Security Upgrades Being Made at Sylvan Township’s Water Treatment Plant and Township Hall

With last year’s break-in at the water treatment plant and the damaged caused in mind, Sylvan Township has decided to move forward on a Security System Installation/Upgrade at the Water Treatment Plant and Township Hall.

At its May 13 meeting, the township board moved ahead with approving a recommendation to work with the Guardian Alarm Company to install a security system at the Water Plant and make an upgrade to the security system at the Township Hall.

The recommendation was made by township supervisor Amanda Nimke in her report to the board.

Nimke said, “There has been a need to update the security system at the Water Treatment Plant since the break-in last year.”

On July 8, last year, Sylvan Township reported a Belleville man had broke into the water plant at 18755 Old US 12 Road and caused damage.

This was part of the Michigan State Police statement on the incident:

“Employees at the plant had reported upon their arrival, discovering that the building had been broken into,” MSP said. “As the trooper was taking the report, the suspect, a 33 year old male from Belleville, Mi was observed coming out of the building where he was arrested. Investigation showed that the suspect had broken into the plant causing damage to its interior and tampered with the system controls. There was also evidence of attempts to damage local infrastructure. It appears the suspect, had gained entry onto the property by cutting through a barbed wire fence. Upon making entry into the building he spray-painted the windows in what appeared to be an attempt to not be seen in the building. He also created a makeshift bed from items in the building. The suspect was lodged at the Washtenaw County Jail on numerous charges.”

To help address this, Nimke said in her recommendation, in “an effort to keep the Twp Hall and Water Plant systems common, Guardian, the current vendor, was contacted to provide a quote.”

“In the process of working with Guardian, we discovered we could save 20 percent in monthly service charges if we were willing to change to a different alarm system application (Alarm.com) rather than keeping the one currently used at the township hall (Total Connect),” Nimke said. “Changing to the new application required upgrades to the township hall hardware but, even with the upgrades to the township, the overall cost was still lower than if we installed the hardware required at the Water Plant to maintain commonality with the current Twp Hall system.”