02-09-1994 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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515 Little Canada Road, (612) 484 -2177 Little Canada MN 55117 -1600 / FAX: (612) 484 -4538 February 1, 1994 TO: Mayor and City Council FROM: Joel Hanson, City Administrator RE: Revisions to False Alarm Ordinance MAYOR Raymond G. Hanson COUNCIL Beverly Scalze Jim LaValle Steve Morelan Bob Pedersen ADMINISTRATOR Joel R. Hanson Attached are proposed revisions to the False Alarm Ordinance governing both burglar and fire alarms. The impetus for these changes came from two sources. The first is the high demand already placed on the time of our law enforcement officers. The second is a public safety issue involving the lack of timely attention to fire alarm problems. When this occurs, residents begin to ignore fire alarms. In the event of a actual fire, the outcome could be catastrophic. You will note that staff is proposing a reduction in the number of alarms which are "free ". Rates for subsequent alarms are also revised. The basis for these changes comes from the attached schedules showing false alarm incidents by address for both burglar and fire. The incident log by addresses seems to tie out well to the proposed alarm schedule. When one considers the cost of providing this service, the fees proposed do not seem unreasonable. It should also be noted that we did not do a fee comparison of other cities at this time. Our feeling was that we are trying to address our problems and therefore, the relevancy of other cities' fees is minimal. Another change proposed includes the addition of an administrative review during the appeal process. For situations where one can readily determine that a "false alarm" did not exist, we would be able to correct the problem without further inconvenience to the property owner and the City Council. Perhaps the most important revision proposed relates to the "Excessive Alarm Report ". We have drastically lowered the number of alarms needed to trigger this provision. We are Page-49