Council questions Syracuse’s $6 million school-zone enforcement revenue estimate and vendor cut

City finance staff told the Common Council on April 15 that the proposed 2026 budget includes up to $6 million in gross revenue from new school-zone and related traffic-enforcement fines, but council members expressed skepticism about the assumptions behind that figure and the contractor payment structure.

Mike Kennezera, Commissioner of Finance, said the $6 million projection is based on experience elsewhere and on preliminary enforcement volumes but acknowledged uncertainty. “It’s an ambitious number, but I think it’s really, we’re wait and see at this point,” he said. He added that comparable early results from Albany informed the estimate: “we are hanging our head on $6,000,000, just based on what had happened in Albany.”

Councilors pressed staff with arithmetic that highlighted how the model creates large per-day violation counts. Kennezera described the revenue calculation and the contractor share: the city has an agreement with a private vendor that will take roughly 35 to 45 percent of collections, depending on the revenue source, which reduces net revenue projections. Kennezera said the $6 million gross becomes about $3.7 million net after the vendor payment and related costs.

Council members questioned whether daily violation counts implied by the budget are realistic. One councilor noted that the assumptions imply several hundred violations per school per day for some fine categories and said, “I think those are probably out of line with what we're actually going to see,” a concern echoed by others who observed that initial enforcement typically spikes and then behavior changes.

Ken- nezera and councilors agreed the city will monitor results closely as enforcement begins and refine future budgets based on actual collections and behavior changes. No formal action was taken during the hearing.