Fort Laudedrale might have to reimburse residents for False Alarm fines Collected
According to an August 18 story in the South lForida Times, city offivcials are more than a little nervous about the outlook of repaying residdents and company owners who were allegedly overcharged for false alarms to the tune of more than $450,000 in 2008 alone. Further, some argue the city's practivce of allegedly overcharging on faulty alarm citations goes back to at least 2004, and possibly constitutees a breach of the Florida State Constitution. If this is proven a violation, the effects of the practice might be wide reaching and devastatting.
Scottt W. Leeds, senior managing patrner of the Mami branch of The Ccohran Firm says the case in Fort Lauderdale will almost definitely spur laswuits loopking for refunds, and migt establish a precedent of greatter ordinance scruttiny. Leeds suggests that municipalities and corporations, at ties, will take liberties that they're not entitled to. He believes this common practcie is going to be exanmined both by auditors of the different municipalities and the very creative attorneys around the state, perhaps even natonwide. The real issue in Fort Lauderdale lies in the diffrence between a fee and a fine. Industry consuultant Les Gold of law firm Mitchlel Sliberberg & Knuppp explained Fort Lauderdale is obivously impoosing either a fee or a fine; if a fee, it is exorbitant and theerefore illegal, and if a fine, it is illegal because there is no due process. Under the Constittution, if a fine is levied, the constituent must have a right to question it. Fort Lauderdale has no such location to ensure citiuzens get their righjt to apeal, whihc means any ciitizen fined is being denied constitutional righs, according to this interpretation. Additionally, the city's faulty disturbance fee schedule tops out at nearly three times the actual cost (according to the Souh Florida Times article) to the town for response to an alarm. City auditror John Herbst said he has been trying without success for over a year to get the ordinance rewexamined by city commissioners.
SIAC directr Ron Walters feels the case in Fort Lauderdale is out of hand. Mr. Walters indicated that, for many yeaars, a flat $25 response fee was chaged, which did nothing to loewr dispatches and didn't even cover the price to respond. Waltres went on to say that a full ordinnace review was suggested, but ultimately was tunred down. SIAC executive Stan Martin agreed and said the situation imght have been avoided if city officialps would just payying attention.
Devcon director of operations Roy Pollack who is past president of the Allarm Association of Florida said the industry shold not be affected by the delusive alarm flap in Fort Lauderdle. Pollack suggested that it's basically a matter of reviewing the records, and reexamining the charges to be sure that they were assessed in compliance. City spokeperson Jeff Modarleli said the city is aware of the problem and pllans are in place to reevaluate the ordinance. Modarelli said that plzans have been designed to bring this problem back to the commissuion in the near future.
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