The Warwick City Council passed one of the most controversial items of budget season and made a decision on city abandonments Monday night.

The council unanimously approved a five-year lease of red-light and school zone speed zone cameras from the Maryland-based technology company Altumint.

Police Chief Bradford Connor said the cameras would be a “force multiplier” for traffic enforcement in the city, and would have a noted effect on traffic safety, saying that collisions in Pawtucket have gone down over 20% since the installation of similar cameras.

“It’s important to use technology as technology advances to better public safety,” Connor said.

Leasing the cameras- and a projected $1.3 million in revenue from them- were taken out of revenue projections for Warwick’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget, as multiple councilmembers said they were uncomfortable with projecting revenues before questions about the cameras could be answered.

Major Andrew Sullivan said that the exact number of cameras that the WPD would be leasing was still yet to be determined. Revenue projections, he said, were based off of an estimate of 20 red light cameras and 10 school zone cameras throughout the city- although Sullivan said that those numbers would likely be lower than what Warwick will get.

Traffic signal; infractions will cost $85 with the city getting $77.20 of that total, and $50 at school zone cameras, with the city getting $42.20 of that total.

A yet-to-be-named third party will be determining locations for the cameras throughout the city, according to Sullivan.

Street abandonment ordinance

An ordinance proposed by Ward 8 Councilman Anthony Sinapi to rework and clarify street abandonment procedures was also granted first passage..

Sinapi said the ordinance would ideally remove hurdles from the process of abandonments in the city.

“We’ve had this come up once or twice now in recent meetings where there’s been a request for an abandonment that is actually in the city’s best interests and there’s been a hiccup when it comes to the language in the ordinance,” Sinapi said. “The city and I are tired of seeing it, and this would resolve it nicely.”

One such agreement came before the Council during the meeting, with the city relinquishing a small unused portion of Cypress Street in Norwood to two abutting property owners. Getting that easement, attorney John McCoy argued, would allow one of the property owners to build an extension on his house and the other to continue using the abandoned road as her driveway.

While that was approved in a public hearing without any objections, Sinapi’s proposed ordinance received some criticism from other members of the council.

Ward 2 Councilman Jeremy Rix said that while he believed the ordinance was well-intentioned and well-crafted, he was concerned about “unintended consequences” of it, and the ordinance being used for political favoritism by future councils.

“I really wouldn’t want to open up that type of loophole, where with a certification and a certain risk of favoritism, for the standard to be applied unevenly and for some to end up getting land transferred to them at no charge while others pay the fair market value,” Rix said.

Sinapi’s bill received first passage in a 7-2 vote, with Rix and Ward 5 Councilman Ed Ladouceur voting against it.