Committee approves multi‑year pavement‑monitoring contract; members flag $60,000 annual subscription and privacy concerns

Tompkins County’s Facilities & Infrastructure Committee voted July 16 to approve a multi‑year contract for a passive, fleet‑mounted pavement‑monitoring system provided by Roadway Management Technologies (RMT), and amended the resolution to identify a $60,000 annual subscription cost, partially offset by a $24,000 net target increase after anticipated permit‑fee revenue.

Noah Butler, vice president of sales for RMT, demonstrated the system and described how sensors mounted on county vehicles collect accelerometer, gyroscopic, radar and image data passively during routine driving. “We’re collecting it there in the background,” Butler said, explaining that data are encrypted, stored on AWS in the United States, and normalized across vehicle types to create continuous PCI (pavement condition index) and predictive deterioration models.

Committee members pressed for metrics on return on investment and whether the county’s existing OpenGov asset‑management system duplicates functionality. Highway staff said OpenGov remains the county’s asset database for work orders and sign inventories, while RMT’s scenario‑builder and continuous monitoring are designed specifically for pavement‑management and five‑year budget scenario planning.

Several legislators raised data‑security and privacy concerns about imagery captured by vendor hardware. Butler said images are captured at spaced intervals, that the company is working to anonymize images (blurring faces and license plates) and that imagery capture can be adjusted or disabled by county agreement. Staff said vendor installs the hardware and that meaningful data typically appear about a month after installation.

The resolution was amended on the floor to state the subscription cost ($60,000 per year) and that permit‑fee revenue increases would partially offset the subscription in the 2027 target; the committee approved the amended resolution.