Let me start by saying that I live in San Diego, CA so this may be a city or county specific ordinance. But I got a ‘bill’ yesterday from the San Diego Police Department telling me that I need to renew my home alarm permit for $55.00.
Naturally, it had a number you could call if you had questions, so I called and said “What the hell is an alarm permit?”. The response I got was that it was to defray the cost to the police of all the false alarms they answer that go off constantly all over the city. Ultimately, of course, they just told me I ‘had to pay it’
So I guess I have three questions:
If I don’t pay it, what happens? Especially since it is in the old homeowners name. Will the police blacklist me and not come if my alarm goes off?
Is this a common tax and am I just an idiot who has never heard of it until now?
It seems to me that answering alarms (false or not) is the job of the police, and they just made this up to get more money beyond my tax dollars. How did they pass this ordinance without anyone noticing?
Obviously, $55 isn’t that much so I’ll pay it to be done with it… but I want everyone to know, I am paying it out of FEAR of what happens if I need the police and they don’t come because I DIDN’T pay it. Can my fire department do the same thing and pass a tax on any house in the neighborhood I have to pay because the house has parts that are made of wood?
Alright, it’s more than 3 questions…but you get the idea
I assume that if you don’t pay, you would get some sort of delinquency note as if you didn’t pay your property taxes.
A lot of cities have laws that charge people for having a certain number of false alarms. Most charge the individual homeowner if s/he goes over a certain number. Your jurisdiction probably felt it was easier to make everybody a small part of the cost.
If you had paid attention to those City Council meetings, you would have heard about this ordinance passing.
Government agencies in California aren’t allowed to hold meetings unless they are open to the public (except to discuss litigation or personnel matters) without posting an agenda of the meeting in a public place prior to the meeting. It’s called the Brown Act.
I would be extremely surprised if the San Diego City Council met in secret to pass this law. I would even go as far to say that the agenda for the meeting was probably posted on the Net.
The city’s servants cannot ignore anyone’s call. That’s what makes false alarms so bad. They must respond, giving valuable time and resources to a lie. So fear not: If you are delinquent and somebody decides to rough you up, the police must come to your house and defend you. Same with fire services. Ambulances are not really in the city’s domain, being private assets owned by the hospital they serve (correct me if I’m wrong), so they charge on a fee-for-service basis even though their vehicles get recognition under the ‘emergency vehicle’ sections of the traffic code. Anyway, a quick trip to the local library and city hall will clear up any future difficulties you have with local laws and definitions.
Yarster, do you need to pay it if you disconnect the alarm? And do you really need the alarm, now that you’ve got the little stickers claiming your house is alarmed?
We have a charge for false alarms, both fire and burglar. Your first 3 alarms per year are free. After that, a penalty fee is assessed for each false alarm, increasing as the number of alarms do. I don’t know the specific charge, but I think it somewhere in the area of $100 for the first offense.
Its also the job of the fire department to answer false alarms. Coming from the fire service side of this argument, I’ve got some strong feelings on this. Its sorry to say, but after an engine or ladder company responds to the same building three or four times a month for false alarms (maliciously pulled boxes, cooking mishaps, dust/water in detectors, system malfunctions, etc), they’re not going to be quite as ready to fight the next time that alarm comes in. There are occupancies in my response area that when the alarm comes in, you can almost hear the “oh, there again” from those who are responding. We go there enough that its not a big deal. About a year ago, though, we responded to one of these alarms and “suprise!” the building was actually on fire. We were ready for it, but its a very bad feeling when you’ve been duped like that.
Apart from those who are responding getting sick of going to the same place for ‘nothing’ calls, there is also the problem of tying up resources for no good reason. If a fire alarm goes off, the vast majority of fire departments don’t just send “someone to check it out.” Usually, at least 2 engines and a ladder will respond. For us, thats half of our structural firefighting equipment. Going to the city next door, they’ll send up to 4 engines, 2 ladders and a rescue for a fire alarm. Thats half of their equipment, and thats for a city of 100,000 people. When they arrive, the trucks are out of service. They’re not going to leave to go to another incident until their’s is over. The chief officer isn’t going to release apparatus until he’s confident that the building is not on fire. Millions of dollars of equipment sitting idle in front of a building because someone won’t get their fire alarm fixed is not a proper use of resources.
But, I will agree with the OP that it doesn’t seem right you get taxed like that. If there is a problem with false alarms, charge those whose alarms are the problem, not everyone. Thus our system…
I forgot to mention that I DO NOT use a monitoring service which I suspect is the source of quite a number of these false alarms. That is, alarm goes off for 2 seconds too long and the police respond anyway even though it gets turned off because they assume someone must be holding a gun to your head and made you turn it off, which explains why you took longer than normal to turn it off.
In my case, the only way the police will know my alarm is going off isn’t because the system calls them automatically, but because I assume my neighbors on either side of me, tired of listening to a blaring siren for 10 minutes, will call the cops. And if my alarm keeps going off all the time (which it never has), then so be it…let the police issue me an asshole tax for being a nuisance.
But tax everyone with an alarm? NO WAY. If I get an alarm, it discourages thiefs, which should lower (at least that type of) crime in my neighborhood, ergo we need less police and we save the police department money. If they want to tax someone, they should tax the people with systems that call the police automatically and waste their time. But I have digressed and turned this into a great debate, haven’t I?
As a follow up, I should tell you that there is no indication that you are fined if you DON’T pay this registration fee. But I also wonder whether your homeowners insurance could use your lack of registration as a excuse to deny a claim. Once again, I don’t know, and don’t feel like reading through all the paperwork, so I’ll pay it out of fear as orginally planned.
I still say this whole ‘ordinance’ thing is bullshit though. Yeah, I’m sure ten years before I ever moved to the city, they passed this ordinance and gave people a cahnce to respond, but even if I had proper notice of the meeting, who the hell is going to take the time of work to complain at city hall?
We have an alarm permit law in Houston. It is $20 per year and is only for monitored alarm systems. It allows you to have a small number [I think its 2 or 3.] of false alarms without paying a fine.
If you have a false alarm and don’t have a permit, you will get fines for both the false alarm and the lack of permit.
I doubt they would fine you if you had a true alarm and no permit.