by johnnymarin | Nov 10, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
A “serious pigeon infestation” at Dorking Halls is going to be tackled as part of a £270,000 refurbishment that will also see windows that no longer open replaced.
Mole Valley District Council (MVDC) will vote on whether to approve funding for the work, which includes repainting and rendering the outside of the building and roof repairs, at a meeting on October 10.
A report to the council from Keith Garrow, general manager of Dorking Halls, states that the walls are falling apart and windows are at risk of falling on people.
Speaking to Get Surrey , he said: “The building has been here since the 1930s and any building of this size that has been here that long is going to need general maintenance from time to time to keep its value.
“Obviously most of the work here is to the outside of the building and that is very important in keeping everything watertight.”
The report says £115,000 is required for the repainting and rendering work on the outside of the building to prevent damage from damp.
The building is quite literally falling apart too, with the report stating: “Chunks of render have already fallen off the rear of the building, leaving the wall unprotected and presenting a potential health and safety issue.”
A further £28,000 is needed to replace 1950s windows that are “warped, don’t open and are at risk of falling into the great hall”.
Another £23,000 is needed to “ensure all areas of the building remain watertight”.
In the report it is also stated that Dorking Halls is suffering from a “serious pigeon infestation” and that £20,000 worth of work is required for cleaning and the installation of pigeon nets.
Councillor for Dorking South Margaret Cooksey said the maintenance of Dorking Halls is of great importance to the town.
She said: “It is important that this work, which is badly needed, is carried out in a timely fashion as it is important we don’t let it deteriorate to a point when we are not able to afford the work.
“Dorking Halls is a very important part of the town. Not just to those who live in Dorking but also because it brings people in from outside of the town to visit a concert or a show.”
Mr Garrow said Dorking Halls now attracts about 200,000 people a year compared with 160,000 a year in 2013.
He said the result is that there is more revenue coming in so the money should be available to carry out the work.
He added: “We are having more cinema and event screenings now as well as more events. We are also seeing a lot more hire events now and the business is getting particularly busy on that side.”
The money from the repairs would either be borrowed or taken from the reserve that MVDC retains for asset upkeep. This reserve currently stands at £5.75m.
The decision on whether to approve the work will be made at the full council meeting on October 10.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Nov 9, 2017 | Bird Deterrent Products
HALIFAX – After receiving complaints from people in his district about neighbors who were feeding unwanted wild animals, a city councillor was surprised to learn there are no rules in place to stop the behaviour.
District 5 Councillor Sam Austin wants a bylaw enacted to restrict residents from feeding and leaving out food scraps that attract unwanted wildlife, including raccoons and pigeons.
He told the Rick Howe Show in addition to those animals becoming a nuisance, there are also health concerns.
“With raccoons, there is parasites and rabies,” said Austin. “With pigeons, there is a fungus in their droppings that can lead to a disease in people that can result in blindness.”
According to Austin, when residents contacted him about the problem, he was shocked to discover there was no bylaw to stop someone from feeding wildlife.
He said the department of natural resources was unable to do anything either and adds while enforcement may be problematic, the point is to stop extreme behaviour.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Nov 8, 2017 | Animal Deterrent Products
Claude Craig jokes that the antiquated communications system used by first responders in Whitfield County had nearly reached the point where it might soon have been better to just toss pigeons into the air with notes on their legs telling lawmen where they were needed.
There’s no need for such drastic measures now, though, as Mr. Craig, director of the county’s Emergency Management Agency, reports that a new $12 million state-of-the-art communications system, paid for with SPLOST funds, has been up and running since early August.
“We Band-Aided and repaired and fixed for 43 years on that system,” said Mr. Craig, who ironically had just started at the sheriff’s office when the old radios were installed, “and it finally got to the point where there were no more Band-Aids. It was just unacceptable and didn’t work. You could be standing in a parking lot somewhere, and I could holler at you and hear you fine, but I couldn’t talk to you on the radio.”
Mr. Craig thanked local voters for approving a SPLOST in March 2015 to pay for the new system. Two and a half years of planning finally came to a close on Aug. 2-3 when workers in several city and county departments switched over to the new digital communications system.
“What a glorious day it was. Great … no problems … best thing that ever happened … works fine … works great … … no dead spots,” Mr. Craig said when asked for comments he had heard from some of the users of the new system.
Count Dalton Fire Chief Todd Pangle is a believer in the new system.
“There’s no comparison,” he told the Dalton Daily Citizen. “We can talk portable to portable better than we could talk mobile to mobile before. So far, we have found no dead spots for communications. Previously, we had multiple dead spots. Even in residential calls, we would find that guys inside were having trouble communicating with people outside.”
