The city of Suffolk approved a new ordinance to charge everyone who has an alarm system $25 a year to be registered with the city. They then outsourced the job of collecting the money to a company called ATB Services in Colorado.

Why?

Has anyone ever heard of ATB Services? Why did the money not go straight to the city treasurer? What is this Colorado company charging the city to collect this money, and are we even receiving any of it? How much money has been collected under this new ordinance?

The problem was false alarms. The solution should have been to charge those people who did not maintain or correctly operate their systems. Those owners should be responsible and should have been the only ones forced to pay a fine after two false alarms.

A 29-page ordinance was not necessary. Who got paid for writing such an ordinance? They must have been paid by the line.