Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Tooele police propose fees after repeated false alarms; council asks for redlines
Loading...
Summary
Chief Adrian Dade told the council Tooele police responded to 996 false alarms in 2025 and recommended adding a law‑enforcement response fee after repeated false alarms; councilmembers asked staff to return with specific draft language and a warning‑then‑fine approach.
Chief Adrian Dade told the Tooele City Council on April 15 that the police department responded to 996 false alarms in 2025 and proposed adding a law‑enforcement response fee to the city's schedule for repeat false alarms.
Dade compared Tooele’s practice with nearby cities, saying Sandy City and Saratoga Springs charge a $100 service fee after a set number of false alarms. He said Tooele’s schedule currently waives response fees for the first two false fire alarms and applies a $100 charge thereafter; he also said higher fees apply for repeated incidents, though parts of the transcript on the higher dollar amount were unclear. Dade asked whether the council would support placing a law‑enforcement fee on the fee schedule for repeated false alarms.
Councilmembers asked operational questions: alarms in Tooele are generally reported to dispatch by third‑party monitoring companies, Dade said; the typical reset period discussed was a 12‑month rolling period; and the department’s practice includes issuing warnings before fines in many cases. Members discussed thresholds and punitive schedules; several councilmembers said they would be comfortable with a warning followed by fees after three or four incidents. Councilman McCall and others asked staff to return with specific redlines and recommended language before any item is brought to a business meeting or to the Planning Commission (if land‑use changes are implicated).
The council did not adopt any ordinance or fee schedule at the work meeting. Instead, the council directed staff to draft proposed ordinance language and fee schedules outlining the warning procedure, the reset period, and the proposed threshold and fee amounts for future review.
Clarifying details: Chief Dade cited 996 false‑alarm responses in 2025 and described multiple residential and business repeat offenders; some numeric lines in the transcript about the breakdown between residences and businesses were garbled and are recorded in the meeting record as spoken. The council asked staff to confirm the precise counts and fee amounts in any subsequent materials.
