FIRE DEPARTMENTS AND COMMUNITIES: PARTNERS IN PREVENTION
MAKING FIRE ALARMS PAY FOR THEMSELVES
BY ROBERT D. NIELSEN
Many fiscal challenges plague the fire service administrator of the `90s. The progressive administrator must turn to creativity to offset budget cuts if worthwhile programs are not to be lost. One area of revenue the fire service has been turning to in recent years is the user fee, which, although not enthusiastically embraced by fire departments and their clients in the past, has become more widely implemented and accepted in recent years as a result of the financial difficulties faced by virtually all fire departments and communities.
Here in the village of Oak Brook, Illinois–a highly commercialized village in the metropolitan Chicago area with 9,100 residents–we believe we have found a satisfactory solution for offsetting increased costs associated with fire alarm/suppression equipment. The Village has always taken a very proactive and progressive stance relative to alarm/suppression equipment. In the late 1970s, we began requiring that all commercial buildings larger than 1,000 square feet be sprinklered. In addition, we mandated that this system be electrically supervised, with the supervision terminating at our Communications Center. Now, some 15 years later, we boast of having approximately 18 million square feet of commercial property within the Village, approximately 85 percent of which is sprinklered by a system we supervise in-house.
THE PROBLEMS
As time passed, however, we found that we had created a monster: We had been averaging 600 to 700 calls per year related to these systems, more than 80 percent of which were false alarms. On top of this, we were providing free supervision of all the systems in the buildings we had mandated be connected to us. This service proved very costly and was reducing communications services for other critical Village functions. It soon became evident that we had to institute a fee for system owners to offset the tremendous costs that these systems-related services were placing on our limited and shrinking budget. Two items immediately jumped out at us–the supervision of alarms and the number of false alarms.
MONITORING SERVICE
The fire alarm monitoring panel within our Communications Center is owned and maintained by an outside alarm company. Per a written agreement, the monitoring equipment is supplied at no cost to the Village. Subscribers paid only an initial connection fee and a monthly monitoring fee of $10. The Village was not paid for the in-house supervision of the systems by the Village`s communications operators. These employees monitored 249 fire alarm connections, 242 of which were in commercial properties.
The Village decided to impose a surcharge on the monthly monitoring charge. It was contracted with the outside alarm firm that it would add this fee ($4 per position) to the subscriber`s monthly $10 system-monitoring charge and then forward the revenues–approximately $12,000 a year–to the Village. The fee can easily be increased, if necessary, to enable us to continue giving the level of service necessary to operate this monitoring service. In the metropolitan Chicago area alone, more than 60 fire departments now use this type of fee. (The Village`s Police Department also earns a comparable amount of money for monitoring security-type alarms.)
Following is the wording of the ordinance we used to institute the surcharge:
“Each person subscribing to a system which is monitored by the Oak Brook Fire Department shall pay a monthly charge of four dollars ($4) to the Village. Said charge may be paid to the agency supplying the monitoring board, provided that said agency promptly remits the monthly fee to the Village.”
FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEMS
The Village then turned its attention to the problem of false alarms associated with sprinkler systems mandated as part of its Fire Prevention Code. A $25 service fee was imposed, not as a source of revenue but as an incentive to property owners to fix malfunctioning fire alarms. The objectives were to significantly reduce the number of false alarms and to recapture a portion of our costs of responding to them. The false alarms constituted about 80 percent of our fire department`s responses. This fee was imposed for each false alarm, excluding the first one, determined by us to be caused by owner negligence occurring within a 90-day period. The initial fee was initiated during the 1970s. Since then, we have twice revisited the issue and both times raised the fee to its present $200. This fee is in place through a local ordinance which reads as follows:
“A fire alarm user shall be charged a service charge of $200 for each false fire alarm if such false fire alarm is (a) due to or caused by a lack of required maintenance as specified in the Oak Brook Fire Prevention Code; or (b) resulting from any test, repair, alteration, or addition to the fire protection system without prior notification thereof to the Fire Department.”
Fees must be established through ordinances, which, if properly passed, can withstand legal challenges on the grounds of being arbitrary or discriminatory. Once the ordinance is in place, charges, such as fees, can be handled locally. In this way, the burdens of enforcement and collection do not fall on the fire department, as the department must only follow the directives of the elected officials.
These fees have worked for the Oak Brook Fire Department, and they can work for your department. They produce revenue, and they have allowed us to enhance services to industry and residents.
Because of the makeup of the Village, almost all ordinances related to the fire department have little or no effect on the residents. The two items outlined above, for example, have the greatest direct impact on our commercial occupancies. The fees have a minimal fiscal impact on each property involved and were designed to enhance the overall fire protection within each. The two ordinances now in place received no noticeable reaction from residential or commercial residents. Although it is difficult to quantify the actual reduction of responses due to this fee, it is quite apparent that it has worked. We have noted a decrease in multiple responses to the same property for the same fire alarm malfunction. Most progressive fire departments in the suburban metropolitan Chicago area now have similar ordinances in place, and they have proven successful. Although fees assessed by fire departments may be disliked at first, they have come to be accepted as a cost of doing business. n
ROBERT D. NIELSEN, a 30-year veteran of the fire service, is fire chief and building commissioner for the Village of Oak Brook, Illinois. He previously served as a shift commander and director of the Bureau of Inspections. He has an associate`s degree in fire science, a bachelor`s degree in public service, and a master`s degree in public administration. He served on the faculty of Moraine Valley Community College, the College of DuPage, and Southern Illinois University. Through the Division of Personnel Standards, Office of the State Fire Marshal, Nielsen is certified as a Fire Officer III, Fire Prevention Officer III, Fire Prevention Education Officer III, and Fire Service Instructor IV. He has lectured extensively on fire service-related topics and has had articles published in various fire service publications.
