(A) To the extent it is possible to do so without cost to the city, the Board of Public Works is authorized to contract for the installation of a uniform central monitoring system to receive visual and audible signals and perform other related functions over a signal line or lines at the emergency communication center (hereinafter ECC). The system shall have a capacity to meet present needs and the ability to expand for future needs, and shall be available to those who meet the requirements for permits under this chapter.
(B) An alarm user’s fire alarm system may be monitored at any outside facility chosen by the alarm user or his or her alarm business; provided that, if the fire alarm system is monitored at any off-premises location, it must also be monitored by the city’s uniform control monitoring system (hereinafter UCMS).
(C) However, a fire alarm system that is monitored by an outside monitoring facility (hereinafter referred to as an OMF), which has the capability to consistently notify the city’s UCMS in the ECC of the activation of a customer’s fire alarm system within 90 seconds of the activation of that alarm, need not also be monitored by the city’s UCMS.
(1) To facilitate random testing by the ECC staff of the 90-second maximum notification time requirement, each customer (both commercial or business and residential) of an OMF must have installed by its alarm installation company a test button, the activation of which shall provide to the OMF in the case of an actual fire; the communication room random tests will determine whether the OMF has the capability to notify the city’s UCMS of an alarm activation within 90 seconds of the activation of the test button.
(2) Tests of the 90-second maximum notification requirement shall be done in a random manner on the facilities of OMF customers; no OMF customer will be tested more than once per year, except as provided in division (C)(4) below.
(3) To perform these random tests, a member of the ECC staff will go unannounced to an OMF customer’s facility and, with his or her timepiece synchronized to the UCMS computer timepiece, activate the customer’s test button and note the exact time of activation (to the second); when he or she returns to the communications room, he or she will check the computer print-out for the time of notification by the OMF to the UCMS of a fire alarm at the customer’s facility, and thereby determine whether the tested OMF has passed or failed the test.
(4) If an OMF fails the test one time, notice thereon shall be given in writing to the OMF and its customer and the tested facility and its OMF shall be tested (unannounced) a second time within 60 days of the first test. If the OMF passes this second test, failure of the first test will be disregarded. If the OMF fails the second test as well, then either:
(a) The customer’s alarm system must (in addition, if desired by the customer, to continued monitoring by the OMF) be monitored by the city’s UCMS; or
(b) The customer must select a new or different OMF, which meets the criteria of this chapter.
(D) The OMF of an alarm system customer whose alarm system is not wired direct to the city’s UCMS or whose alarm system is not also monitored by the city’s UCMS, shall report the activation of its customers’ alarms by way only of the prescribed communications room emergency telephone numbers (as provided to the OMF by the city’s alarm administrator). On all of its emergency alarm-reporting calls to the ECC, the OMF must provide the individual four-digit customer account number of the particular OMF customer whose alarm was activated, which individual four-digit number is provided to each separate alarm system owner by the city’s Alarm Administrator.
(Prior Code, § 94.03) (Ord. 3483, passed - -1989)