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WILKES-BARRE — With no reason to continue to pay for a camera surveillance system that is not being monitored, the Wilkes-Barre Parking Authority will not renew its $100,000-a- year service contract with the city.

The contract expires at the end of October and will end there, authority members said Tuesday at their monthly public meeting. The authority had been the sole outside revenue source for the system.

City officials knew this day was coming and did not budget any revenue from the authority for next year, said Ted Wampole, city administrator.

The nearly 300-camera system transferred to the city after the non-profit Hawkeyes Security Solutions Inc. dissolved last year is not fully operational and the control center with the video monitors in police headquarters has been locked and not been staffed since early this year.

City officials have been in talks with vendors and have yet to decide what to do with the system that went online in 2016 and was built with nearly $4 million in state and federal grants, Wampole said.

“We have to determine where we go from here,” Wampole said.

The Parking Authority had been assured by the city the cameras in its parking garages were working and received monthly updates like the one included in September’s report from LAZ Parking Mid-Atlantic Inc., the company that manages the facilities. The latest report said that, with the exception of two cameras in the East garage, all cameras in the garages were functioning.

The authority assumed that also meant the cameras were being monitored in the control center, said Tom Torbik, executive director of the authority.

“Perry Mason would have said, ‘Was anybody looking at the screens on the other end?’ We didn’t ask that question and apparently there hasn’t been anybody in the last several months looking at the screens on the other side,” Torbik said.

The authority is current with its monthly payments, he said.

Authority members asked solicitor Murray Ufberg if they should notify the city that the contract will not be renewed. Ufberg said he has already informed city officials of that and there is no need for the authority to do anything after the contract ends Oct. 31.

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By Jerry Lynott

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Reach Jerry Lynott at 570-991-6120 or on Twitter @TLJerryLynott