Elgin eyes tracking devices for public works vehicles

If you're an Elgin city employee driving one of 126 public works vehicles, Big Brother may be watching soon.

The city council Wednesday will consider paying $142,045 to Interfleet Inc., a company that would furnish the 126 vehicles with automatic vehicle location systems.

Vehicles that handle snow removal, leaf collections, water mains, sewers and inspections - roughly a third of the city's fleet of 430 vehicles - would be outfitted with the contraption.

The system, about the size of a CB radio, would feed signals into a computer with a map of Elgin that a supervisor switches on to see where any given vehicle is and what it's doing, said John Loete, director of public works.

The map would also show who is closest to respond to any given problem, whether it's an icy intersection, a broken water main or branches on city streets.

Plans for the tracking units come after residents spent seasons complaining about what they said was the city's inadequate snow removal, street salting, leaf pickup and storm cleanup.

Loete admits those accusations and a desire to streamline operations are the driving force behind the new gizmos.

"Certainly, it is being done as a way to improve providing basic services," Loete said. "Any particular issue that's come up, it's always easier to manage a situation when you know where your resources are."

In some respects the device would allow public works to function the same way police and fire dispatchers do.

Knowing exactly where someone is would save time now spent when supervisors call around to see who can readily respond to an incident, Loete said.

"We're not fighting fires or stopping bad guys 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but there's a lot of things we do day in and day out that require us to get people all over town," Loete said. "So you're constantly moving resources around and the more efficiently you can get that done, the more you're going to get done."

And if someone complains city workers didn't plow snow on his or her street, for example, the system has the ability to prove that person right or wrong - it lets supervisors review timelines to see whether a specific plow collected snow in a certain area.

"It can be a very positive, useful tool and it could help support the employee in the field, just as much as it can be used to bird dog him," Loete said.

If the council's committee of the whole signs off on the contract, it would go before the city council for a final vote.

Officials hope to install the systems sometime before winter.