Memo
TO: Mayor Collins and Town Council Members
FROM: Kevin Burke, Town Manager
Peter Wingert, Chief of Police
DATE: June 9, 2016
DEPARTMENT: Police Department
Staff Contact Peter Wingert, 480-948-7418
End
AGENDA TITLE:
Title
Update to Town Council on Police Alarm Monitoring Program
Body
Council Goals
Public Safety - Improve Public Safety Services including prevention, enforcement, communication and community/victim outreach. Evaluate the Alarm System.
SUMMARY STATEMENT:
The Town of Paradise Valley has been providing police alarm monitoring since 1984. The equipment purchased at inception has reached the end of its serviceable life.
In October 2015, four options were presented to the Town Council regarding the direction that the Town Council wished to take this service. At that time, a “Hybrid” type solution was recommended by staff and, based on the recommendation, directed by the Town Council.
In late December 2015, the alarm monitoring equipment failed, causing an outage for five days for all subscribers to our alarm monitoring service. We were able to revive the system and continue to offer this service while we began to implement the Town Council’s direction of a Hybrid system. We also began to seek a private partner to assist us with alarm monitoring for a short term, in order to guarantee alarm monitoring service to our subscribers.
In late February, we reached an agreement with a vendor to provide short term monitoring of our alarm subscribers while we implement the long term solution. Executing this agreement with the vendor to provide alarm monitoring for a short term has been more difficult than initially anticipated. Also in February 2016, we advertised for an alarm consultant via an RFQ process. At the close of the RFQ process, in late March, no bids were received to provide consulting services.
We have found 13 municipalities that provide alarm monitoring service directly to subscribing customers. Five of those 13 are located in the Dallas and Houston, Texas area. In late May 2016, staff conducted site visits with those five municipalities in Texas in order to gather research on municipality alarm monitoring.
This presentation will provide the Paradise Valley Town Council with research learned during the site visits and revisit the original four options presented to the Town Council during October 2016.
ATTACHMENT(S):
PowerPoint titled: “06092016 Alarm monitoring findings”