The cities of McHenry, Woodstock, Crystal Lake and Algonquin are now engaged in municipal monitoring within McHenry County. The recent development means business taken away from the private alarm monitoring companies—EMERgency24, Stand Guard and Alarm Detection Systems, to name a few—and increased monitoring costs for business owners within those areas. And many of those business owners are “quite irate” according to Kevin Lehan, executive director of the Illinois Electronic Security Association (IESA), Arlington Heights, Ill.
A majority of real estate owners understand the impact this has on their multi-tenant locations and “are pretty upset about this” Lehan referenced. Real estate owners with multi-tenant facilities are potentially faced with an annual increased amount of “$10,000 additional cost that they would be responsible for to cover the alarm monitoring mandated by the ordinance” Lehan explained.
IESA’s call to action
As a result, IESA wrote and sent letters to Mayor Low of McHenry, city councils and fire district protection boards in those areas, explaining the impact of their decisions (see sidebar), requesting their response to further discuss their actions. In another letter sent to 300 precinct committeemen in the county of McHenry, the IESA questioned where and when the decision to enable municipal monitoring took place and the methods taken to allow this to occur within those communities of McHenry County.
IESA long-time lobbyist Dick Lockhart explained in a recent meeting held by the organization in Elk Grove Village, Ill., “If we want to make any changes in the law, we need to have complete unanimity and support.” Addressing the roomful of attendees, he stated, “The strength that you demonstrated earlier this year in Springfield, you cannot relax. Fire officials will figure out ways to extract some kind of benefits.” The IESA urges alarm industry professionals and monitoring companies to call their district offices and speak to those electoral officials on the matters that affect their businesses. To read the full story, visit http://www.securityinfowatch.com/.
