Sign up for the paNOW newsletter

False alarm fees set to increase

Jan 6, 2012 | 1:24 PM

City council could soon be increasing the fees home security system users pay for generating false alarms.

Right now, alarm system subscribers pay $15 to license their system for police response. Each user gets two free false alarms per year, after which they must call a 1-900 number for police response and pay $75 for each call. Those fees have remained the same for the last eight years.

The proposed increase is to make the subscription fee to $25 and the fee for calling the 1-900 number to $100 per call.

Gary Ryhorchuk, property control by and alarm coordinator with the city’s bylaw department said the by law was in place in the first place to try to bring the number of false alarms down.

“That’s the one reason that this program was put in place, it was to reduce the number of false alarms from occurring,” he said. “We’d hoped that property owners, if there was a penalty for maybe not paying attention to things on their end as far as the alarms, that they would be reduced.”

But growth has meant that there have simply been more alarms. In 2011, the department counted more than 3000 security system subscribers with 14 alarm companies. Over the year, the service responded to 1,952 alarms of which 1,925 were false, but police still had to respond.

In addition to having to change the actual physical system used by the police force to monitor alarms,

Ryhorchuk said costs were simply going up and most municipalities were making the same move.

“The fees haven’t been increased since the bylaw came into effect,” he said. “We have to go to a new company and of course, there’s a cost with that and we also keep close tabs with the industry—Saskatoon, Moose Jaw and that—and they are all increasing their fees as well.”

At the last Prince Albert executive committee meeting, councilors approved the increase in principle.

However, the change will require an amendment to the current bylaw and will take several weeks to move through the process.

adesouza@panow.com