The village has decided to give residents and businesses a bigger break from now on if their burglar alarms are falsely activated.
The village fines businesses and residents who have an excessive number of false alarms, or more than two per year, because police must respond to the calls. Violators had 10 days to pay the fine before a $10 late fee was added to the charges.
If the fine still was unpaid after a second 10-day period, an additional $10 charge was tacked on. If the fine remained unpaid for 30 days, the charges were hiked to $50 for residential alarms and $60 for business alarms.
But many businesses complained that they couldn’t avoid the late fees because they had to send the bills to a corporate office and wait to have payment authorized, the village finance director said.
So trustees agreed Monday to relax the stringent payment requirements, allowing those with excessive false alarms 30 days to pay their fine.
