[Adopted as Sec. 10-5 (Ord. No. 88-20) of the 1977 Revised General
Ordinances]
The purpose of this article is to alleviate
those conditions within the Township of Blairstown, whereby policemen
and fire personnel make unnecessary responses to alarms and thereby
drain the manpower, time, space and facilities of the Township of
Blairstown in providing responses to fire alarms and burglar alarms
within the Township of Blairstown.
As used in this article, the following terms
shall have the meanings indicated:
ALARM BUSINESS
Any business operated by a person, partnership, or corporation,
for profit, which engages in the activity of altering, installing,
leasing, maintaining, repairing, replacing, selling, servicing or
responding to a fire or burglar alarm system, or which causes any
of these activities to take place.
ALARM DEVICE
Any type of alarm-activating equipment which provides warning
of burglary, intrusion, fire, flood, or like peril.
ALARM SYSTEM
The installation in one or more buildings of one or more
alarm devices for the express purpose of giving visual and/or audible
warning of an emergency such as burglary, intrusion, fire, flood,
or like peril.
ALARM USER
Any person, firm, partnership, association, corporation,
company or organization of any kind in possession or control of any
building, structure or facility wherein an alarm device or system
is maintained.
FALSE ALARM
An alarm signal eliciting a response by police or firefighters
or any other public officials when a situation requiring a response
by police or firefighters or any other public officials does not in
fact exist, but excluding an alarm signal caused by violent conditions
of nature or other extraordinary circumstances not reasonably subject
to control by the alarm business or alarm user.
INDEPENDENT SMOKE DETECTOR
A device giving an audible alarm indicating smoke and/or
fire within a structure and not connected to an alarm system or to
any external sounding device outside of the structure.
All information submitted in compliance with
this article shall be held in confidence and shall be deemed a record
exempt from public disclosure pursuant to state statute(s). Any violation
of confidentiality shall be deemed a violation of this article.
The provisions of this article shall not apply to any alarm system installed on property occupied by any Township, county or state or federal government agency or office, nor to an independent smoke detector as defined in §
56-2.
Any person who intentionally causes the giving
of a false alarm shall be in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:33-3.
A fee schedule for the use and service of the
alarm system established at the Police Department of the Township
is as follows:
A. Alarm connection fee: $85.
B. Monthly monitoring fee: $20.
C. All other costs, fees and expenses are customers'
obligation.
[Amended by Ord. No. 93-10]
A. The person who receives the notice of violation or summons in reference to a violation of §
56-7 or their designated representative ("the alarm user") shall have the right to a hearing before the Township Committee to show cause why the penalty provisions of §
56-7 should not be enforced against said alarm user only if said alarm user files with the Township Clerk a written request for a hearing before the Township Committee within 10 days of the alarm user's receipt of said notice of violation or summons.
B. The hearing before the Township Committee shall be
heard within 25 days of the receipt of the written notice by the Township
Clerk or if no public meeting of the Township Committee is scheduled
within 25 days, at the first public meeting thereafter.
C. The alarm user may, at the request of the Township
Committee, be required to provide evidence of his or her good faith
efforts to cure, remedy or replace the malfunctioning alarm system.
[Adopted as Sec. 10-6 (Ord. No. 92-11) of the 1977 Revised General
Ordinances]
All one- and two-family residences within the
Township shall, within six months of the enactment of this article,
install and maintain in good working order smoke sensitive alarms
or smoke detectors on each level of that residence.
No owner, or agent of any owner, shall sell,
convey or transfer title, or permit a person or family to begin a
new occupancy of a portion or the entirety of any one- and two-family
residential premises within the Township unless and until that owner
or agent of any owner applies for and obtains a certification of smoke
detector compliance in compliance with this article.
The Department of Fire Inspections, through
its employees, and/or the Fire Subcode Official shall be authorized
to inspect residential premises upon the request of the owner (or
the owner's agent) of the residential premises in question and the
payment to the Township of an application fee of $25. The inspector
shall determine if an operable and operating smoke detector exists
on each level of the residential premises.
All persons described in §
56-13 above, as the local enforcement agency responsible for enforcing the Uniform Fire Safety Act (P.L. 1983, c. 383), shall also be permitted to issue the certification of smoke detector compliance on such forms as are approved by the Fire Safety Bureau of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs when the residential premises inspected are found to be in compliance with §
56-3.
Any owner or agent of an owner found to be in violation of this article shall be subject to the fines described in §
76-3 of Chapter
76 of the Code of the Township of Blairstown.