Pending a City Council vote, Hoboken may soon replace its Nixle alert system with a $32,050 alternative that the city will use to send timely messages about public safety, community engagement, and emergency notifications.
By Dan Israel/Hudson County View
The council discussed the matter during yesterday’s caucus, contemplating a resolution that would award a contract to Everbridge Inc. for a community alert and messaging platform for $32,050. The measure will be voted on at Wednesday’s 7 p.m. meeting
“Everbridge, Inc. combines the power of the Everbridge 360 platform with Community Engagement (formerly Nixle), Everbridge’s anonymous opt-in SMS community alerting service, to provide a complete platform for managing a full spectrum of community communications,” the resolution says.
“Everbridge is built on the robust Everbridge 360 platform featuring advanced security protocols, scalable infrastructure, mobile accessibility, interactive reporting, and adaptive resource mapping.”
The resolution also says that Everbridge enables individuals to sign up based on their locations of interest or by sending keyword via text.
“Everbridge Community website and Public Safety mobile app allow subscribers to manage their personal profiles, explore organizations in their communities, and subscribe anonymously to receive messages regarding specific topics or general messages from organizations,” the measure also states.
In response to questions from 6th Ward Councilwoman Diane Imus, Council President Ruben Ramos, also the 4th Ward councilman, confirmed this was a replacement for Nixle.
2nd Ward Councilwoman Tiffanie Fisher said that Everbridge has owned Nixle already for a long time, noting that this would be akin to the same system that they’ve been using.
According to Business Administrator Jennifer Gonzalez, nothing will fundamentally change under this new contract. She confirmed that Everbridge acquired Nixle and has since decided to implement the new system.
“Everbridge has since determined that they’re phasing out effectively Nixle and replacing it with a very, very similar product that does provide the same emergency alert and community messaging system,” Gonzalez said.
“This is the same kind of credit-based system that we currently use.”
Gonzalez added that benefits of the new system will now allow the city to send more specific alerts. This could mean sending messages directly to certain locations or people.
“We can have targeted alerts to specific geographic areas or groups or predefined lists, things like that. That’s really the only change in the service – improvement in the service – if you will,” she added.
The contract totals $32,050 and includes an allowance of 9.5 million total credits, figures based off the city’s usage in years past and the estimated need for this year.
According to Gonzalez, the system is credit-based in the sense that Hoboken pays a certain number of credits for every message that they send.
“Our annual cost is always somewhere in the realm of $25,000 to $30,000. This year, it’s about $32,000 for the amount of credits that we assume we’ll use on an annual basis. It’s based on our previous use and our estimated use.”
OK but what is the current cost? Is this going up? What are they paying the person who makes jokes on social media? Communication can be free.