BONNYVILLE - The MD of Bonnyville is ready to keep residents in the know through their new emergency alert program.
Using Voyent, the municipality will keep residents apprised on ongoing issues throughout the MD, whether they're related to crime or other important matters.
“The Voyent system is essentially an alert system that is designed to not take the place of Emergency Alert systems provided by through the province and federal government, but to supplement them with local information and also to enable to MD to deliver messaging to the community that’s not necessarily emergency-related, but may have to do with other matters such as community events and notifications,” explained director of public safety Luis Gandolfi.
“I can advise council that we are essentially ready to go, we’re at the push-button stage and then we’re live,” he continued.
Gandolfi highlighted the benefits of the program during council's April 21 committee meeting.
“Voyent is an app-based system that is functional through smart phones, tablets, and it's also capable of sending emails to those that don’t have smart phones or tablets. It also has a phone capability, so if there is an alert that needs to go out, depending on the settings of the individual subscriber sets up, they can receive a voicemail message or answer the phone and hear a recording as well,” he outlined.
While residents can download the app for free, the MD will be paying $4,900 annually to run the program, a cost that's coming directly out of their public safety department budget.
"It’s not something the public needs to pay for. They simply need to download the app and tell the app where they live, the kind of notifications they want to receive, and from there, the Voyent System and MD Public Safety will manage the information going out,” Gandolfi detailed.
Not only can the MD utilize the app for sending out emergency-related notifications, they can also provide information to residents about ongoing programs, crime, fraud, reunite lost pets with their owners, and traffic-related trends, among others.
Gandolfi said, “That being said, one of the things we thought was a benefit of the Voyent system was the ability to share crime prevention initiatives and also details of emerging trends in the community. For example, if we have communication with the RCMP and receive information that we’ve had a series of break and enters in a specific area overnight, we can share that information through the Voyent system so people living in that particular area might perhaps remember something that they observed the night before or maybe have the occurrence to go out and check their shed and make sure things are as they should be."
Gandolfi is hoping the MD can use the RCMP's crime map do provide a weekly or bi-weekly report to residents about what crimes are taking place in their region.
“We do obviously have quite a few pages and groups on Facebook where we have people complaining about something or notifying others about crime or whatnot through the area. Through Voyent, we can actually go into those open-sourced media platforms and mine some of that information out and generate our own release so everyone gets it, not just those on Facebook,” said Gandolfi. “It adds a bit of credibility to the information... What you see on Facebook isn’t always the whole story. If we find something worth sharing, we can go in and dig in a little bit and make sure it’s credible information that should be release, and then we can release it with our public safety endorsement."
He also sees Voyent as a platofrm for sharing the province's monthly traffic initiatives.
“Obviously we can’t lose sight of the fact that the Voyent system does have real-time capability, which means if we have an unfolding event taking place in the MD, we will be able to notify the public with information on exactly what to do,” he noted. "Through the Voyent system, it allows us to get that information from the police, fire, and EMS, and share that with their consent and their permission, and perhaps give information to the public in terms of what it is they should be doing.”
Using an armed barricade or robbery as an example, Gandolfi explained how the program could inform residents of an unfolding event that requires them to stay out of a specific area for their own safety.
“This is going to evolve as we move forward with the program. There might be some new ideas that come forward, but this was to give you an idea as far as crime prevention where I see some advantages to having the Voyent system,” Gandolfi told council.
Gandolfi confirmed for Coun. Ben Fadeyiw no additional staff were hired to take-on this program.
“The policy calls for a division of the type of fan-out that’s going to be going out. For example, if council has something they want to get out that might be more of an information piece, that will go through communications. Public safety will essentially manage the system, but the only types of fan-outs I will be responsible for myself are things that are emerging and... a bit of that vetting is going to be done through myself and the supervisors at public safety."
Reeve Greg Sawchuk was concerned about notification fatigue. He was worried if the MD sends out too many notices residents will simply stop listening.
“We’re aware of it... We will work to ensure we’re not fanning out (too much) stuff,” responded Gandolfi, adding users can select what items they receive notifications on, the only ones they can't avoid are emergency alerts.
Coun. Dana Swigart is hopeful the new app will help cut back on rural crime.
“It looks like a great system and I think we’ve been waiting for a while for this,” he said.
