By Lee Weyhrich
CLAY — Clay City Councilman Ricky Baker announced Monday that the new public safety camera system has been ordered.
The council approved $4,500 at the previous meeting to purchase four cameras and hardware to be used for public safety and crime prevention. The cameras will be installed at the Chalkville Mountain Road intersection at Old Springville Road. Baker hopes that the cameras can be used to identify criminals leaving local businesses, and perhaps deter future crime.
If the pilot program is successful, the council will look into the installation of cameras at other key intersections, Baker said. If the camera system isn’t successful for that role, it can be moved to the Clay City Park and used as a security system, Baker said. ?The cameras broadcast wirelessly to a nearby computer and can even be accessed by sheriff’s deputies through wireless Internet. Unlike other systems the council had looked into, there is no monthly fee for this system.
The five-megapixel cameras will be primarily used to help deputies identify and deter criminals, and won’t be used to monitor traffic.
The computer system has a four-terabyte hard drive, and can handle and record up to eight other cameras. The intersection will be a test to determine the system’s effectiveness.
In other news, a sidewalk project started in 2008 and completed in 2011 is causing major problems now. The project, which took place on Cougar Drive, was part of a $190,000 Alabama Department of Transportation grant that might have to be repaid if city officials can’t find or re-create all the documentation for that project.
Most of the documents regarding this project were shredded by the previous administration. Now City Manager Ronnie Dixon and Mayor Charles Webster are contacting everyone involved with the project to try to re-create the necessary information.
Originally, one company handled oversight of the project, but it was fired before the project was completed, and its records only include its portion of the project. According to Dixon, the project was then put under the oversight of then-Mayor Ed McGuffie’s grandson, who was apparently made an inspector so he could have the authority to do so. Some notes were taken in a notebook, but there are major gaps in information, Dixon said.
ALDOT needs to know the size and number of trucks that came, how much gravel was brought, what types of beds there were and where the dirt came from. City officials have managed to re-create much of this material with the help of the various companies that worked on the project.
All this time and effort, as well as the work that’s having to be done by the other contractors, is costing the city money. However, the money the council is expending for this effort is far less than the cost of repaying the $190,000 grant.
“We’ve spent countless hours trying to re-create this stuff from that notebook and other companies,” Webster said.
This isn’t the only old project that has reared its head due to poor or destroyed records, according to city officials. The council also discussed a Housing and Urban Development project that no records exist on at all. HUD has asked for documentation so that the project, from 2009, could be closed out. The best guess from current councilmen who served during that time is that the project in question was for the bridge at Cosby Lake. Dixon is searching for any documentation that might help him find a definitive answer.