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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10/10/06 Technologies I 10/1 0/06 MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING OF THE TECHNOLOGIES BOARD HELD ON October 10, 2006 The Regular Session of the TECHNOLOGIES BOARD of The Colony, Texas was called to order at 6:30 pm on the 10th of October, 2006 at CITY HALL, in the City Manager's Conference Room, City Hall, 6800 MAIN STREET, THE COLONY, TEXAS, with the following Technologies Board members present: John Marshall T eRon Lawrence John Harton Harshkumar Desai Mike Lynch With 5 out of seven members present a quorum was established and the following items were discussed. 11.0 I Call Meeting to Order: 6:30 P.M. I 2.0 I DISPOSITION OF MINUTES Acceptance of Technologies Board Minutes for a meeting held on July 25, 2006. I I 3.0 I CITIZEN INPUT None I 4.0 I AGENDA ITEMS 4.4 Discuss and recommend approving the SCADA system at the Wynnwood Lift Station I Gordon Scruggs, City Engineer for The Colony, explained the proposal to tie a SCADA system from the Wynnwood Peninsula Lift Station into the Stewart Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. The lift station is currently under construction and he feels this would be a good time to implement the SCADA system there. The system is monitored at the Stewart Creek plant during the day and during nights and weekends at the Office Creek Pump Station. The ultimate goal is to tie all of the lift stations into the system. John Manning with Freese and Nichols explained that by implementing the SCADA system at the Wynnwood Lift Station we will be able to bring the other lift stations onto the system without major modifications. He gave an overview of where the lift stations in the city are and how they plan to tie them back to the Wastewater plant. Mr. Manning explained the technology behind the system and what frequency they use. Mr. Lynch asked about frequency hopping and Mr. Manning explained that this depends on the proximity to other towers. Matthew Johnson, IT Manager for The Colony, asked how this system will work over IP based systems. Mr. Manning said there are addresses that can be assigned in and they can transmit Ethernet but, this is more used for the SCADA and not looking at the IP addresses. Mr. Johnson asked if this will work over our wireless mesh. Mr. Manning said that most of the time these systems are set up for a dedicated SCADA 1 I 10/10106 instead of going through a general network. Mr. Johnson asked about setting up a dedicated VLAN network and if it would work. Mr. Manning said that most of what he has seen and set up has been a dedicated system primarily for security reasons. Mr. Manning said that he has not seen it set up that way in this area. Mr. Harton asked if this is the same as the existing technology that we currently have at the water treatment plant. Mr. Manning said it will be the same technology. Mr. Lynch asked how many repeaters there will be. Mr. Manning said that right now there are only plans for one at Wynnwood Peninsula. Mr. Lynch said that he would be more comfortable with two repeaters in the event that one went down. Mr. Marshall asked if the signal is encrypted. Mr. Manning said it is encrypted. Mr. Lynch asked about upgrades to the radios. Tim Campbell with Freese and Nichols said they are not selling the equipment. They are recommending the design of the system. Prime Controls is the vendor for the equipment. Mr. Scruggs asked for a recommendation from the board to proceed with the project. Mr. Lynch asked if they had done the path analysis and Mr. Manning said they have. Mr. Scruggs said that right now they are just going forward with putting one repeater at Wynnwood because of the construction that will be going on there. They will need to re-evaluate it after the houses are built. Mr. Manning said their recommendation was for a fifty foot tower but the developer had a problem with that. The other option will be to place it on top of the elevated storage tank. Mr. Marshall said our concern is about functionality. Mr. Campbell said that at this point they plan to construct a thirty foot tower with the option to go back in and add more sections as needed. Mr. Lynch made a motion to approve with the elimination of single point of failure routing. Mr. Lawrence seconded the motion. Motion carnes. I 4.1 Discuss and recommend approving City wide Wireless Mesh I Mr. Johnson explained that Redmoon gave a proposal to the city regarding a wireless mesh system. He felt that it was not feasible. He is proposing that we implement the system ourselves. Rebecca Koo, Finance Director, said that the City Manager had recommended about $400k in 2007 Certificate of Obligations to finance part of the mesh system. We are planning on doing a stage approach. This will be a project that will take several years. Mr. Johnson said this will provide the first level of connectivity for several sites in the city. The TI lines at the Fire Department and Police Department will stay in place and all of the others will be eliminated. Mr. Lawrence asked if we will be doing anything for QOS and security for public safety. Bruce Maker, IT Specialist, said they will be on their own VLAN. Mr. Harton asked if there will be connection for the laptops in the police cars. Mr. Johnson said it will. Mr. Harton asked if the devices will be mounted on light poles. Mr. Johnson said they will be mounted on wooden telephone poles that will be installed because many of the existing poles are not tall enough. Mr. Marshall asked if the design is for city use only and Mr. Johnson said no and eventually we would like to offer it to the public. We are in the processing of drafting a letter of intent to the state to provide the service. Mr. Harton asked if this will be like a subscription service. Mr. Johnson said that was correct. Mr. Lawrence asked if this will be offered to citizens for a fee. Mr. Johnson said there is a possibility that we could do that and bill it on residents' water bill. Mr. Desai asked if this will be used for telephone and internet both. Mr. Johnson said it will be used for telephone at some of