Nine offer Miami Beach school speed zone detection systems

Miami Beach city officials continue to explore speed detection camera systems for school zones after nine vendors offered systems to the city.

The initiative aims to improve the safety of students and pedestrians by enforcing speed limits. The system’s objective is to detect and deter speeders.

In 2023, notes the commission memo, the state authorized counties and municipalities to install speed detection systems “to enforce school zone speed limits for violations in excess of 10 miles per hour over the applicable speed limit and to enforce the posted speed limit at other times during the entirety of the school session.”

In April 2024, the commission approved issuance of an RFP (request for proposals) for speed detection camera systems for school zones. In December 2024 action was referred to the Finance and Economic Resiliency Committee (FERC) which recommended rejecting all proposals received for the RFP for speed detection camera systems for school zones and authorizing a new RFP.

On Feb. 3 Commissioner Alex Fernandez sponsored an item accepting FERC’s recommendation. He explained his concerns on the initial procurement.

“My issue was with the amount of feedback that we got on this, on this procurement … and the amount of protests that we got,” he said. “That was what was concerning about it, and that’s why we discussed it at committee and the committee agreed that it might be better to start the process again, given the amount of protests that we received on this item.”

Ultimately, city officials agreed to reject all bids and issue a new solicitation for speed detection camera systems for school zones.

The commission was informed there were two protests. Mayor Steven Meiner asked City Manager Eric Carpenter for his “professional judgment” as the mayor said that the two protests didn’t seem like an outlier. “We get protests all the time on our procurements.”

“Two is more than we normally get,” said Mr. Carpenter. “We normally get one protest from whoever came in right behind the number one. But I do think that there’s a lot of interest around this one, as you can see from nine proposers. Ultimately, I think that there’s multiple vendors in this group that are capable of delivering the service. I don’t have any issue if the commission wants to select a different vendor. You’re not bound to my recommendation. I just think it’s a clean process.”

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