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• FALCON HEIGHTS CITY COUNCIL MINUTES -5- March 26, 2003 Consideration of participation in the Citizen Observer Program (continued) Mayor Gehrz said that she has heard Terry Halsch, President, make three presentations about this resource and would like to pursue this opportunity, using some of the $9,807 grant from the Department of Emergency Management to do so. Mr. Halsch presented information to the Neighborhood Commission at the March 19 meeting and the Commission suggested that we continue researching the details of how we could use this. CitizenObserver has secure servers in San Antonio, Texas. Their initial work was in using Internet, fax, and cell phone notifications to alert businesses to crimes. Businesses funded most of the cost. They later expanded to other alerts and to providing the web site presence for police departments. They currently have over 1000 Neighborhood Watch Programs enrolled through 115 participating agencies in eight states. The next phase is to expand this resource for use by Citizen Corps Councils. They currently offer automated registration, secure sites so no one can create an unauthorized message, the ability to target alerts to specific neighborhoods, and the ability to create both public and private pages. We do not have the in-house resources to do this ourselves. The projected cost is about $2,500 a year. The Council and residents can take a look at this resource at www.CitizenObserver.com. Surf around the site and check out the "Neighborhood Watch Groups." You can also see which cities in Minnesota and other states are already using this service. Council member Talbot said that he thinks this is something that should definitely be pursued. He thanked Mayor Gehrz for looking into this. Council member Lindstrom said this seems like a no brainer to him. Council member Kuettel said the cost bothers her a little bit. She sees the cost as only getting bigger every year and that is her only reservation. She would like to see this pursued further. Council member Lamb said the City has talked about this for a couple of years. Expanding the City's capability is an important thing. We all know our own server is very limited. In the past the City has talked about joining with other communities utilizing a joint server. He would like to see the City to pursue the idea of joining a server consortium and doesn't want to pay for duplicative services. Anything the City can do to expands its communication electronically is a good thing. The general consensus of the Council was that Mayor Gehrz and staff do more study of the Citizen Observer Program and bring back to the Council detailed information at a later date.