Aurora Tri-State to lease water tower space, provide monitoring to village

October 30, 2003 NORTH AURORA, Ill. - As part of a deal to lease space on top of a village water tower here for its monitoring antenna, Aurora Tri-State Protection will provide a number of benefits to the village. The company will install fire and burglar alarms at a number of public buildings, including public works buildings, the village hall and the fire station. Aurora Tri-State will also install alarms at the new North Aurora Fire Protection District Training Center, the police garage and any newly constructed village hall or police station. The company will monitor those alarms from its central station at no charge to the village. The North Aurora Village Board unanimously approved the lease after taking a number of concerns into consideration. According to Assistant Fire Chief Mark Bozik, the equipment will belong to the village, with the exception of radio transmitters, which will remain property of Aurora Tri-State. Bozik had raised questions about whether the village would be getting fair market value from the company. He estimated that a comparable user would pay $6,500 a year for the lease, but that additional security required would cost the village an additional $3,000 a year. The equipment North Aurora will receive through the lease totals nearly $30,000, including equipment for the new buildings, with the monitoring service valued at about $5,000 per year. Some others in the village had cried foul, saying that the village’s pact with Aurora Tri-State unfairly offers endorsement for the company, a charge that Barry Torphy, alarm manager for Aurora Tri-State, called unfounded. “Placement of an antenna does not amount to an endorsement,” he said. Torphy said using space on the water tower is necessary to support the wireless transmission his company uses for monitoring alarms. The company had also been looking at other opportunities in case the North Aurora deal fell through.