our sites but telephone could not be offered to the public. Mr. Johnson said this will be a big advantage to the police for use in their patrol cars. Mr. Desai asked about the 35 foot poles. Mr. Johnson explained that we will have new poles installed because most of the poles in the city are only 15 foot poles. He also eXplained that the price will vary 2 I 10/10/06 depending on whether there is power within 50 feet of the poles. Mr. Lawrence asked about a fourth phase. Mr. Johnson explained that the fourth phase will be Wynnwood Peninsula which has not been built yet. Mr. Lynch recommended that Mr. Johnson get a picture of a typical pOle to show to the council. Mr. Johnson said there could be different types of poles for different areas of the city depending on the surrounding. Mr. Lynch asked if this is a bud$etary price and Mr. Johnson said yes. Mr. Maker said that the price will vary some bec<liuse the quote has a pole built in for every device and there are existing poles in some of those locations currently. Mr. Johnson explained the multitude of things that can take advantage of this system that will allow employees to do their job easier. Some of those items are water meters, irrigation systems, and ball field lights. This will be a cost savings in man power. Mr. Marshall asked if Mr. Johnson had considered WiMax and Mr. Johnson said it is not an option at this time because WiMax is not readily available in the United Sates at this time. Mr. Lynch made a motion to approve the concept with the possibility or option of replacing insufficient height light poles and combining them with poles of sufficient height. Mr. Lawrence seconded the motion. Motion carries. 4.2 Discuss and recommend approving Security camera system for Municipal Court and the Police Department I Mr. Johnson explained that this system will be paid for from the Court Security Fund and the City Attorney has verified that because the Police Department is located in the same building as the Court. There will be no problem using the funding for cameras in both locations. Chris Plemons, Support Services Captain for the Police Department, explained that the new system will be a DVR to replace the current tape system. They currently have $150k in the fund. Mr. Plemons explained that the system will have cameras in the building and separate audio microphones that are not mounted on cameras. The locations of the cameras will be: at each entrance and exit, on the outside of the building recording the parking lot, and in the criminal transport area. The ones on the exterior will be pan, tilt, and zoom cameras. This system will eliminate the televisions and VCR's that are currently at dispatch and will be replaced with one PC and plasma screen. The cameras will be able to be controlled from any computer where the software is installed with different security settings for different users. Mr. Lynch asked if the interior corridors will be covered. Mr. Plemons said that each corridor will be covered. Mr. Lynch asked how the recording is accomplished. Mr. Johnson said the reason they chose this solution by Indigo Vision is that their greatest asset is they offer compression up to ninety percent over what the other companies offer. Mr. Plemons believes that the recordings must be kept for 90 days. Mr. Johnson said the reason he chose Indigo Vision is for the storage cost. Mr. Marshall asked if any of the other companies used compression. Mr. Johnson said some of them did but not most used MP3' s. Indigo uses a proprietary compression. Mr. Johnson said this will be a huge data storage savings for the city. We will be able to use back up storage on the device for City Hall and be able to add numerous cameras for the city. We will be able to handle up to one hundred cameras on one desktop. Mr. Harton asked if the system will include the cameras. Mr. Johnson said it will and it also includes installation. Mr. Harton asked if the storage will be supplied by Indigo and Mr. Johnson said yes. Mr. Harton asked if this will record twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. Mr. Johnson said it will not. It has the ability to do that but we will set schedules and motion activation. Mr. Harton asked about record retention of ninety days. Mr. Plemons said that according to the Texas Open Records Act we are only required to keep the records for ninety days. Mr. Lynch asked what the start time is for the motion I 3 I 10/1 0106 detection. Mr. Maker said that we could set them to go back up to thirty seconds. Mr. Harton asked if this will capture data from the patrol car cameras. Mr. Johnson said that is what they are hoping to do with the Wireless Mesh system. We could also use this to add cameras to the water treatment plant. Mr. Lynch asked about the warranty and maintenance. Mr. Harton asked if the maintenance is fifteen percent of the system cost for hardware and software or fifteen percent for each. Mr. Johnson said it is fifteen percent for the entire system. Mr. Lawrence made a motion to accept as is. Mr. Lynch seconded the motion. Motion carries. 4.3 Discuss and recommend approving the lease of computer equipment Mr. Johnson explained the pricing for the quote. He explained that the price could possibly go down if we do not have to purchase operating systems for each pc. Mr. Harton asked if the price was for one pc and Mr. Johnson said that it was the price for a monthly lease of 157 computers at $27.56 for a total of $4,326. They have dual core processors, 1 GB memory, 80 GB hard drive and come with a 19 inch flat screen monitor. We will be getting 157 desktops, 37 laptops, 10 tough books, and 1 tablet. The installation will be included in the lease price. Mr. Johnson explained that IBM will be giving us a buy back program on our existing Dell computers. We will be getting docking stations for the laptops but we will not be purchasing new monitors for those. We will recycle some of the existing monitors. Mr. Lynch made a motion to accept as is. Mr. Lawrence seconded the motion. Motion carries. I [ 5.0 I ADJOURNMENT With no further business, the meeting adjourned at 8:20 p.m. APPROVED: ~/~ John Marshall, Chairman I 4