Despite continued opposition from some members, the State College Borough Council voted in favor of monitoring the Beaver Canyon surveillance cameras last night, which will take effect July 1.

The Borough Council voted 4-2, with one member absent, to implement the monitoring plan proposed by the CCTV Citizens Advisory Committee at a meeting last week.

Borough Council President Tom Daubert and Borough Council member Elizabeth Goreham voted against the plan, which calls for live monitoring of the cameras during peak weekend hours: Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.

"I am very uncomfortable with government surveilling its citizens," Goreham said. "[The cameras] have been essentially useless."

Goreham said although the plan "didn't sound bad," she wanted to use the vote to show her basic discomfort with government surveillance.

The cameras were installed in September 2003 on the 200 to 300 blocks of East Beaver Avenue. The committee was formed to gauge the effectiveness of the cameras for a year after their installations.

Borough Council member Janet Knauer, who is also part of the committee, said it decided in a separate meeting yesterday that it wanted to design a trademark logo to begin to advertise the cameras' existence.

She said that in the surveys conducted by the committee, those who knew about the cameras had little to no problem with them.

"It would be a consistent image," Knauer said. "People will learn to realize it's a safety program, not Big Brother."

State College Police Department Chief Tom King said that because the cameras are currently in an unmoving position, the police only refer back to the recordings two to three times per month.

"With them being monitored, it is a much better opportunity to watch," he said. "It's a very active two blocks ... there's a disproportionate amount of crime in that area in relation to the rest of the borough."

Daubert said he has been against the existence of the cameras since the program's inception in 2002.

"It's an invasion of privacy," he said. "I'd rather put more money into more officers running around on the street."