Denver is offering to renew its contract with the operator of its red-light ticket camera network for only six months, to see if problems over the system's performance and money owed to the city can be worked out.

The contractor, Redflex Traffic Systems, may owe the city nearly $28,000 for its failure to photograph a required number of red- light runners.

The city wasn't aware of the credits it was due from Redflex until the Rocky Mountain News uncovered the problem while reviewing documents provided in response to an open-records request.

The one-year contract expires Feb. 15, but allows for up to four years of renewals. The administration is recommending to the City Council only a six-month renewal.

The contract will go to a City Council committee Wednesday.

The shorter renewal period will allow the city "to evaluate the vendor's performance," including a requirement to credit the city with payback for system failures, according to a memo to the council from the safety department.

City officials didn't respond to the Rocky's inquiries about how it intends to handle the money already owed. Redflex is supposed to credit $25 back to the city for every time the system detects a red-light runner but fails to capture a video and photos suitable to issue a ticket, except for 2 percent of the total.

Through December, those failures resulted in a total of $27,900 owed back to the city, according to a Rocky calculation of the data.

The city says it plans to pursue at least some of the money that Redflex owes. Redflex officials declined to comment.

City officials haven't begun to address whether the program is effective at reducing red-light running.

Denver started the program without following federal guidelines that suggest it first try proper yellow-signal timing.

After a Rocky investigation showed that all four intersections chosen for red-light cameras had substandard yellow times, virtually guaranteeing a flood of tickets, the city increased yellow times, ranging from a half-second to two seconds. That immediately resulted in substantially fewer violations than projected.

But, according to Redflex's data, the violation rate remains much higher at the one intersection where only a half-second of yellow time was added: eastbound Sixth Avenue at Lincoln Street.

That camera captures up to four times the rate of violations as the other three, suggesting that offenses could be cut significantly if that signal were adjusted to match the others. The cameras brought in $173,295 in fines in November.

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH

Ken Blakeslee found out you don't have to run the red light to get a red light-running ticket.

He got a $75 red-light camera ticket in the mail after he stopped for a red light. He just didn't stop soon enough.

What Blakeslee learned is that the law requires you to stop before crossing the painted white line in front of the crosswalk. On Nov. 3, he stopped for the red light on Eighth Avenue at southbound Speer Boulevard, but his minivan came to a stop in the crosswalk, its rear wheels on the white line.

Even though he didn't run the red light, Denver issued him the ticket for "disobedience to a traffic control device."

He contested it, and a city attorney explained the law. The judge cut his fine to $45.

"When you think of running through a red light, you think of going through the intersection," the Park Hill resident said. "They need all the money they can get. I understand why they're going there."