YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – The Youngstown Safety Committee met Tuesday morning and received an update on the newly installed school zone speed cameras.

According to Mark Hutchinson, with Blue Line Solutions, since the initial rollout of the cameras in January there has been an 80% decrease in speeding.

“The expectation is that they’ll be another five to 10 percent reduction in speeding inside the school zones, and so it’s working really well so that it will be down almost 90%,” said 6th ward councilwoman Anita Davis.

The city began using the cameras in January, but there was a 30-day grace period before citations would be given. That grace period ended last week and on Feb. 20, the citations began.

One of the concerns at the safety meeting was making sure people would not be cited unless they are within the school zone perimeter.

“If there’s a ticket that’s being applied, that it’s being applied to the right person for an actual offense, which is going in excessive speed inside the school zone,” Davis said.

“Before we went live, I actually went up to every school zone and using a departmental laser, I measured to make sure that the signage and everything were within 300 feet from the camera enforcement zone. Everything was in that zone,” Lt. Brian Welsh assured the committee.

Davis said they should soon have an update on how many citations were given out in the first official week.

The topic of Blue Line Solutions providing the city with 80-100 automatic license plate readers also was discussed. With the current contract, the readers would be provided at no extra cost, to accompany the 80-100 speed cameras.

Davis said she would want to make sure the readers were used for the right reasons and that no personal privacy of residents and drivers would be invaded.