posted on Monday, July 06, 2009 10:26 AM
by
klehan
Wichita, KS, Alters Alarm Ordinance
Wichita, KS, City Council members altered a plan to charge people with monitored alarm services $3 a month and businesses $9 a month.
Instead, they are poised to charge $1 a month to residents, perhaps $2 or $2.50 to businesses and $9 to high-rise buildings, which require several fire engines for even minor alarms.
There are an estimated 32,000 licensed alarm systems in the city.
Without fees of some type, Fire Chief Ron Blackwell said, the city may have to cut one fire engine and five squad trucks, which would almost certainly reduce response times to emergencies.
Currently, everyone gets one false alarm free. After that, the city bills $40 for each unnecessary call, though City Manager Robert Layton said the city hasn't collected recently because of data glitches between city and Sedgwick County systems.
The new plan would increase the false alarm fee with each incident, though no numbers were specified.
Layton said many other cities have similar sliding scales for false alarms.
Council members hope that will entice those with security systems to arm them more carefully to reduce false alarms.
Mayor Carl Brewer said none of the proposed cuts — including the elimination of 101 city jobs, or 3 percent, many through attrition — is attractive.
"We're not going to get everything we want and we're not going to be able to make everyone happy," he said. "This isn't easy, but every household in the city is going through this same thing."