I am writing in response to the Bellevue City Council enactment of a False Alarm Ordinance.

I feel that the enactment of this ordinance is an unfair penalty on the citizens of Bellevue who have taken the responsible steps to protect their homes from burglary, invasion, fire etc.

We pay to have protective systems installed at considerable cost. Pay a monthly fee to have the  alarm company monitor and call the responding agencies to alert them to a potential problem.

We also pay to support these responding agencies with our city tax revenues.

I acknowledge that there are probably a lot of false alarms which is a significant drain on the budgets of the responding agencies, financially and hours that could be used in other areas.

This program covered by the ordinance is called the Bellevue False Alarm Reduction Program.

The program is administrated by a Public Safety Corporation located in Los Angeles, CA using its “Cry Wolf” software.

The underlying fact is that the monitoring agencies get an alert, they call the premise, if they get a response and the person verifies that it is a false alarm, they do not request a response from the fire or police. If they do not get a contact they will then call for help.

With this procedure, I do not think the registration and annual fee applied would change anything  in respect to saving departmental money or hours.

There would be absolutely no reduction in the time and cost, it would remain the same!

I also fail to understand why the owners of subscripted alarm systems should have to pay an annual fee to an out of state agency for administration of this program.

This program has the feeling of a collection agency that we are paying  to benefit our city government and has absolutely nothing to do with wasted  time and cost

I think that the offending false alarms could be handled in a more focused manner,

I think a ticket issued by the responding agency at the time of response with a meaningful fine on offenders, elevated significantly for each occurrence and a summons to appear in Municipal Court.  If payment is not made satisfactorily would be a more effective solution.

-David G. Scott