Hoyle laid out his case to the Cornelius Town Board Monday night, asking for the board’s permission to approach Mecklenburg County about shifting funds from CMPD, which is currently contracted by the county to conduct lake patrols, to the CPD for the same purpose. The department has engaged in a summer-long test to make officers available for lake enforcement either on the water or on call around the clock, which Hoyle characterized as a success.

He knows it’s working because another set of numbers, the one that makes his phone ring, is being used a lot less this summer.

Just how much money he needs to dislodge from CMPD he doesn’t know for certain. That’s because CMPD won’t tell him — either because it doesn’t know or doesn’t want to say — but it’s likely because there isn’t a dedicated budget for lake patrols.

Hoyle told commissioners he has “reverse-engineered” the cost, basing it on the cost of the six CMPD officers assigned to lake patrol — he knows that down to the penny — and included the price of everything from gas for the boat to paper clips. He told commissioners he is confident he can save the county upwards of $3 million over 10 years and at the same time provide more effective and more responsive police service on the water and along the shores of Lake Norman.

“It’s rare that we can improve the levels of service to this degree and save money in the process,” Hoyle said. “We can save money and lives with this proposal. It doesn’t usually happen that way.”

Hoyle said about half of the local 911 calls regarding Lake Norman are made to the Cornelius dispatch center, which then must be routed to CMPD, where the dispatcher again must determine if the call is about an incident on the lake. If there are no officers on the lake at the time — there are none on the lake overnight — a determination is made as to whether the incident warrants the dispatch of officers. Often, Hoyle said, the calls are simply ignored.

“There is a lot of theft (from docked boats) in the wintertime because they know there is nobody out there,” Hoyle said. “Our officers would not be on the water 24/7, but we could  dispatch officers and have someone on the water within 15 minutes because of our proximity.”

Along with boater safety, lake patrol issues include breaking and entering docked boats, accessing private property from the water, property damage resulting from boats speeding through no-wake zones in coves, and late-night noise from boats anchored just off shore from homes.

Even if Hoyle is able to score points with a common-sense argument with the county, town commissioners warned he will face a battle of perception. Cornelius is regarded as a “rich” town by those south of I-85, one capable of paying for its own lake patrol if that’s what the town wants. This despite the fact that lakefront properties are responsible for some $14 million in annual property tax revenues. That, plus the fact that the majority of users of Mecklenburg County’s Lake Norman waters don’t live in Cornelius — despite the fact that the vast majority of the county’s shoreline is within the town limits — and many of them are not even from Mecklenburg County.

But at a time when the county is looking to pare some of the $12 million it currently spends to contract CMPD to patrol the unincorporated areas of the county, much of which is in northern Mecklenburg, convincing the county to dedicate a portion of an already murky pool of CMPD dollars to Cornelius could be an uphill battle.

“I’m confident in my numbers and I believe they are conservative,” Hoyle told commissioners. “I don’t think CMPD is going to be vehemently opposed to (giving up lake patrols), except for the funding piece.”

Replied Commissioner Dave Gilroy, “It’s all common sense until it comes to the funding.” Added Commissioner Lynette Rinker, “They are going to say, ‘you live there, you pay for it.’ And that’s not going to fly because we’re paying for it already.”

That’s where politics comes in, prompting Commissioner Jim Bensman to suggest to Mayor Jeff Tarte that Hoyle be accompanied by a member of the town board as he states his case to the county, especially as it continues to address funding of police and other services in all of the towns’ extra-territorial jurisdictions (ETJ).

“This will end up getting wrapped into the whole police district discussion,” Bensman said to Tarte. “You need one of our board members or you yourself to pair up with the chief and go to the county to find out where they stand on this whole process in policing the ETJ and see what the chances are that this is something they would look to implement next fiscal year. This is a very good time to start this process.”

Town wide-fi

Prior to Monday night’s meeting, Hoyle and representatives from wireless network firm DoubleRadius briefed commissioners on a proposed town-wide wi-fi network that could be used not only to improve communications between the town’s public safety personnel, but also greatly enhance the town’s surveillance camera network.

Currently, CPD employs four such cameras, all of which must be hard-wired to police headquarters. Expanding that network, Hoyle said, would be costly and, long term, the town could realize considerable savings by connecting them wirelessly. The camera system would also be highly flexible, he said, because units could be moved as needed and installed quickly as the need arises. 

And if the town chooses, it could offer free wi-fi to everyone within the town’s limits, something the company says is becoming a prerequisite for corporate relocations and event planning. Hoyle isn’t completely thrilled with the town-wide free wi-fi option, but he did say one citizen application could include traffic cameras that residents could view on their computers before leaving home. The town could save some costs by eliminating hard-wired technology currently used for communications.

“One of the applications is video surveillance, but really that’s the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you could be able to do in terms of economic development and first responders,” said DoubleRadius representative Wade Chestnut. “There are quite a few different benefits you can see with this.”

The company has surveyed the town and drawn a map of where the three different types of components that would transmit the town’s wi-fi signal would be located. The wi-fi network carries with it the opportunity for the town to sell advertising to help defray costs, which Chestnut said would cost about $350,000 to install and implement. However, the proposed configuration doesn’t extend the signal into the outer reaches of the town’s limits and into the ETJ.

“If you are going to have a solution, you have to cover every inch of town, otherwise you would have to have redundancy,” said Mayor Jeff Tarte. “The worst thing you can do is to have a police officer out on a call and they go out of range.”

Chestnut said DoubleRadius is currently working with 20 communities in installing some level of wireless communications system. The board agreed to allow Hoyle to refine cost estimates, including expanding the network throughout the town as Tarte suggested.

“It’s not if you should do it but when you should do it,” Chestnut said, “in order to be competitive, attract businesses and work cost efficiently with all the applications that the bandwidth will allow you to use at a fraction of the cost that it would cost you to connect to a wired system.”