HOWLAND — The township park board wants more surveillance cameras in Howland Township Park to discourage frequent vandalism.

“We don’t want cameras here, but it’s the world we live in,” park board member Shawn Pompelia said during a special board meeting Friday morning.

The park has about eight cameras in the park, five of which work.

The board wants to add cameras to cover the lake pavilion, where the bulk of spray-paint vandalism has taken place; the new Tiger Town playground; the pavilion near the Wright building; and the tennis courts.

The board also discussed installing a camera outside the entrance to the restrooms,which vandals damaged despite being locked at night. Fixtures were ripped down, feces smeared on the walls and items placed in the toilets, park Commissioner Jessica Gault said.

Park commissioners Pompelia, Gault and Allen Semen met with Bill Walsh of ALC Technologies, the company that installed the original cameras in the park, to discuss options.

Walsh said some types of surveillance cameras include starlight cameras, which record in full color at night; LPR cameras, designed to capture the numbers on reflective license plates at night; and PTZ, or pan, tilt, zoom cameras that lock onto and track motion.

Park board members agreed they want to the surveillance equipment placed on existing structures rather than installing poles.

Walsh is expected to give the board a quote for a number of cameras at its next regular meeting at 9 a.m. July 8.

Before meeting with Walsh on Friday morning, the park board also met with Howland Local Schools Superintendent Kevin Spicher to talk about ways the park and school district can collaborate — including exploring the legal possibilities of piggybacking on school grants.

Howland Township park is managed by the township park district, but the land is owned by Howland Local Schools, which has made it difficult for the park district to get grants of its own.

Spicher expressed enthusiasm about collaborating and said the school district is getting a security grant and it may be possible to put some school district cameras in the park. He added, however, that as superintendent he only executes the decisions of the township school board.

During the meeting, Spicher talked about the park’s complicated history. Originally part of local pilot Ernie Hall’s flying school, board records show the school board either purchased or “acquired” the land, Spicher said. Blueprints from the late 1960s detail school complexes that could have been built where the park now stands. Ultimately, the land became recreational space for the township and for about a decade was under the purview of the Howland Township Joint Recreational Board, made up of township and school officials.

The Howland Township Park District in its current form was established in 1984, according to the township’s website.

“What I don’t want to do, I guess, is harbor on the past,” Spicher said, adding that today there is the possibility of collaboration that could take the park to “the next level.”

He said it would be important to have a conversation with the board of education.

Gault said the park board is looking for ways to improve the park and that often happens through partnerships with other entities.

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