A total of 1,196 radios were installed and are being used by the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office, Dalton Police Department, Whitfield County Fire Department, Dalton Fire Department, Whitfield County Public Works, Dalton Public Works, 911, EMA, Cohutta, Varnell and Tunnel Hill, District Attorney’s Office and constables.
“This thing didn’t just happen, like, oh, we’re buying a new radio system, OK, open that box, there it is, OK, it’s our new radio system,” Mr. Craig said. “It just didn’t happen that way. There is thousands upon thousands of hours that have gone into this to make it work – from the infrastructure all the way down to training for the end user.”
And the work is not over.
“You’ve got to manage the system on a daily basis,” Mr. Craig said. “It’s not just out there running itself. We’ve got three tower sites we’ve got to maintain, got to keep power on them. Power goes out, you’ve got to have generators, got to make sure the generator runs. If the generator doesn’t run, you’ve got to make sure the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) works. We’ve got to keep power on. You’ve also got to manage the users because everybody has a unique code in their radio. You can’t take my radio and just go do whatever with it – it’s unique to each person. When you push that button, dispatch knows who’s talking.”
Managing the new system is easier, though, since the county joined the Tennessee Valley Radio Communications System (TVRCS), which includes 10 counties in Tennessee and Catoosa, Dade, and Walker counties in Georgia.
“The old system basically consisted of an antenna on a pole and a repeater,” Mr. Craig said, noting that it just broadcast an analog signal out as far as it could to the people that were close enough to receive it. “Be it a telephone pole, a three-legged tower pole, whatever, it was just an antenna and a repeater, and that’s what your system was. The repeater took what you said and repeated it so other users could hear you.”
The new system is much more sophisticated and reliable. “Our new tower at the 911 Center is ‘married’ to the three other tower sites, locally, and then regionally to all the other sites going up to Tennessee and Catoosa, Dade and Walker,” Craig said. “If one tower fails for any reason, the other three would be able to take over. The system would just say, hey, this site’s down, so just use the other three to broadcast the signals. It might even use a tower over in another county if it’s closer to the user.”
Mr. Craig said the original $26 million price tag to replace the old system would have required the county to build 11 tower sites, but by joining the TVRCS, they only had to build three new towers, cutting the cost of the project by more than half. “TVRCS already had a tower on Dug Gap Mountain in Whitfield County that was servicing another county,” he explained, “so we were able to tie onto that one, too.”
Jeff Ownby, deputy director at Whitfield EMA, pointed out that with the old system, each department basically managed its own equipment, which varied from agency to agency. Now everybody uses the same Motorola radios, which will be managed and updated by TVRCS in the coming years.
An advantage to being on the regional system is that Whitfield users can communicate with all the other agencies using it in Georgia and Tennessee, particularly useful during a regional emergency.
“We’ve always offered automatic aid to agencies around us,” Dep. Dir. Ownby said, “but the county fire department just recently signed some agreements to help with both our county and Catoosa and Walker county ISO ratings. Both those counties are on this system. Before, it was a challenge talking to these counties because they were on an 800 megahertz system and we were not. Now we actually have shared fire channels. If we’re responding in Catoosa County, for example, we can talk on their fire channel or even one of their fire ground channels which is immediately issued if there’s a working fire. They can do the same with us.”
More importantly on a daily basis, though, the new system has eliminated virtually all the dead spots in Whitfield County that plagued the old system for years and left first responders sometimes unable to communicate with others.
“We’ve got great coverage now,” Mr. Craig said. “I mean, there’s no question. We checked over 3,000 grids when we were testing the system, and we had only one grid that failed. We went back, and it turned out to be a grid that you couldn’t really drive into. So we did the test again on foot, and it was fine.”
Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Gary Stephens says he was recently near the Tennessee state line and was able to talk clearly to dispatch.
“In the previous situation,” he told the Daily Citizen, “I probably would have gone back to my car and used my phone, if I had phone service.”
Lt. Stephens recounted a recent ATV accident in the Chattahoochee National Forest in the northwest section of the county.
“We all went to the first responders channel,” he said. “As I was riding in, we could talk to the firefighters who were there, and in the past there would have been no radio service at all in that area.”
The new system is also encrypted, which means that people with scanners at home can’t hear what’s going on.
“But it means more than that,” Dep. Dir. Ownby said. “What it really means is that you can’t just show up with a radio and start talking on our system. You can’t just buy a radio from Motorola and show up in Whitfield County and say I’m gonna start using the radio system. That’s just not the way it works. It has to be programmed to the specifications of the TVRCS system. That means our system is more secure against attacks from outside users.”
Some two months into the system, Mr. Craig says the bottom line is that the new radios are “exceeding expectations.”
“The coverage is so much better,” he says. “Being able to hear is important in an emergency. You know, seconds count if you’re having a heart attack. If we’re dispatching an ambulance or a fire truck when you’re having a heart attack, if they can’t hear where we’re telling them to go, that costs time.
