As a way to recover some of the cost of responding to more than
1,100 false burglar alarms in the city each year, Morgan Hill
Police have proposed a new registration requirement and more fees
for the owners of chronically false alarms.
Morgan Hill
As a way to recover some of the cost of responding to more than 1,100 false burglar alarms in the city each year, Morgan Hill Police have proposed a new registration requirement and more fees for the owners of chronically false alarms.
Details about the possible new rates will be discussed at a city council public hearing May 27. The proposed annual registration rates, which are subject to council approval and could change based on further analysis by city staff, are $25 for residential alarms and $50 for commercial alarms, according to Morgan Hill Police Cmdr. David Swing.
He said the goal of the new rates is to reduce waste in the department, as police repeatedly respond to false alarms that take away from other officers’ responsibilities and “creates inefficiency.”
Police respond to almost every alarm call received by the 911 dispatch center, and usually two officers respond. In 2008, that amounted to a total of 1,550 such calls. Only 12 of those turned out to be “good alarms,” in which officers found evidence of a burglary or other crime at the scene, according to Swing. In about 430 alarm incidents, the call was canceled because the property owner or alarm monitoring company determined it was accidental before police arrived.
That means more than 1,100 alarm calls to which police responded last year were false.
“What we’d like to do is recoup some of the cost of service from the limited number of people who use this service,” Swing said. “Every residence and business does not have a monitored burglar alarm system, so it’s a service (alarm owners) are able to take advantage of that other people don’t have.”
Another intent of the registration requirement is to ensure police have updated contact information for property owners equipped with alarms, and “to encourage people to be more responsible,” Swing said.
The new fees would be added as an amendment to the existing city code relating to burglar alarms, which allows the city to charge property owners for chronically false alarm calls. Swing said currently, alarm owners are allowed one “free” false alarm response every three months. For each false or accidental alarm after that, the owner is charged $140 until the next three-month period begins.
Those fees generated about $30,000 of revenue for the city’s general fund last year. Swing said the majority of frequent false alarms are not residential, but instead come from the school district, city facilities and private businesses.
Swing explained that most burglar alarms are monitored by a private company to whom the owner pays a monthly fee. The company is notified every time a subscriber’s alarm is tripped, and calls local police.
Most of the time, these companies are unable to tell if the alarm went off accidentally, because of a pet inside the home, for example, or a storm, or an employee at a business who did not know the code to cancel the signal.
At the public hearing later this month, police will suggest reducing the number of free false responses to one per year, Swing said. Unregistered alarm users would not be allowed any free false response.
Because alarms are not currently registered, it is unknown exactly how many Morgan Hill property owners have alarms. However, the department estimates the suggested annual registration fees would generate about $25,000 per year. The additional fees for false responses would bring in about $50,000 to the department, Swing said.
It takes at least 30 minutes to respond to each alarm, and with two officers manning each call, police spent a minimum of 1,108 hours or 92 12-hour shifts last year responding to false alarms. At the current minimum pay rate of $35.51 per hour for a Morgan Hill police officer, the department spent at least $39,345 on false alarm calls in 2008. That doesn’t count the time spent by dispatch operators to take the calls. And since that cost doesn’t include benefits, and “it’s safe to say all our officers make more than entry level,” the actual cost of resources spent responding to false alarms is likely significantly higher, Swing said.
The city’s finance department conducts a periodic fee analysis to determine revenue from fees collected by other departments such as the police, he added.
Michelle Matz, owner of the Magpie gift store in downtown Morgan Hill said her alarm system, operated by ADT, has gone off accidentally on two occasions in recent years. Both times she received a letter from the city saying she would be charged the false response fee if another false alarm happened at her address before the quarter was over.
“Sometimes it’s beyond your control,” said Matz, noting that one of her false alarms occurred as a result of an earthquake.
She added that an annual registration fee is another overhead cost, and business owners might not like the idea when such costs are already growing.
And Mike St. Cloud, co-owner of Legends Bar & Grill, said an annual registration fee is “nuts.” He said he is already losing money because of a list of city-imposed charges and fees.
An annual registration fee for alarms would apply to both existing alarm users and new ones in the city, Swing said. City staff will work with alarm companies to identify subscribers, and those who choose not to register will be sent a notice if and when police respond to a false alarm at that address.
The proposed fees are based on research into similar policies adopted by other police departments in California. Some of those policies are significantly more restrictive than what Morgan Hill is considering. One city, he said, charges property owners $1,500 for each false alarm to which police respond.
