Mount Olive Police Chief Jason Hughes talks about efforts to get the town’s failed video surveillance system back up and running while Mayor Pro-tem Steve Wiggins takes notes. The cameras were discussed during an ordinance and contracts work session held Tuesday night, March 7, in the town hall conference room (Steve Herring|mountolivetribune.com)
Areas of Mount Olive, where street lights are out or are needed, will be mapped out. The need for the lights was discussed during an ordinance and contracts work session held Tuesday night, March 7, in the town hall conference room. From left are Mayor Pro-tem Steve Wiggins, Public Works Director Jeremy King, Commissioner Vicky Darden, Commissioner Barbara Kornegay and Town Attorney Carroll Turner (Steve Herring|mountolivetribune.com)
A failed video surveillance system and street lights that have gone dark were on the minds of Mount Olive town commissioners during an ordinance and contracts work session held Tuesday night, March 7, in the town hall conference room.
Town commissioners created the work sessions in 2017 after they began reading through the town’s ordinance books, Commissioner Barbara Kornegay said. The sessions just recently resumed after being suspended during the COVID pandemic.
Kornegay compared the process to driving through mud.
“We have been having work sessions once a month just to look at things that we see need to be changed instead of trying to slog through the whole book,” Kornegay said.
Mayor Pro-tem Steve Wiggins has led the sessions since the start, she added.
The discussions have included what to do about the town’s contract with Calypso for sewer services, trash pick-up across the town, noise ordinance and other ongoing topics.
“We want to keep these things online, we want to remember them,” she said.
A continuing list is kept since not everything can be handled at one meeting, Kornegay noted.
Street lights were not on the agenda, but surfaced as part of the discussion on how to take a pro-active approach to crime and nuisance areas in town.
Commissioner Delreese Simmons pointed out that there are no lights on Kornegay, Connor and Church streets in the southern part of town.
“Connor, Kornegay (streets), they are going to shoot them out,” Police Chief Jason Hughes said. “The (power company) will put them up and they (individuals) will take a BB gun or something and shoot them out.”
Wiggins asked if the town is responsible for street lights.
“They are ours,” Town Manager Jammie Royall said. “I reported them out so I am sure they (Duke Energy) will get around there.”
One complicating issue is that Duke Energy and Tri-County EMC both have lights in the area, he added.
Kornegay said she would like to know when Duke will replace them.
“There are several areas, especially in the south end that really, really, really need attention with lights,” Hughes stressed.
Kornegay wanted to know if that is because most were shot out.
No, Hughes replied.
“I just think a lot of them have not been kept up,” he added.
Wiggins asked if anyone had mapped out the areas where attention is need.
“We have in the past,” Hughes said.
It can be difficult, Hughes and Royall said, since an address and pole number are needed when reporting an outage to Duke. Tri-County poles do not have numbers, they pointed out.
“Where additional lighting needs to be placed in, I guess it would just be a report to say hey, can we get some additional (lights) over here, but that would be up to Duke to decide when they want to come in,” Hughes said.
The town would have to provide an address as to where the light would be placed and Duke Energy would come in an assess the location, Royall added.
Wiggins asked how the town would determine where a light needed to be.
It could be residents who contact the town to say lighting is needed in their area, Royall suggested.
“I would say for the most part if they would just fix or just replace the bulbs for all of the ones that are out we probably would not have that big an issue needing additional lighting,” Hughes said. “There are some areas, but about every area you go to that is dark — you can look up and there is a street light.”
Turner said his wife is a member of the First Baptist Church choir. On a recent practice night she left about 7:45 p.m., he said.
“She came home pretty upset,” Turner said. “Somebody had come by and just sat out there, sort of frightened them. Coming out into that parking they have a new fancy LED light — burned out. Not one bit of light right there. She took me back to the church. She wanted to show it to me.
“I looked down the street as you go toward the school and the next three or four lights were all burned out. What I am saying, there is a lot more to these lights … I think you need to do an inventory of these things and call them into Duke and just raise Cain.”
Wiggins asked how the town would do that.
Hughes responded that he would take care of it.
Officers can note the outages as they patrol the town over nights, he said.
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Hughes also provided an update on the town’s video surveillance system.
The first company, which is local, came in to look at it, but couldn’t get in the system because of the password, he said.
“We had already reached out to the original company one time,” he said. “They said they were going to give us a quote. We called them back maybe mid-month. Didn’t get an answer and left a message. Didn’t hear anything back.”
Another attempt, this one successful, was made and the company provided the password.
The original company, named Wildfire, that put up the cameras went out of business around 2017. The woman who kind of spearheaded the original project went to work with a company called W2D2, a camera company, Commissioner and former police chief Tommy Brown told the board at its monthly session in January.
The name was later changed to Phoenix Camera System or something along those lines because people were getting it confused with R2D2 from the Star Wars movies.nix Company, Brown said at that January meeting
The town already has spent a lot of money with them, Hughes noted during the work session.
“A lot of money not to have a system that works,” Hughes said.
When the cameras worked, they worked well, Wiggins added.
“But apparently what she is telling me, everything is outdated,” Hughes said. “Which the system is about 10 years old this year. I can understand that with technology. But the biggest thing she talked about is changing the Cat 5 to Cat 6 (cabling).”
Wiggins asked if anyone knows how much was initially spent to get the system.
It was about $35,000, Hughes responded. Additional thousands have been spent since then to try to get it working, he said.
Hughes said we would like to get quotes from the local company. He added that Royall has provided name of third security company.
“We have options if can get them to move,” Hughes said. “It is not moving as fast as I would like.”
As for replacing the cables, Wiggins said he was not expecting that.
“I sure would like to have somebody else’s opinion on that,” he added. “We have had several situations going on that if we had the camera system in place, and a better camera system, it would have been a really good help to use,” Wiggins said.
“One is we are still having vandalism in the cemeteries.”
