The Piedmont City Council agreed on Monday night to further exploration of installing license plate readers at entrances and exits of the city.
The project, if installed at all roads into and out of the city, would cost more than $1 million, according to the staff report presented to the council.
The council Monday instructed staff to ask the city's Public Safety Committee to comment on the proposal at its next meeting on April 4, and the council also instructed staff to seek a "turn key" quote from the vendor of the license plate readers, 3M, for not only providing the cameras but also installing them, according to City Administrator Geoff Grote.
The staff report by Grote said the city received a quote from 3M for 57 cameras and attendant equipment for $978,716, not counting installation costs or monthly wireless fees and electricity charges. The quote also didn't include a three-year maintenance warranty of $174,700, the report said.
"The council felt an urgency to keep moving on this project," Grote said.
The proposal comes in response to heightened public concern over crime in the wake of rising burglaries and two home-invasion robberies in one day in January.
"Obviously the price was an issue," Grote said of the council's discussion.
The council indicated strong interest in the "turn key" approach to help assure that the equipment performs up to specifications, Grote said.
The turn key contract, however, would not include the city's monthly wireless costs to Verizon or the PG&E costs for the electricity to operate the units, which send the images wirelessly to a server.
The Verizon cost, if all cameras are installed, is estimated to be about $1,100 per month, Grote said. The city does not have an estimate for the electricity costs yet, he said.
No decision has been made on whether to install the full system or instead to pursue the less expensive route of placing cameras at the main entry and exit points, he said.
The new Chief's report was praised by some members of Council. While installing the license plate readers is apparently more involved than just camera installation, I concur with Fred Thompson and would prefer a normal bid process. Relying on a turn-key no-bid option often results in the most expensive implementation.
Perhaps the costs could be offset by selling it to advertisers, or perhaps your employeer would like to know if you were driving around on a day you called in sick? Or your car insurance company wants to keep track of how often you really drive your car around. We need to make sure that if a system like this is installed, that the information collected is used only for its intended purpose.
It is unlikely that LPR and server can be linked to the wireless home security systems. The cost does seem very high. If I understood the Chief, was makes it "sole-source" is 3M control of the server that contains the NICRICS crime data the system uses to check scanned plates against. The Chief suggested this was the most comprehensive data for LPR. It may just be a matter of time before other vendors to develop cheaper methods for accessing this public domain information. To Steve's point, I think the LPR will just scan plates against a dataset of known criminal plates entered by PPD (stolen cars, warrants, sex offenders) and store only those plates that are "hits" but I am not positive about that. If not, it certainly would help us track our kids. Seriously, this does have to be clarified and a good place to do that is at the next meeting of the Public Safety Committee, Thursday April 4 at 5:00, City Hall. Council will revisit the LPR question at its meeting on Monday, April 15.