False alarm concerns raised at Barnwell council

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By Greg Price
Taber Times
gprice@tabertimes.com

It was a relatively quiet October for Barnwell as far as the detailed RCMP and Taber Emergency Services report went.

Village council examined the report at its meeting on Nov. 19 and found there were only a quarter the number of calls as there were in October 2014.

Calls dropped from 12 to three as Taber/Vauxhall RCMP dealt with two mischiefs and one traffic complaint.

There was also only one traffic ticket issued compared to six in October 2014.

Luckily, there were no collisions reported compared to two in October 2014.

Barnwell Mayor Eric Jensen did do some inquiries about the nature of an alarm in the previous month’s Emergency Services Report.

“That was a person driving a truck in a garage and it set off a CO2 detector,” said Jensen.

Barnwell Chief Administrative Officer Wendy Bateman noted that Barnwell village council may want to look into drafting a bylaw in the near future if false alarms become an issue down the road.

“I know that in Taber with people with home security systems, and if the alarm goes off and they phone you and you don’t remember the code and you are a little wishy washy, they will phone it into the fire department,” said Bateman.“In Taber, you are allowed to do that once. The second time you have a false alarm, you will get billed. Basically, it (the Taber bylaw) is saying if you have an alarm system, you better know your stuff. That’s something we may want to look into if it starts to become a problem.”

Barnwell Deputy Mayor Darrell Turner agreed, saying if the Town of Taber were to bill the Village of Barnwell directly for a repeated false alarm call, council needs a way to pass that cost onto the consumer as opposed to the taxpayer.

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