Story posted Thursday, January 28, 2010
City Trying To Cancel Police Records Contract
By CRAIG ADAMS Journal & Topics Reporter
The Rolling Meadows Committee of the Whole discussed changing record keeping software for the police department and record storage methods of the city.
In 2001, the police department contracted with New World Systems for services including computer-aided dispatch, records management software, mobile software, and field reporting capabilities. In 2008, the city made an additional five-year agreement with the company and still has an outstanding balance of $179,680.
In addition, the city purchased another software product from Advanced Public Safety in 2005 to capture data mandated by state law. That software was upgraded in 2008 in another five-year agreement that still carries an outstanding balance of $71,000.
However, the city recently switched its dispatching to Northwest Central Dispatch, rendering many of the functions of the two software packages unneeded or incompatible with the new systems used by the cooperative.
Police Chief Dave Scanlan explained that the dispatch service and 10 of the 11 departments that use it are on a system made by ID Networks. That difference means the Rolling Meadows police and other departments cannot directly access each other's data. Also, there is no available data transfer between the systems; information from the dispatch service must be manually entered into Rolling Meadows' system.
New World proposed modifying its fees for the remaining three-year period to a total of about $99,000, but Scanlan asked the council to consider trying to cancel existing contracts and come to an agreement with ID Networks. The price for that system is about $89,000 over a four-year period with a one-time $13,000 migration fee.
City Attorney Jim Macholl said the contracts have a clause allowing the city to stop payment by not appropriating money. As the 2010 budget is already passed, the earliest the city could use that method would be next year. He agreed to re-examine the contracts to see if there was any way to end the agreements early.
Aldermen also heard a presentation from City Manager Sarah Phillips about options for storage of city records. During budget talks, aldermen asked about the city's current method of reducing paper records to microfiche or microfilm. There is currently about $23,000 in the 2010 budget for three departments for the service this year.
Phillips shared information about Datamation, a document conversion company, that could convert the city's existing microfiche records and current paper records to digital files. The change could eventually allow residents to easily pull up information online and would allow additional off-site storage of records, keeping them safe in a catastrophe.
"The current piece of equipment we have to look at the microfiche is outdated," she said, adding that the price between microfiching, microfilming, and digitizing records are "within a few cents of each other." Phillips plans to investigate how much of the work could be done by a volunteer or intern, but added the full system from the company would allow easier organization and retrieval.
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