NIPAWIN - Nipawin Town council approved the purchase of an automatic call system.
At the Dec. 11 council meeting, council agreed to enter into the agreement and to put funds toward the project in 2024.
“CodeRED” is an automated calling system that allows the user to create a message and send it to multiple people via phone call, text message, or email, within minutes.
Within the recommendation it was stated, “The system has been identified for major use with utilities and emergency communications. Utilities makes about 250-300 calls a month for overdue utility bills and this takes 2-4 days depending on other work load. This time, over a year, equates to approximately 225 hours spent making calls. The monetary value for this time is estimated at $7,000/year.”
With CodeRED, the utilities department would be able to import a list of phone numbers and create a custom message within 15-20 minutes, the system would then call, read out the message or leave a voicemail if there is no answer. The selection of contacts can also be made using geo-referencing data. This would allow the system to be able to call, text, or email those affected by a water line break or notification of a boil water advisory.
Jeff Hrynkiw, Land Planner for the Town of Nipawin said, “We do have our taxation system and utility bill information, however if someone has lived in their residence for several years and changed numbers, we might not necessarily have their new numbers in our taxation system. Our contact information is not mandatory to update so we have a lot of old phone numbers including landlines that are likely not even in service anymore. We want to get the message out to everyone in Nipawin, if they are interested in receiving emergency notifications, boil water advisories, or utility information to ensure we have up to date contact information of up to 3 persons in each household. As it stands, we typically only have one, maybe two phone numbers on file but we can have up to 3. If multiple people are living at the same address and want to receive the notification, we would need their updated phone numbers.
“As stated above, it is a taxation system, so we would only have the phone number of the property owner on file. If someone is a tenant, the only way we would have their contact information is if the landlord had the tenant get water in their name, then they would be in our utility system.”
Hyrnkiw said the notification system would be most useful for emergencies that are more advanced than the Town siren, which has not been working for a few years. The Town of Nipawin also has to contact people regarding their utility bills and this takes a lot of administration time. He said they see this system having the ability to complete both these tasks more effectively.
Hyrnkiw said, “By having a system like this, it will really help the residents if there are emergencies. We hope to communicate with the RCMP, if there is anything they would like us to put out to the residents we could assist in that.”
For emergency situations, the town could send a message to all town employees or all residents and describe what the emergency is, what people should do, etc. This would be a modern replacement for the town siren. The proposed contract comes with 30,000 text messages, 60,000 call minutes and unlimited emails per year.
