The Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners will be putting forward recommendations to increase alarm fees as part of the Alarm Monitoring Bylaw that dates back to 2002.

Currently, there is an annual fee of $15 for an alarm owner to register their alarm with the Moose Jaw Police Service. The owner would be given two free false alarms police responses in a 365-day period.

After those two free false alarms, there is a response fee of $75 billed to the owner through a 1-900 phone number.

Staff Sgt. Randy Jesse did a comparison with police services in Prince Albert, North Battleford, Regina and Saskatoon. The results are as follows:

Prince Albert

  • $25 registration fee
  • $25 yearly renewal fee
  • $100 after two free dispatches in a 365-day period

North Battleford

  • No 1-900 dispatch line involved.
  • $30 registration fee
  • $30 renewal fee
  • One free false alarm that gets followed with a letter of caution.
  • Second false alarm $200
  • Third false alarm $300

Regina

  • No fees for registration or renewals.
  • No 1-900 dispatch line, alarm companies are to call a non-emergent line to request dispatch.
  • Two free dispatches per 365-day period if the alarm site is registered.
  • Unregistered site, $100 fee every time an alarm company or homeowner requests dispatch.
  • Warning Notice, $75 for have a third false alarm within 365 days.
  • Suspension Notice, $75 fee for a fourth false alarm and the police suspend attendance for the registered site for a year.
  • Suspended Site Dispatch Request, $100 fee and police do not attend.
  • Duress Suspended Site Dispatch Request, $75 fee and police do attend due to it being seen as an emergent alarm.

Saskatoon

  • $25 registration fee
  • $25 yearly renewal fee
  • $100 after two free dispatches in a 365-day period.

The recommendation would be for the Moose Jaw Police Service to increase its registration and renewal fees from $15 to $25 and increase the false alarm fees from $75 to $100.

"When I reached out to all of the other municipal centres here in the province of Saskatchewan and we did a fee comparison, and to temper this we have not changed the fee since inception, so in doing a review we are considerably behind what other departments are charging for this particular service," Jesse said.

Commissioner Mayor Fraser Tolmie was in favour of the proposed recommendations.

"I will note that we just recently updated our fire safety bylaw about a year ago, came into effect in 2019, so I think this lines up with modernizing and getting our bylaws up-to-date."

Jesse added that the cost to operate the bylaw is 25 per cent of a full-time salary and the increases would make the bylaw more cost-neutral.

The amendments will be brought to the city solicitor's office for consideration.