BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Starke approved an ordinance April 15 raising the penalty on false alarms to encourage property owners — mostly businesses — to repair their systems.
Raising the financial penalty for repeated false fire alarms to get the attention of property owners was one reason to update the city’s rules. Fire Chief Jason Clemons said the other was to reassign enforcement powers away from the police department, which no longer exists. The ordinance assigns responsibility to Chief Administrative Officer Jimmy Crosby.
The ordinance grants four false alarms per calendar year without penalty. That’s enough time for an alarm problem to be identified and corrected.
Each false alarm after the fourth will result in a fine. The fines start at $250 per incident. After the ninth incident, the fine increases to $500 for each false alarm.
During a prior discussion, Clemons gave examples for why this in necessary, saying there was one property Starke Fire Department responded to 18 times last year — each time a false alarm due to a faulty detector in their HVAC system.
“They know about it. They won’t fix it. So, if we sting them a little bit, give them some motivation to maintain and repair their systems appropriately — you know, it’s not that often that we respond to those type calls and then have a delayed response to a real emergency, but it does happen,” he said.
According to Clemons, a lot of the calls are from nursing facilities or apartment complexes that are required to have functional alarm systems for the safety of the residents. If something is not working, it needs to be repaired.
Clemons said false alarms at private homes are rare, however, the top five commercial offenders on his list were responsible for 49 false alarm responses from the fire department in 2024. He calculated the cost of those responses to be $11,000.
Per the ordinance, Crosby or his designee will keep a record of every alarm response and whether it was valid. Property owners will be notified of each false alarm reported. This will serve as notice that after four false alarm responses, the property owner will be fined for every subsequent false alarm response.
The ordinance does include an appeals process through the chief administrative officer, who would examine the case and make the final decision.
Fees collected will be used for enforcement of the ordinance, with any remaining revenue going to the fire department.
Commissioners emphasized upon passing the ordinance that the intention was to encourage compliance, not enforce penalties.
The ordinance will be enacted after approval on the second reading.
