St. Cloud City Council approves $1M update to city surveillance cameras

ST. CLOUD — The St. Cloud City Council unanimously approved a $1 million update to the city's video surveillance system Monday night using the city's American Rescue Plan Act funding.

The 487 cameras currently in place around the city operate on nine different video management systems and some were installed in the 1990s, said city Information Technology Director Micah Myers at the meeting.

The systems vary in age, brand, technology, capacity and capability and the city wants to create a unified and centralized system that will be able to adapt as the city grows, Myers wrote in a submitted agenda item. The cost will be $997,936.39.

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Most of the surveillance cameras are located in downtown St. Cloud parking ramps, as well as around city hall, the police department, River's Edge Convention Center, water towers, the hydroelectric dam, Lake George, the library, the wastewater treatment plant and the Whitney Senior Center, according to the proposal from company Heartland Business System and Verkada.

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Myers said at the meeting one of the challenges is that some recording devices are running on unsupported versions that don't allow them to run because of security risks. Some cameras are offline and there's no way to monitor others in real time, he said.

The new system would allow police officers to access video feeds via phone and allow the department to monitor the footage more efficiently, Myers said. Staff time is currently being wasted pulling video and analyzing footage.

Some of the estimates from system contractors exceeded $7.5 million, so the price tag is industry-standard, Myers said at the meeting. There will be a 10-year warranty on the cameras and it will be easy to replace and add additional cameras to this system in the future, he said.

Becca Most is a cities reporter with the St. Cloud Times. Reach her at 320-241-8213 or bmost@stcloudtimes.com. Follow her on Twitter at @becca_most. 

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This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: St. Cloud City Council approves $1M update to city surveillance cameras