The Renton City Council has voted unanimously to oppose Tim Eyman’s Initiative 985, which in effect would end the city’s efforts to stop the potential fatal consequences of running red lights at four intersections in the city.

The council’s vote came Monday night after a public meeting (part of the council’s regular meeting) specifically on I-985, at which Eyman also spoke.

“He (Eyman) wasn’t received with warm and fuzzy feelings from the council,” said Mayor Denis Law, who presides over the council meetings but doesn’t vote.

Eyman bills I-986, which received enough signatures to appear on the Nov. 4 general election ballot, as a way to reduce traffic congestion in the state.

The initiative raises money for such efforts by redirecting a variety of taxes, fees and tolls to a special account. It also sends to the state all the gross revenues from the 17 cities, including Renton, that have installed red-light cameras and, in Renton’s case, the speed-zone cameras.

The city would have to end the programs if the initiative is approved, according to officials.

According to Eyman, the money would help move traffic.

• Carpool lanes would open to all traffic during non-peak hours,

• Traffic signals would be synchronized on heavily traveled streets, and

• Emergency roadside assistance would be provided to help clear accidents or stalled vehicles faster.

A City of Renton analysis shows that the initiative, if approved, would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars over the next five years, including nearly $575 million in the state’s general fund. The state would lose $3.1 million over five years if it didn’t charge tolls during off-peak hours on the State Route 167 HOT lanes.

The initiative also would strip the City of Renton of the revenue from the red-light camera and school speed-zone programs, both designed to respond to citizens’ concerns about public safety on local streets.

Those who break the law pay for the program by paying a $124 ticket. So far this year, the city has issued about 4,500 citations, but actual revenue is about $200,000. With costs factored in, it’s likely that the city has not made any money so far this year, according to the analysis.

It’s city policy that any “profits” from the programs go to neighborhood traffic enforcement.

To Law, the program seems like a “win-win,” with revenue coming from those who break the law and no new taxes are required to improve public safety. The programs are not a “profit center,” as Eyman would have the public believe, Law said.

“He (Eyman) tries to put a negative spin on it,” Law said.

Eyman, in an interview, said he also didn’t want to raise taxes in his effort through the initiative to reduce traffic congestion.

“We are trying to identify revenue sources that already exist,” he said.

Eyman, who said Monday was his first time to speak at a public meeting on the initiative, didn’t hold out much hope that he would sway the City Council to his way of thinking. He wanted to go “nose to nose” with council members. You get credit, he said, for “going into the lion’s den.”

His real audience, he said, was those voters he could reach watching the meeting on the city’s public access station and those in the audience.

“I was mostly talking to the citizens,” he said.

He said that if the City of Renton and others were really concerned about public safety, they would pay for the red-light cameras and school-zone cameras with city dollars, rather than abandon the programs.

It shouldn’t matter where the revenue goes, he said, because “they weren’t really in it for the money anyway.”

There is no assurance, the city points out, that any of the money Renton would send to Olympia from the two programs would come back to benefit the city.

However, Eyman said the bulk of the money would go back to cities and counties to help synchronize traffic signals to get traffic moving.

Estimates show that revenue from the red-light cameras would generate about $13 million for the congestion fund, according to Eyman. The bulk of the each year’s money, about $128 million, would come from the state vehicle sales tax.

Marcie Palmer, president of the Renton City Council, points to the need for the programs.

“At McKnight Middle School, we have seen 67 percent of the vehicles exceed the 20 mph speed zone, when the children are being dropped off at school,” she said.

“When I am visiting our schools, parents come to me every day and want to know when we’ll be installing additional cameras to make our schools and neighborhoods safe,” she said.