Wrightsville Beach to consider $88K upgrade to security camera system

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH, NC (WWAY) — The Town of Wrightsville Beach Board of Aldermen is set to discuss an $88,000 upgrade to their safety and traffic camera infrastructure at their regularly scheduled meeting on Thursday.

According to the agenda item written by Town Manager Tim Owens, the camera network is experiencing issues.

Raquel Irvin, the town’s IT manager, wrote a detailed memo on the history of the camera system. First installed in 2010 when the Public Safety Facility was built, the project “went to the low bidder” and 25 Vivotek cameras were installed.

The police department wanted to upgrade the system in 2016 because the cameras were not serving their purpose due to their low resolution and location. The town hired Brady Integrated Solutions for the upgrade and all Vivotek cameras were replaced with Axis cameras, which Irvin notes had the reputation of being the best.

In the last five years, $344,000 has been invested in the camera system and the town now has 68 cameras. Following the upgrade, the cameras started having latency and connection issues that Brady ultimately could not come up with a solution to fix.

The town called Johnson Controls, who then resolved the issues, but now the cameras are having an issue that Irvin refers to as “stuttering.”

“This is a term I use for the video showing a car in the same position in multiple frames. More and more of the cameras are having this problem. Scaling back all the cameras to a lower resolution seems to help the ‘stutter’ issue some, but then we are back to the low-resolution issue,” Irvin wrote.

According to Irvin, Johnson Controls says they need to upgrade the infrastructure in order to get the best resolutions from the cameras or to install new ones.

Based on the original estimate, the cost of the solution and equipment rental would be around $65,000.

An additional $18,000 would fund the installation of four new cameras purchased with the FY20/21 budget.

The board is set to meet on Thursday at 5:30 pm in council chambers at Town Hall.

To read the full agenda, visit here.