Sheriff's Office racks up $419,000 this year from alarm ordinance

Sheriff Rod Shoap closed the books on the fiscal year Tuesday, giving just more than $1.5 million to commissioners. Part of it was returned immediately. The alarm registration fee generated $419,500 this year, with $186,720 of it handed over to the county.

The county handed it back. When commissioners adopted an alarm registration ordinance in March, they promised to plow proceeds back into law enforcement. Sheriff's Financial Director Bill Bergquist said $232,780 of the alarm fee proceeds went for software and staffing to collect the fees and track the registrations. The rest will go toward future staffing, eventually for deputies.

When he was pushing for the new ordinance, Shoap said the agency had responded to 35,000 alarms in 2001. Deputies found a grand total of 26 burglaries, none of them in progress when they arrived. Shoap pegged the cost of responding to false alarms at $1.5 million.

Bergquist said the agency hasn't started fining owners for repeat false alarms yet. The agency started registering alarms in June. Because of the short year -- the fiscal year ended Oct. 1 -- the annual registration fee is expected to generate more next year.

"We still have some, we know, who haven't registered," he said.

The alarm ordinance also carries fines for repeat false alarms, fines that start at $25 for unregistered first occurrences to $400 for a ninth false alarm. The program eventually is expected to generate about $750,000 a year, covering around half the estimated cost of responding to the false alarms.

Another big chunk of the money Shoap returned Tuesday came from housing federal inmates. Shoap said the jail's currently holding 100 or so inmates more than expected.

"We've got 100 a day more than we planned for," he said. "But we've got a double-digit crime decrease, too."