By Beverly Hills Mayor Jimmy Delshad
December 20, 2010

For nearly 100 years, Beverly Hills has been known as a city of aspirations, the ultimate American dream and a destination for visitors from all over the world. For residents, it's a small town, where elected officials are a phone call away and where, often, three generations of families still live. Beverly Hills is the city where I, an immigrant from Iran, chose to make my home and raise my own family.

Yet, in the past few years Beverly Hills has taken on a new identity: "The Smart City."

Four years ago during my first term as mayor, I launched a smart initiative campaign because I wanted to advance our city into the 21st century and take full advantage of the latest technologies. Since then, we have increased our investment in technology and programs to improve security, to offer online services and to move toward environmental sustainability.

Our Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) cameras have had phenomenal results in identifying stolen vehicles that pass through our community. These cameras have increased the rate of stolen car recoveries by 56 percent and helped us to arrest over 37 people. We have plans to add more ALPR cameras.

Our 162 smart security cameras make it easy for the police department to keep an eye on vulnerable areas of the city 24-hours a day.

UNITE, a program in development that combines all our security technology into one dashboard, will allow us to share that information with other law enforcement agencies. Much of the UNITE program has been funded with grants from California state and U.S. homeland security agencies.

In the past few years, we have installed intelligent irrigation systems in the city's parks and added solar-powered, credit card operated parking meters. Residents now have wireless water meters that can alert the city instantly to leaks. We have implemented a food waste program that recycles 900 tons of food every month from our city's many restaurants.

In online services, residents can renew their parking permits from their home computers and we offer a service-request app for phones. Residents now track their daily water usage online. Starting in January, our customers will be able to pay utility bills online and, soon to follow, business license fees.

Most recently, we approved a program to install a solar energy system at our civic center. This program will reduce our energy costs at the same time as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

These are just a few of the many components to the city's "Smart City" initiative. Our council members and staff have enthusiastically embraced the "Smart City" concept and have found ways to make these projects become a reality in spite of challenging economic times.

Beverly Hills remains one of the most alluring cities in the world. But without constant attention to technological advances, our cherished standard of living and the reputation that goes with it could fade. I believe that our many Smart City programs will help keep Beverly Hills on the cutting edge of both glamour and technology.