By John Francis, Bruce Peninsula Press
When MNBP’s CAO, Peggy Van Mierlo-West gave a presentation at the Men’s Breakfast in Tobermory earlier this month, she told about how a stolen truck was recovered through the recently installed GPS tracking system. I followed up with her to get more details.
“It was one of our older work trucks,” she explained, one that is kept outside the community centre in Tobermory to do work around the village. Thieves broke in to the community centre in the middle of the night one day last June and stole some tools and a laptop; they noticed the keys to the truck in the office and stole that too.
Lance Golden arrived at work very early that morning and immediately noticed the break-in and the truck theft. He called the OPP first and then the municipal office.
But here’s where it gets interesting. “All of our trucks have GPS tracking,” Van Mierlo-West told me. “It kicks in the moment the truck is started, so we could track them from the moment they left the community centre and every place they had stopped for a moment or parked for a moment.” She called the OPP to put their IT department in touch with MNBP’s IT Manager, Kara Smith.
An OPP cruiser followed her directions and found the vehicle parked, undamaged, in Sauble Beach. Unfortunately the laptop and the power tools were gone. But the IT system had one more trick up its sleeve — the software includes a package that wipes the computer clean if it is stolen, so no data were compromised. The GPS tracking system could not be used to locate the computer; the computer’s GPS only works within the municipality.
The IT upgrade looks like good value for money; just getting the truck back was a pretty big deal. It would have taken months on a waiting list to get a replacement truck.
This all stems from a resolution passed by Council in December of 2020 which included 30 recommendations for Information Technology upgrades, including: an online work order system which allows GPS and data tracking of work done in the field; sharepoint and booking systems for various municipal facilities; the ParkPass system, through which parking is reserved at Little Cove and McCurdy Drive parking lots; online building permit applications; online STA registrations, vastly improved network security and, as they say on TV, much, much more.
CAO Van Mierlo-West says staff are very pleased with the way all records have been put on the network, including strategic plans, infrastructure plans, recreation plans etc. Things can be checked out and implemented so much faster when you don’t have to waste time digging out paper copies of things. When you write things up, they are backed up automatically.
She cites some concrete examples: building department mobile workstations allow building inspectors to interact in real time with contractors at a building site. Public works employees are able to interact in real time to complaints about roads, streetlights etc.
Tobermory Christmas Bird Count December 14
The 50th annual Tobermory Christmas Bird Count will happen on Wednesday, December 14. The count will be limited to 40 participants for 2022.
Anyone can contribute to the CBC by watching their bird feeder and recording what they see (or hear).
For further information about participating or doing a feeder watch, please contact Tyler Miller (tyler.miller@pc.gc.ca).
Christmas Bird Counts are also conducted for Cape Chin and Pike Bay. They are traditionally held between Christmas and New Year’s; watch the next edition of this newspaper for details.
National Park Yurts and Campgrounds Temporarily Closed Due to Bear Activity
The National Park Campgrounds and Yurts at Cyprus Lake are temporarily closed. The cause of the closure is a single, extremely bold bear which has become dependent on dumpsters, garbage and campsite raids for food.
There was a lot of bear activity in the campgrounds this summer and one bear in particular frequently got food rewards, which created a feedback loop — the bear had no interest in leaving or exploring other food sources. The bear has been tagged and hazed but the campground and its garbage seem to be too much of an attraction to resist.
There is great reluctance to harm the bear because the peninsula’s bear population is unique and fragile so it is a high priority to protect every individual. Parks have closed the campgrounds and yurts in hopes that with no food attractants, the bear will just go to sleep and the problem will be over (until next spring but that will be another story…)
The closures will be reevaluated on November 25. If the bear has left the area, the facilities will re-open.
