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Davenport’s 5% collection of unpaid red light camera tickets is ‘pretty good’

The red light amnesty program that was introduced on June 3, 2014 ended August 4, 2014. Read More: Davenport offers last chance with overdue red light/speed cam...

The red light amnesty program that was introduced on June 3, 2014 ended August 4, 2014.

Read More: Davenport offers last chance with overdue red light/speed camera tickets.

The City of Davenport offered the program to create an incentive for people with overdue red light/speed camera tickets to pay their fines. People could pay their $65 ticket without having to pay any additional late fees added onto it.

Notices were sent in the mail to people with overdue, unpaid tickets.

The city's finance director, Brandon Wright, said out of the 28,000 people they sent notices to, only about 1,500 actually paid their overdue fines.

Wright said even though that's only about a 5 percent return rate, it's still better than nothing.

"If you go to a collection agency and ask them how they are on their collection accounts, you'll find it's nowhere near 5 percent.  A typical collection for a collection agency is in the 2 percent range during a kind of typical month. So five percent is actually pretty good," said Brandon Wright, Finance Director for the city of Davenport.

"We have about $2.5 to $3 million of outstanding amounts," said Wright. "We've collected about 100,000 dollars of those outstanding amounts."

All the money generated from the red light/speed camera tickets goes towards the police general fund.

Starting August 5, 2014 a $25 fine will be added to all overdue, unpaid red light camera tickets and a notice will be sent to the state of Iowa to hold the vehicle registration.

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