Brady Burgess, IT consultant, presents a quote of $49,829 to the Warsaw Board of Public Works and Safety from Havel, for camera surveillance upgrades. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Security upgrades to the camera surveillance system at Warsaw City Hall were approved Friday, Oct. 3, at the Board of Public Works and Safety meeting.

Brady Burgess, the city’s IT consultant, presented a quote of $49,829 to the board from Havel, the city’s current door access and security surveillance solution provider at the Warsaw Police Department and door access and fire alarm panel system provider at City Hall.

“Most of our surveillance equipment is approaching eight to nine years old and we’re feeling the age of that, and it’s time to upgrade our surveillance. Fill in some blind spots that we have,” Burgess said. “It goes without saying. We have a responsibility to not only protect the assets here, but all of our guests, citizens and, most importantly, employees that are here every day.”

With the new system, he said there’s some more advanced features that “will help us in assisting, retrieving stored or recorded videos to try to detect – you know, was it a black truck that went through City Hall’s parking lot between the hours of such and such time. That will kind of help us dial that in and retrieve that recording for the police in a much-faster fashion.”

Burgess said they toured the police department, and they have the system currently.

“We just have a more upgraded version of that because when they deployed theirs, the A.I. features weren’t quite available yet, but they are now. So, the police department is really happy with theirs and we were really happy with that also,” he said. “We’re seeking your approval to move forward with upgrading our existing cameras but also adding a few to fill in some blind spots.”

Board Member George Clemens said originally, he thought the price seemed high, but then when he started looking the system over, he saw how good it was.

“It just seems like a big upgrade on what we have,” Clemens stated.

Burgess said it gives the city the ability to expand it and a lot of different options.

“The police are familiar with it. A lot of times we’re getting requests from them to review footage … so giving them access to it, us access to it and being able to pull the footage really quickly, to, again, protect the assets and the people that are coming and going, I think this is the correct step,” he stated.

Burgess noted the area between City Hall and the county courthouse is a very popular area for video surveillance.

Clemens made the motion to approve Burgess’s request, and the motion passed 2-0. Board member and Councilwoman Diane Quance was absent.

In other business, the board approved:

• Pay application #8 for $267,620 for the Belle Augusta Residential Infrastructure Financing (RIF) loan, as requested by Warsaw Community and Economic Development Director Jeremy Skinner. He said it’s the final one and will complete the bond payment that the city did earlier this year for work completed on the expansion of the Belle Augusta subdivision. The total of the loan was $1,025,000. Skinner said the pay application will get submitted to the state and then they will release those funds.

• A change order related to the construction contract with Garland/DBS Inc. for the City Hall deck improvements project, as presented by city engineer Aaron Ott. “As we began the project, we discovered some differences in the composition of the existing concrete deck up there, and the scope of work had to be adjusted accordingly because the plan that we had to replace that was going to be more costly and difficult if we proceeded in that direction,” Ott told the board. After going back to the designers and contractors, Ott said they worked out an adjusted scope of work that came back with a total deduction of $18,220, taking the new contract value from $148,773 down to $130,553. Ott said it all came up a couple months ago, but they’re just getting through it contractually now.

• Pay application #1 from Phend & Brown Inc. for $821,843.70 for the reconstruction of Airport Road and the milling and paving of Provident Drive, CR 150W, Old 30E and Zimmer Road, as requested by Public Works Director Dustin Dillon. He said it was part of a Community Crossings Matching Grant from the state, so half of the pay application will come from local funds with the other half coming from the Indiana Department of Transportation grant. The work has been completed.

• The bid from Kerlin, Silver Lake, for $49,278 for a Ford F250 for the street department, as recommended by Street Superintendent Joe Vetor. The other two sealed quotes that were submitted were $51,125 from Model 1 Ford, Warsaw; and $50,828.80 from City Ford, Columbia City.

• A change order for $42,930 from Insight Pipe Contracting LLC for sanitary sewer rehabilitation work; a pay application for $43,612.50 from Insight Pipe for sanitary sewer rehabilitation work; and a pay application for $41,642.78 from Insight Pipe for sanitary sewer rehabilitation work. All three requests were presented by Larry Hyden, Warsaw Wastewater Utility.

• A preventative maintenance agreement with AP Sound for the audio, video and lighting systems at the Zimmer Biomet Center Lake Pavilion for $2,070, as requested by Warsaw Parks and Recreation Department Superintendent Larry Plummer.

• Accepting a matching grant to the Warsaw Parks and Recreation Department from The Dekko Foundation to support the development of a community skate park, as presented by Plummer. For every $1 contributed, The Dekko Foundation will match it, up to $40,000. The overall project budget is estimated at $487,000.

• A proposal from Dogwood Hills Tree Farm for the removal and replacement of two trees in downtown planter boxes for $3,963, as presented by City Planner Justin Taylor. The trees have declined in health and need to be replaced. As part of the proposal, Dogwood Hills will do some pruning in the spring.

• Pay application #14 from The Troyer Group for the Lincoln Neighborhood Sidewalk Project for $16,745.04, as requested by Taylor. The pay application is a result of a change order that was approved earlier this year for $18,500. Taylor said the project will still come in under budget overall. Cost of the total project is around $3.5 million, with local funds only covering about 20% of that cost.

• WPD Chief of Police Scott Whitaker’s request to accept a $2,500 grant through Kosciusko REMC for personal protective equipment upgrades for the Emergency Response Team (ERT); and a $10,000 grant from the Kosciusko County Community Foundation for personal protective equipment upgrades for the ERT.

• The new hire and change in payroll report, as presented by Warsaw Human Resource Director Denny Harlan. It includes the hiring of Vincent Werner as a groundskeeper for Oakwood Cemetery at $20 per hour; two Warsaw Police Department patrolmen being promoted to detective (Kevin Kyle at $3,134.20 biweekly and Christopher Brown at $3,084.18 biweekly); one detective (Jeff Ticknor) going back to being a patrol officer, at $2,900.99 biweekly; a merit increase for records clerk Shanna Patterson at the WPD, for a salary of $21.50 hourly; and a new WPD officer, Julio Albor, who was a lateral transfer, at $2,575.86 biweekly.