At its Sept. 11 meeting, the Wrightsville Beach Board of Aldermen discussed purchasing surveillance cameras for the public areas near Crystal Pier and the Oceanic Restaurant.
Camera surveillance has been a long-term goal for that location but the board considered whether recent events warrant installing cameras sooner than planned. Two incidents occurred in the vicinity of Crystal Pier in the last month.
The first, vandalism by graffiti, occurred to the town’s public bathrooms. The second was an armed robbery of an Oceanic employee Aug. 25. No one was apprehended in either case.
Wrightsville Beach Police Chief Dan House presented details of the proposed surveillance cameras to the board. He said the project would involve installing two fixed light finder cameras and one pan, tilt, zoom camera at the S. Lumina restroom facility.
“We’re not saying it would solve one hundred percent of crimes if we had cameras,” House said, “but it would certainly answer some questions.”
The estimated cost for the project is $14,800, which House said could vary slightly depending on where the cameras are mounted.
“I’d rather give you a higher number and have it go lower than have a lower number and have it go higher,” he explained.
He added that he has been very pleased with the cameras that have been installed so far.
“We’re trying to work out all the details,” House said, “but the quality of the video, it’s night and day from what we had, and when you zoom in, it doesn’t pixelate it, you get really really good images, so you can get license tags and stuff like that.”
Alderman Lisa Weeks asked whether there were any other areas around Wrightsville Beach that needed cameras.
“The ultimate goal is to cover all the big parking lots, and town hall,” House responded. “That’s the beauty of putting the system together and that’s why we worked so hard to get the infrastructure right, because now we can put more up at relatively low cost.”
Weeks suggested another area that might need cameras was the portion of the John Nesbitt Loop near the Fire Station, because it was not well lit.
The board voted to move forward with installing the surveillance cameras.
