$53-million photo radar takeover ‘went off the rails,’ Edmonton official admits

A 2007 business plan indicated the scheme would cost $6.7 million and result in $7.3 million worth of savings in the first five years.

But any savings disappeared as costs ballooned to $53.6 million, mainly because staff couldn’t find an off-the shelf ticket processing system and had to create one.

That required paying $19.2 million to keep Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services on the job until 2013, five years longer than planned.

Operating costs in 2008-12 were $22.4 million, eight times higher than anticipated, yet city councillors apparently were never told, an auditor’s report found.

“In this case, it went off the rails pretty early,” transportation general manager Dorian Wandzura told council’s audit committee.

“There was an opportunity we should have taken to communicate that upward … Administratively, we knew this wasn’t coming together as anticipated.”

He doesn’t know what went wrong in the planning because he only started in his position last year and most of the key decision-makers have left.

That wasn’t good enough for Coun. Tony Caterina, who wanted someone to take responsibility for what happened.

“The fact is, staff has changed. That’s being used as an excuse,” he said. “The fact nobody has taken responsibility for this is very, very concerning to me … This was a breakdown in the department somewhere.”

Coun. Bryan Anderson was equally blunt, saying councillors and the public must be able to trust administration recommendations.

“Any time we engage in a business operation that generates headlines that say ‘Automated ticket enforcement overrun $47 million’ … (confidence) just has to nosedive,” he said.

“When we talk about concepts, we talk about (costs) plus or minus 50 per cent. Well, here we’re minus 800 per cent.”

Mayor Don Iveson said later that the operating expense for each ticket was down sharply last year from 2008, and the system is now working well.

“Something obviously went very wrong in the original planning to make the transition. I think time is now showing us this was the right decision,” he said.

“It took five years longer to make the transition and a lot more money than we thought.”

The extra expenses were covered by fine money, not taxes.

Revenues doubled to $41.3 million last year compared to 2012, and are expected to be around that amount in 2014, or about $10 million more than anticipated in the budget.

Wandzura denied boosting enforcement to cover rising costs, saying the number of units deployed has more than doubled.

Edmonton’s injury and fatality collision rate is almost half what it was in 2007.

gkent@edmontonjournal.com