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Residents incensed about Palo Alto’s $250 fine for unregistered alarm systems could soon get more time to comply before they’re hit with the hefty penalty.
City Manager James Keene and Interim Police Chief Dennis Burns are proposing to calm the community clamor over the steepness of the fine by revising the city’s alarm ordinance, which has been in place since 2001.
The revision is a response to a flurry of letters and calls the city received during the spring from residents angry about the $250 penalties. In April, recently fined Palo Altans attended a City Council meeting to vent against the city’s alarm penalty, which they characterized as excessive and outrageous.
Keene told the council at the April 27 meeting that staff will revisit the ordinance and consider revising it. Under the current ordinance, residents with security alarms are required to pay an annual $35 registration fee. Failure to do so results in a $250 penalty.
The new proposal — which the City Council is expected to discuss Monday night — would require the city to send two notices to residents before imposing the $250 penalty. The second notice would request a $20 late fee and would give the resident 30 days to comply before the heavier fine is imposed.
Keene is also proposing sending a “one-time amnesty letter” to residents who are not in compliance with the alarm ordinance. These residents, according to the report, will be given an opportunity to renew their alarm registration by paying the registration fee and a $20 late fee.
A new report, written by Charles Cullen, director of technical services at the Palo Alto Police Department, estimates that about 5 percent of the participants in the alarm program fail to renew their registration.
The City Council adopted the alarm ordinance in 2001 in an attempt to reduce the number of false alarms in the city and create a registry of local alarm systems. According to a new staff report the ordinance helped reduce the number of false alarms by 25 percent between 2002 and 2008.
I still don’t understand why any penalty is required. Just hit people with the $250 call-out fee if an alarm goes off and their alarm registration fee is out of date.
That would save all this overhead of issuing letters and collecting fines. Unless, of course, the whole point of the fines is to raise revenue.
The paperwork alone and hours dedicated to this tracking the (so-called) penalty fee is very costly to the city.
For a city that is suppose to be environmentally friendly, the paper waste is prodigious.
Maybe cutting back on the amount of letters mailed would make a difference on this issue.
Hours spent on this aspect of the job should be viewed by the public.
$250??? It used to be that the Fire Department would have to respond to 3 False alarms at a Business before they could fine them $50 bucks?
3 responces for $50 bucks and a $250 fine for no responces? For just having the alarm. So if you try and be safe, The city will fine you for it>> Someone is being made to pay for the cities failed leadership?
The alarms actually help reduce crime and reduce the patrolling expense that the police should bear.
So what is this fee all about. Abolish the fee. To add insult to injury they have a penalty for the fee not paid on time.
This city is run by martians.
God bless America.