By Marisa Iati, Staff Writer
An amendment to the borough’s nuisance fire alarms provision and an ordinance that would require property owners and tenants to register and pay administrative fees for their burglar alarms were introduced at the June 7 Borough Council meeting.
If the burglar alarms ordinance is passed, the registration form will require alarm owners to provide contact information for the owner of the property on which the alarm is installed, an emergency contact, the person or company responsible for maintaining the alarm and the person or company monitoring the alarm. It will also ask for a description of the alarm and the area covered by the alarm.
The annual burglar alarm registration fee and the annual fire alarm registration fee both will be $50. According to the amended nuisance fire alarms provision, the annual registration fee for a combination fire and burglar alarm will be $100.
According to the original provision, if a fire alarm has experienced two false activations in the year prior to renewal of the annual registration, the fee will be $135. Each additional false alarm activation in the same 12-month period will require an additional $100 fee for each activation. This law will remain in effect under the amended provision.
The burglar alarms ordinance identifies one purpose of the registration forms and administrative fees as to offset the cost of registering alarm owners and the cost of responding to alarm activations. It identifies another purpose as “to encourage proper maintenance of burglar alarm systems and take steps necessary to prevent the occurrence and recurrence of burglar alarm activations.”
The amended nuisance fire alarms provision and the burglar alarms ordinance both will take effect when they are passed and published according to law, or Aug. 1, whichever is later.
Fire official William Drake said the borough has 293 registered fire alarms, 94 of which are residential combination fire and burglar alarms. The fire department responded to 390 alarm calls last year. Two hundred fifteen of those were false alarms.
Mr. Drake said such nuisance calls cost the fire department for the fire trucks’ response and the investigation of the cause. They also decrease the availability of fire department volunteers.
”Primarily, it’s the hazard of responding to false calls that we’re trying to avoid (by amending the nuisance fire alarms provision),” said Mr. Drake. “I’m talking about the hazard of volunteers driving from their homes to the fire house and then the trucks driving from the fire house to some other building.”
Mr. Drake also said the purpose of the burglar alarms ordinance is for the borough to regain some of the cost of police officers’ responding to alarm calls. He added that property owners and tenants that have registered combination fire and burglar alarms will not have to reregister, but will have to pay the increased fee.
”Some buildings have an alarm system that is a combination fire alarm and burglar alarm,” said Mr. Drake. “We’re modifying the fire alarms ordinance to say if you’re already registered under the fire alarms ordinance, then we already know that you’re there and you exist, so you don’t have to reregister the burglar alarm.”