“Now, it’s…” Mr. Craig says, pausing to snap his fingers, “one time and go. The responders can actually hear the dispatchers give the addresses the first time whereas before it was a crap shoot. Sometimes you might hear it, sometimes you might not.”
Chief Pangle calls the new system a “great investment,” and fellow Whitfield County Fire Chief Ed O’Brien said it’s “exceeding our expectations.”
“I know it cost a lot,” Pangle told the Daily Citizen, “but from my perspective, it was worth every penny, and I really thank the taxpayers and voters for allowing us to make that investment.”
Now there’s definitely no need for those pigeons anymore.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Nov 7, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
Pigeon fanciers have taken aim at two roosting birds of prey at a Taunton landmark who have been given a leg-up on the housing ladder thanks to public funds.
Taunton Deane Borough Council put £3,500 towards the £7,000 cost of setting up a nest box for peregrine falcons that have set up home at St Mary Magdalene Church tower and a webcam so people can keep a close eye on them.
But that hasn’t gone down well with the pigeon racing community, who believe the birds are a threat to not only their beloved pigeons, but also songbirds and wildlife in the area.
The predators can swoop down on their prey at speeds of up to 180mph and keeping the other birds in the area at bay.
While that may seem like good news to some, Mick Templeman, a pigeon fancier from Taunton, says he’s concerned about the new nesting box.
“The fact that there is now a nest box at the church is a huge blow for both myself and other fanciers in the area and it’s only a matter of time before our pigeons become victims,” he said.
“Peregrine Falcons perform savage and harrowing attacks on smaller birds such as racing pigeons which is causing devastation amongst my community.
“If our birds are lucky enough to survive an attack, they become extremely disorientated and if they are injured it makes it impossible to train them. It’s truly heart-breaking to watch.
“I have an extremely close bond with my birds and the sport is one that I hold close to my heart.”The falcons have previously been described as “natural pest control” for the church, with feathers from their prey frequently in evidence over the vicarage lawn.
But Mr Templeman says there would be outcry if other pets were being targeted by the falcons.
“This problem shouldn’t be controversial, if our pigeons were respected as highly as other pets such as dogs or cats then there would be no issue for pigeon fanciers,” he said.
“I can’t understand why people cannot see the sublimity of these birds, especially as they played such a huge role in the success of our country in both World Wars.”
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Nov 6, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
100 years ago – October 4, 1917
For better fire protection
“Healdsburg is badly in need of modern fire-fighting apparatus,” said Chief Harold Rosenberg in speaking to the Board of City Trustees Monday night. “It is poor policy to wait until the town burns down before we realize the need for modern equipment. The town is well able to purchase an up-to-date engine, and we ought to give this matter our attention before we suffer the same experience that came to Ukiah recently. “The efficiency of the department has decreased in recent months as it is. A number of the members have enlisted and others have left town. I don’t like to carry the responsibility of the head of the department with conditions as they now are.” The members of the Board of Trustees talked the matter over briefly, and considered that the first need toward improving the fire protection of the town was to replace some of the old and small pipes on various streets to pipes of larger capacity.
50 years ago – October 5,1967
Ponder Plaza pigeons
What do Healdsburg’s Plaza and San Francisco’s Union Square have in common? Pigeons. Councilman Art Schieffer at Monday’s council meeting reported that the pigeon propagation has become so great that, “we have quite a problem in town,’’ and quoted several irate citizens who expressed their disgust in strong language, especially one who hailed down the councilman while wielding a shovel alongside his place of business. The council didn’t come up with an answer, pointing out that if San Francisco hasn’t been able to solve its pigeon problem over many decades, Healdsburg couldn’t expect to solve it in one week. Inasmuch as one suggestion involved “shooting ’em down,’’ Mayor Badger referred the matter to the police committee for lack of a better one. Which caused Tribune writer Dean Dunnicliff to challenge the referral in its entirety. He commented that if the police committee was going to study the matter it would be right for a police committee to be responsible only for the stool pigeons. Which resulted in Councilman Schieffer firing back, “Yes, in more ways than one.”
25 years ago – October 7, 1992
Council makes DRC’s demise official
The appointed arbiters of architectural taste in Healdsburg have been ousted. It’s official: The city’s Design Review Commission, which has been praised and damned for its work in the past, is no more. Over the protests of the city Planning Commission and amid warnings that it would do just the opposite of its intention, the City Council approved a resolution Monday night eliminating the DRC, expanding the Planning Commission to seven members, and distribute the DRC’s duties among the planning staff. The DRC was charged with reviewing plans for projects, and judging their merit based on design, compatibility with surrounding uses and development that is in keeping with the character and scale of the city.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
