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Fruitland, OR, Moves Forward with Alarm Law

The Fruitland, OR, City Council agreed to send its false alarm ordinance to public hearings for a final review.

The ordinance creates fees for “misuse of alarm systems” to reduce an excess of false alarms in the city police have to respond to. According to the ordinance, the fees go into effect after police have to respond to two alarms deemed to be false in a calendar year. According to the ordinance, the third false alarm yields a $25 fine, the fourth a $50 fine and the fifth a $75 fine. Property owners with more than five false alarms will be fined $100 each.

The fire life safety review fees generated the only discussion by the council. At the previous City Council meeting, the board agreed an ordinance establishing fire life safety review fees should be written based on Oregon’s code.

While Oregon only requires fire life safety fees on commercial and industrial businesses that meet certain size and occupancy requirements, Fruitland council members agreed, after some discussion, any commercial or industrial developments should be required to have a fire life safety review with a fee of 20 percent of the building permit cost. 

City Administrator Rick Watkins pointed out builders in Fruitland are not assessed fees for building plan reviews to begin with, and the ordinance only addresses fire life safety for commercial and industrial. “If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it right,” he said. “And if (a fire life safety fee is) going to break them, they weren’t going to make it anyway, especially if you’re getting a free plan review.”