Opinions were mixed at Huntsville City Council member Bill Kling’s latest town hall regarding the topic of cameras on trash collecting trucks to aid enforcement of grass and yard maintenance.

The measure has been discussed among the council but any decision has yet to be considered for a vote. But it’s out there, and residents at Kling’s District 4 gathering at the downtown Huntsville-Madison County Library shared their feelings.

A violation of privacy, or a helpful tool? Locally, the public in the past has balked at employing cameras at intersections to record traffic violations.

“I read an article that said that the Huntsville City Council was taking an action or consideration of getting cameras on the trash trucks to monitor people’s land and home maintenance status,’’ said a citizen who attended the town hall.

“I wanna just say I think that’s important because on the one hand – we can’t trust (cameras) with monitoring traffic, and yet we can do that (on garbage trucks)? That’s really invasive and intrusive.’’

Kling said the idea has been broached but no official action has been introduced.

“Nothing has come up,’’ he said, “just that we were told by the mayor that this is something I’m kind of working on and I might follow up on it. It was just that he was kinda giving a heads up, which is good for communication.’’

Kling responded that looking for solutions to neighborhood tidiness is a positive, cameras or not, to aid a swamped Huntsville Community Development department.

“The problem is we’ve got six inspectors and they’re covering a city that is over 210 square miles and goes into three different counties,’’ he said. “And, it’s the twenty-seventh largest land area city in the entire country. We’re bigger than Chicago or Los Angeles without their suburbs.’’

Another District 4 resident threw his support behind the potential use of cameras to help neighborhood management and ease city hall burdens.

“I have a perspective on the trash truck camera thing,’’ he said. “I think more information would be helpful. However, I think it would be a good automation tool to help those six inspectors who are already overloaded, so they wouldn’t be further burdened with the additional duty of reporting houses with improper trash piles or junk.

“I think it would be a good automation tool, but there needs to be more information about the oversight. If it was done correctly and transparently, I think it would be a very, very good automation tool for the city.’’

In a related note, what might appear to be cameras at some city intersections are actually devices that record traffic flow data. The system is linked with the state system to help manage traffic light activity based on the amount and peak times of vehicles passing.

The data is used to set traffic light timings.

Anyone wishing to attend a city council meeting in which the matter of equipping garbage trucks with cameras might be raised can check the bi-weekly agenda. The city council meets the second and fourth Thursday of each month, and the agenda for each meeting is released after business hours Tuesday prior to the meeting at www.huntsvilleal.gov.