City of Quinte West council approved a recommendation from a staff report to investigate expanding its emergency notification system that residents can register for to receive emergency notifications from the city.
This stems from the water main break in Trenton back in July that led to a boil water advisory being issued.
Residents who signed up to the city’s PRISM system, an in-house custom-built customer communication software system, sent feedback to the city stating they were not notified of the boil water advisory.
City staff had previously extended the life of the system in 2019 by combining old code with a modern callout system.
A customer notification system project was being worked on with resources assigned to the project in September 2022. The project was still being developed at the time of the water main break.
Since the water main break, limitations were found in the system resulting in staff moving to purchase a new model.
The current system under PRISM only notifies customers who signed up for water notifications.
A recommendation to council was to investigate further options that would incorporate the water notifications with other emergency notifications and investigate and implement a full emergency callout system.
According to the financial impact, its estimated a full emergency callout system would be anywhere between $8,000 and $10,000 based on preliminary estimates received by city staff.
