The Ventura Fire Department is considering refunds to owners of apartment complexes and motels charged for city smoke-alarm inspections that were never completed.

Some 415 property owners were sent bills in 2007, ranging from $220 to $440 depending on the number of units, to cover the cost of the inspections.

Many were not conducted within a year's time, however, because of scheduling conflicts, a lack of manpower and other responsibilities, said the city's chief fire inspector, Glen Albright.

Albright could not say how many inspections were missed.

State law requires smoke detectors to be hard-wired with a back-up battery, or have a 10-year, tamper-proof lithium battery, he said.

"There are some units that were not inspected during the 12-month billing period," he said, "and at this time we are evaluating providing partial to complete refunds."

A decision on the refund should be made within 10 days, he said.

John Dennis, a Ventura real estate broker who owns five apartment complexes in town, said the city has been negligent in charging for a service it hasn't provided.

"To me, this inspection fee was always a revenue grab," he said.

Last week, the Ventura Fire Department became the first in the county to charge a fee — $99 — for weed-abatement inspections, regardless if the property owners comply with brush-clearance laws.

The inspection fee, levied on about 1,200 homeowners near brush-covered areas, angered residents who said they had taken proactive measures to meet weed-clearance requirements and didn't appreciate being charged for a basic city service.

Ventura has also drawn criticism for being the first city in Southern California to charge phone customers a monthly fee for basic 911 emergency service.

Dennis said he paid the city for smoke-alarm inspections last year.

But he only heard from fire officials about scheduling an inspection at one of the three complexes he owned at the time, he said.

This year's bills for each property arrived in February. Again, he has received no phone calls to schedule a walk-through, he said. He complained, but got few answers from the Fire Department, he said.

"They are only doing this (the refunds) because they are reacting to the story" about the new weed-inspection fee, Dennis said.

"If their whole point is to insinuate that people are dying because of faulty smoke detectors, then they should check every detector."

Until the late 1990s, the city conducted annual compliance inspections, but it stopped because of the increased workload on a limited staff.

"The focus was more on the code enforcement portion of the job," Albright said.

Albright said the city reinstituted mandatory inspections last year with the intent of checking every smoke alarm, but it proved difficult because of scheduling conflicts between the inspectors and property owners who possessed keys to each unit.

"Oftentimes, we were playing phone tag with each other," he said. "We were spending more time coordinating an inspection than the time allotted for each inspection."

Instead, the city ended up doing "spot checking" for compliance, Albright said.

The city's three full-time fire inspectors assigned to the program often would show up unannounced, knock on doors, and inspect hallways and rooms where someone would answer and allow them to come inside, he said.

If alarms appeared in compliance, the city would allow property owners to conduct self-inspections of other units despite paying the full fee.

The inspectors have to juggle other time-consuming duties, Albright said, such as inspecting private and public schools, healthcare facilities, and sprinklers and fire-alarm systems in new and renovated structures.

Most property owners paid the fee last year, records show. The city is allowed to collect it to recoup the expense of inspections, under the California Health and Safety Code, Albright said.

The tiered fees were reduced this year, but the goal remains to inspect every alarm, he said. Triplexes and facilities with three to 25 units pay $173, down from $220 last year. Facilities with 26 to 50 units pay $272, down from $330. Facilities with more than 50 units pay $372, down from $440.

About 85 percent of property owners have paid their 2008 bills, according to department records.