Following a vandalism incident, town officials last week approved a contract with a Plainville-based company to install a more secure gate at the Main Street entrance to the Transfer Station facility.
Though he didn’t steal anything, a young man with a backpack did some damage at the Transfer Station after entering the facility by the entrance at 394 Main St., according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann.
“He tried to get into the new scale house,” Mann told members of the Board of Selectmen at their Aug. 9 meeting. “He ripped the screens off the scale house and tried to access some other facilities, or some equipment, and he was not able to do damage, thankfully.”
Mann said, “We are having issues where the gates are being left open at night and we have people come in.”
There are “hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment” in the facility, he added, “so we’d like to close this off, make it more secure.”
The selectmen voted 3-0 in favor of a $26,250 contract with Eagle Fence and Guardrail to replace the existing manually operated double gate with a new cantilever slide gate with automation and access control. It will protect the Transfer Station as well as the Highway Garage and Waste Water Treatment Facility.
“We will have a touchstone pad and then key fobs for everyone, so we can give out key fobs to the employees,” Mann said at the regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “They have gas fobs already. We can give out key fobs to get in and out through the touchpad. In case we get a late or early morning delivery, we can actually text that number to the delivery operator and he can plug in the number and come in. The most important thing is that after-hours the gates will be locked and they will be locked automatically, so that the moment someone leaves, the gate locks behind them. That is basically our problem: They’ll unlock the gate, come in, get gas and then forget to lock the gate.”
The selectmen asked whether there are cameras at the Main Street entrance (yes and throughout the facility), whether there’s been criminal activity (yes), whether the recent vandal entered via Main Street (yes), whether Mann is comfortable with the gates used at the cemetery side (yes they lock automatically, so after-hours access is via Main) and whether police apprehended the suspect (not yet but they have an image of him).
It’s good that they are upping the security features, and I hope the police will be more vigilant in surveillance of sites at risk around town. Across the road from the transfer station young workers are being paid $80/hr and more at the Canaan Parish $45 million project; word is out that New Canaan is a gold town ripe for the picking.