False Alarms, Real Costs

By Jean-Albert Maisonneuve, Asbury Park Resident

The Asbury Park Fire Department (APFD) responds to thousands of calls every year, but a troubling pattern has emerged. Chronic false alarms at Asbury Park Housing Authority properties, particularly the 3rd Avenue facility, are overwhelming the system, costing taxpayers, and stretching public safety resources thin.

As a former council member in Cranford, NJ, and liaison to both the police and fire departments, I’ve seen firsthand how deployment patterns affect public safety. The numbers in Asbury Park tell a story that can’t be ignored.

From a conservative standpoint, the 3rd Avenue facility alone has generated at least one call per day over the past year. That equals:

365 calls × $1,385 = $505,525 annually from just one building.

If the other two Housing Authority facilities experience similar call volumes, the total citywide cost is likely well over $1.5 million annually in unnecessary deployments.

Comparisons That Matter

For context, Cranford, with a population 56% larger than Asbury Park, had approximately 3,200 fire department deployments last year.

By contrast, Asbury Park logged over 7,000 deployments, more than double Cranford’s workload despite serving a much smaller population.

The math is clear: Asbury Park firefighters are being called out far more frequently, and a significant share of those calls are false alarms from Housing Authority buildings.

The Missing Deterrent: Enforcing and Updating Fines

Asbury Park already has a town ordinance that penalizes false alarms, but only after the third false alarm, with a fine of just $50. Not only is this rarely enforced, but it is also far too low to deter chronic offenders.

Had the ordinance been applied at the 3rd Avenue facility alone, fines would have totaled at least:

• (365 calls – 3 free calls) × $50 = $18,100 per year at the current penalty level.

If fines were raised to $250, as many other municipalities charge for large multi-unit buildings, the same facility would owe approximately:

• (365 – 3) × $250 = $90,500 per year.

Extend that across all three Housing Authority facilities, and the city could collect close to $270,000 annually — money that could be reinvested into better fire safety systems at those very properties.

Unresponsive Leadership

I attended a Housing Authority meeting to raise these concerns directly. Unfortunately, my inquiries were met with dismissiveness and inaction. Without financial accountability, the Housing Authority has little incentive to address the malfunctioning alarm systems that drive these costly false alarms.

Enforcing fines is not about punishment, it is about forcing action when cooperation fails.

Proposed Solutions

1. Enforce the Existing Ordinance – Apply fines consistently to Housing Authority properties after the third false alarm.
2. Increase Fine Levels – Adjust penalties to at least $250 per false alarm for multi-unit facilities, aligning Asbury Park with best practices in other communities.
3. Reinvest Fine Revenue – Direct collected fines into safety improvements needed for first responders and/or improvement needs for the city.
4. Ongoing Oversight – Require quarterly reporting of false alarm data and hold property managers accountable for excessive incidents.

Conclusion

False alarms may not burn buildings, but they burn through taxpayer dollars, firefighter time, and public trust. The data from the 3rd Avenue facility and the likely $1.5 million-plus annual cost across Housing Authority buildings makes the problem impossible to ignore.

I know strong leadership and accountability can solve this. Enforcing fines, updating outdated penalties, and holding repeat offenders accountable will save money, protect public safety, and let Asbury Park’s firefighters do what they do best: respond to real emergencies.