Crossfield Town council debated the merits of rolling out the second phase of what Chief Administrative Officer Ken Bosman called a “future technological vision” at its May 17 regular council meeting.
The first phase was completed in April and implemented a centralized Internet feed using a point-to-point radio signal, which Bosman said saved the Town from paying for multiple Internet connections.
The second phase would establish a fiber optic line into the Crossfield Fire Hall and set up a centralized Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system that would connect all of Town’s phone lines to one reception at a lower cost.
“It’s actually relatively cheap to get a proper fiber connection into the fire hall,” Bosman said.
Mayor Nathan Anderson was hesitant to give the second phase the go ahead, as the Town’s budget has been completed and didn’t know where the $18,000 to replace dated phone systems would come from.
He also said he didn’t have the full understanding of the benefits versus cost of the plan.
“For me, I need to understand it in the context of the overall strategy,” Anderson said.
Bosman said though it would cost about $44,000 to get fiber into the fire hall, a 60 month payment commitment with Shaw would actually see the Town’s overall bill go down by about $200 a month because of the savings from the VoIP system.
Those savings, he said, would return the initial $18,000 upfront investment in about five years and go down even more once the commitment with Shaw was paid off.
Anderson said he was leery of VoIP, as he had it in the past and wasn’t happy with the quality.
Bosman said the biggest problem with VoIP is if you have a bad Internet connection there is going to be a slight voice delay.
“Off of fiber optic connections, you essentially have no delay,” he said.
Access to fiber optic also put a couple other moving parts of the overall technology vision into play, Bosman said, including the possibility for a network of Wi-Fi hotspots to be installed wherever the Town wanted at a one-time cost of $1,500 per each hotspot.
With the downturn in the economy, Bosman said there have also been a few more break-ins and the bandwidth allocation from fiber optic creates the possibility of having closed circuit television security cameras (CCTV) to help deter crime.
Councillor Hadi Feltham said he has heard from many residents and business owners who are comforted by the idea of having CCTV especially to monitor vehicles entering and leaving Crossfield.
“The security of our community is very important to me at this point and time,” he said.
Anderson noted council looked into the option of surveillance five years ago.
He said they spoke with RCMP who told them there were legal issues associated with convictions off of CCTV. They also spoke with a committee of residents at the time who, though adamant to stop crime, weren’t in love with the idea.
“They were all against this,” he said.
Anderson returned to the idea of having this information presented in a holistic plan that didn’t just look at the next phase, but rather the end result.
He said perhaps attitudes towards surveillance have changed, but argued council needed to meet with RCMP and the community once again before making a decision.
“When you’re talking about surveillance, you have to have community buy-in for something like that because it is such a serious thing,” Anderson said.
With the quarterly budget review scheduled at the end of June, Feltham motioned a planning meeting be held to further discuss the future technological vision for the Town. A date for the meeting was not set at the May 17 council meeting.
