Memo
TO: Mayor Collins and Town Council Members
FROM: Kevin Burke, Town Manager
Peter Wingert, Chief of Police
DATE: November 17, 2016
DEPARTMENT: Police Department
Staff Contact
CONTACT: Peter Wingert, 480-948-7418
End
AGENDA TITLE:
Title
Update from Working Group on Alarm Monitoring
Body
Council Goals
Improve Public Safety Services including prevention, enforcement, communication and community/victim outreach.
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, staff presented the status of the alarm monitoring program and was directed by the Town Council to seek solutions.
In late December 2015, the alarm monitoring equipment failed, causing an outage for five days for all subscribers to our alarm monitoring service. Staff began to seek a private partner to assist with alarm monitoring for a short term to guarantee service to subscribers.
In late February 2016, staff attempted to negotiate a short-term monitoring agreement, but was unsuccessful. Also in February, staff 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.
In May 2016, staff conducted site visits with five municipalities in Texas in order to gather research on municipality alarm monitoring. Staff collected information about municipal alarm monitoring and presented that information to the Town Council in June 2016.
In June 2016, Town Council gave direction to staff to seek a business model that was cost positive or cost neutral and would not need subsidization from the General Fund.
In July 2016, staff requested a vendor to assist with creating business models for the monitoring service.
On November 2016, staff presented business models to the Town Council. Council gave direction and asked clarifying questions on two of those models. Those clarifying questions were answered in the Town Council Study Session in November 2016.
On December 1, three business models were presented to the Town Council. Additionally, a resolution to terminate the service was presented. The Town Council decided not to terminate the alarm monitoring service. Instead, the Town Council chose to create a working group comprised of Jerry Bien-Willner, Mark Stanton, Kevin Burke, Chief Wingert and Robert Kornovich.
Through the assistance of a town resident, the members of the working group toured a local vendor’s facility, discussed false alarm enforcement with Phoenix PD, and met to discuss vision, process and technology needed to implement a planned direction.
The working group’s proposed business plan seeks:
– To explore a partnership with a monitoring provider who can receive signals from our current subscribers and provide them to the Town’s Police dispatcher.
– To respect our current subscribers’ desire for reduced response times and data privacy.
– To service only existing subscribers.
Lastly, a related part of this conversation is false alarms. False alarms are generated by alarms directly monitored by the Town and those monitored by a private companies. They represent an impact on staffing and service capacity at the Police Department; however, managing false alarms also represents an impact on staffing and capacity. It is acknowledged that this issue must be managed as part of a long term solution to this service. As such, those involved in this work group started exploring options as part of this research. Going forward, Police staff and ACOPS will continue to explore recommendations to Council for improving this situation.
ATTACHMENT(S):
Alarm Monitoring Power Point