Trail city council has approved spending about $51,000 on a new surveillance camera system for the Trail Memorial Centre.
Purchasing and mechanical superintendent Bryan Maloney told council last week that the project began in 2019 when they sought suggestions from vendors for upgrades. It was included in the 2020 capital budget but did not go ahead.
The new cameras are part of a multi-year project to replace old equipment throughout the city with new gear with a number of additional features, including being able to access footage remotely and self-diagnostics of problems.
“We determined those items to be of utmost importance,” Maloney says. “We’ve often had issues with the system being offline. Currently it does not self-report. We don’t know that until we go to retrieve footage and see that it’s not there.”
Additionally, the new system will provide better resolution and have some night-vision capability, two things the RCMP indicated as concerns when he met with them to find out how the system might be improved.
“This system largely is in place as a deterrent and a detection process for crime on city properties and on streets downtown,” he says.
The city received two local bids, one of $51,000 from Selkirk Security and another of $107,000 from Ralcomm.
Asked about the large discrepancy between the bids, Maloney replied that it was like comparing a Cadillac and a Toyota. The Ralcomm option had numerous features “to the point where we could do facial recognition, traffic patterns, we could follow a person through the downtown core.
“That being said, I truly don’t believe that’s the level of system the city requires. Though all the bells and whistles are great, the system presented by Selkirk Security gives us what we need without overspending.”
