPS didn’t pay what it owed the prosecutor’s workplace, in order that relationship ended.
The district started talks with the town’s prosecutor earlier this 12 months, however now that workplace says it doesn’t have the personnel to tackle the duty. Identical for the Seattle Police Division, which has been understaffed for a couple of years.
Now the issue is who can and can overview tickets generated by footage collected from bus-mounted cameras — a job, in response to state regulation, that have to be carried out by regulation enforcement.
Senate Democrats advised The Seattle Instances editorial board that reasonably priced housing and training can be amongst its priorities for the upcoming session. Scholar security needs to be on that record as effectively, even when any potential change — comparable to permitting for specifically educated civilians to overview tickets — could be narrowly tailor-made to use solely to Seattle. Mayor Bruce Harrell’s workplace mentioned the town will proceed to increase the usage of cameras for site visitors enforcement, already underway in 19 college zones. That, coupled with a legislative answer, would assist lower the variety of violations.
Whereas Seattle’s delegation in Olympia is determining tips on how to finesse this, SPS and the town’s prosecutor’s workplace should collaborate as effectively whereas acknowledging monetary restraints. That is what’s meant by doing the onerous work.
Although lots of of motorists annually sadly and boldly ignore our kids’s security, we don’t count on elected and appointed leaders to do the identical.
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