(Greensburg, IN) – Greensburg City Council on Tuesday night passed on first reading an ordinance establishing fire inspection fees and fines for businesses found to be in violations.
“We’re just trying to set something up so that we have a better enforcement mechanism on getting some of the problems that we’ve had in town fixed by certain businesses that have strung out their ability to fix items,” said Greensburg Fire Inspector Alan Campbell
He adds most of the violations he finds are with sprinkler and alarm systems plus fire extinguishers that are not up to code.
Since he began serving as fire inspector in 2019, Campbell says he’s received mostly positive responses, overall.
“But I do have a few places here and there that drag their feet,” Campbell said. “All of these fixes cost money, so that causes hesitation for people to get things fixed right away, and to make it safer for the people…things like that really need to be fixed.”
The plan was brought up by Fire Chief Nathan Stoermer in August.
“After five years of inspections, we’ve had some businesses that are basically repeat offenders of violations, after violations, after violations,” Stoermer told council last month. “We give them several months to fix it. We try to work with them in fixing it. We have some who still do not fix what they’re doing, so we’re looking to levy that monetary punishment to try to persuade them to comply with the fire and life safety code.”
Stoermer says it would start with a documented verbal warning, followed by first, second and third offense status, with an escalating fee schedule that would increase with severity and time.
An appeals process is included in the proposed ordinance
The ordinance is scheduled to go through a second reading – with a few verbiage revisions – next month.
