INDUSTRY ISSUES
In recent years, a sales organization has been pushing its agenda to leaders of some local government bodies to encourage them replace the private-alarm industry. This business plan calls for communities to purchase alarm-monitoring equipment that duplicates existing private-sector infrastructure.
These communities then passed ordinances that strip away the free-market choice of business owners by requiring that fire-alarm systems must be monitored by each community’s government monitoring station. Additionally, a single government-selected company then performs all installation and servicing for commercial fire-alarm communication systems.
To justify taking over a private industry, proponents of this business plan make false claims about reducing false alarms via municipal monitoring and improving response times.
Both of those claims have been debunked. The IESA welcomes public debate on those two points, as well as this entire issue.
IESA Stops House Bill 1301
The IESA’s political presence was felt throughout Springfield earlier this spring when 95 alarm professionals went to the capitol to tell our elected officials about the hazards of House Bill 1301, titled Fire District Anti-Trust Exemption. We were successful and the short-sighted legislation died in executive committee.
In addition to those members who gave a business day to speak to legislators, many other alarm dealers who could not make it to Springfield have been active in other ways. In fact, in 2011, nearly 200 unique individuals have attended various IESA events throughout the state, including Des Plaines, Rockford, Bloomington, Elk Grove Village and the state capitol. That’s nearly a third of the licensed contractors and about half of the agencies!
The IESA was joined in our efforts to stop HB1301 by the following organizations:
- Illinois Retail Merchants Assn.
- Illinois Chapter, National Fed. Independent Business
- Illinois Manufacturers Assn.
- Illinois Assn. of Realtors
- Associated Detectives and Security Agencies of Illinois
- Illinois Allied Guard and Patrol Assn.
McHenry County is in the Spotlight Now
Without doing due diligence, government employees in City of McHenry, like Woodstock, Crystal Lake and Algonquin, have made fundamental errors in their quest for revenue. They were sold a bill of goods by the aforementioned sales organization without understanding the “macro-level” consequences of their decisions.
It’s clear these councils and boards of trustees did not do their proper due diligence otherwise they would understand the consequences of their community-impacting decisions, which include:
- Businesses will pay more to have additional equipment installed at their premises.
- Businesses will pay higher fees and will ultimately pay for the infrastructure at the government’s monitoring center.
- Newer fire-alarm systems will be “dumbed-down” by a decade-old technology that will be used by the government-run monitoring center for an additional decade or two.
- Alarm agencies will lose every customer relationship they have fostered over the years with no compensation. This accounts for millions of dollars confiscated by the local government.
The IESA has been actively trying to educate the McHenry County decision-makers that there are practical, more cost-effective alarm-dispatching methods available today that do not harm the free-market system. One method used was a print advertising campaign in the Northwest Herald. The advertisement ran as a half-page ad from Wednesday, June 22 until Sunday, June 26.
