Fee on alarm systems
dominates police budget
hearing

By Jessie Halladay · jhalladay@courier-journal.com · June 8, 2010

Whether Louisville Metro Government should collect a projected $1.5 million in revenue by assessing a fee to any home or business that uses an alarm was the main topic at Tuesday's budget hearing with Police Chief Robert White.

In Mayor Jerry Abramson's $821 million budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, he has set aside nearly $144 million for the police department.

But most of the discussion centered around a proposal that would require any home or business with an alarm to pay a yearly fee. The fee would be $25 for homes and $50 for businesses.

In order to assess the fee, the metro council would have to amend a 2005 ordinance that assesses penalties when police respond to repeated false alarms at homes or businesses.

That's a proposal that council member Mary Woolridge, D-3rd District, said she adamantly opposes.

"People are just being overtaxed," Woolridge said, who added that she doesn't believe the council would support the fee.

White acknowledged that the move would be a significant source of revenue for the city, which would go into the general fund to pay for city services.

"That's $1.5 million that certainly this city can use," White said.

But he said there are benefits of getting each of the roughly 62,800 alarm users in the area covered by metro police to register because it means that police will have the opportunity to teach people how to more efficiently use their systems and hopefully cut down on unnecessary runs that take police away from other matters.

White said since the ordinance went into effect in June 2005, the number of false alarm runs has decreased by about 57 percent.

Under the ordinance, people are charged for repeated false alarms, though the first two times an officer responds to a false alarm, no fee is charged. After that fees ranging from $100 to $1,000 are assessed. The rate depends on how many times an alarm has falsely gone off and whether it was for a burglary or a hold-
up.

Councilman Kelly Downard, R-16th District, said he could support the fee, but suggested some alternate ways of collecting the fee by using alarm companies as the collection point rather than having the city attempt to collect the fees.

No ordinance amendment has officially been filed with the council, so it is unclear when it will again come up for discussion.

Very little changed in the police budget, White said. In the past couple of years, White has had to shave costs, including laying off some civilian employees. But this year's budget does not reflect major cuts anywhere.

"This was a budget to keep things afloat from what we had last year," White said. "This budget puts us in a position to maintain."

Reporter Jessie Halladay can be reached at (502) 582-4081.