Board considers more cameras for village

By DAN BENSON

Ozaukee Press staff

Fredonia village trustees want to look at installing cameras at the Marshal’s Office and at the Fredonia Government Center three years after cameras were installed at the village wastewater treatment plant.

The cameras were not part of the 2023 village budget, but last week the Village Board directed Village Administrator Christophe Jenkins to gather information on the cost of adding the new cameras.

Jenkins said he won’t know the potential cost until he does more research and whether it could fit in this year’s budget.

“If it’s $10,000, we could probably find room for it” in the budget, he said. “If it’s more than that, it may have to wait until 2024.”

In January 2020, the board voted to spend as much as $7,000 to install cameras at the treatment plant to improve security there.

Officials said at the time that improving security at village facilities had been on the village’s to-do list since the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001.

At the time, they also voted to spend $11,000 to make other technological upgrades, including installing equipment in the government center’s conference room where official village and town meetings are held so those meetings can be streamed through a web-based conferencing program such as Skype, an 80-inch wall screen that can be connected to a laptop or other device to enable presentations and a wireless microphone for speakers.