GPS Helps Babylon Keep Tabs on Fleet

"BIG BROTHER" is watching over 200 of Babylon's town vehicles - via tracking devices installed in snowplows, maintenance vehicles and emergency cars.

The Global Positioning System technology tracks the every move - speed and exact location - of the town's fleet of trucks and vehicles.

GPS "is a great performance management tool," said Steve Bellone, Babylon's town supervisor. "It will help us understand how we can make public safety, building inspections and street sweeping more efficient."

Cell phones equipped with Global Positioning Systems created by TeleNavTrack are mounted to the dashboards of service vehicles.

The vehicles' information is then transmitted wirelessly to a main switchboard.

"During the two major snowstorms this past month, the system helped us work quicker by being able to deploy and employ plows to where they were needed from a central location," Bellone said.

The GPS technology monitors the workers, as well as the fleet, which raises the question of performance measurement and employees' privacy, said Chris Campbell, acting director of Suffolk's chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"How much further is it going to go?" Campbell asked. "Workers shouldn't lose their rights when they punch in.
There needs to be a balance between the responsibility toward the town and the rights of the workers."
But Bellone sounded unsympathetic.

"These are taxpayer vehicles and the people utilizing them are being paid through these taxes to perform a service," Bellone said.

"They are not private vehicles."

The tracking system, installed last month, cost $60,000 to set up and an additional $65,000 for annual maintenance.

Babylon is the first municipality on Long Island to use GPS tracking on its entire fleet of vehicles.

Bellone said that he already has received calls from other towns and New York City officials with an interest in installing the technology.