GREENVILLE – Nearly every year during budget time, Janet Chasse has raised the question whether surrounding communities are billed for the true costs of the services they receive from Greenville, including administrative costs.

This year, the budget committee member’s persistence resulted in a comprehensive study of the costs associated with the delivery of services such as police and fire protection, solid waste and recycling.

Embraced by the budget committee and selectmen, the recently released study shows that the combined outlying communities should be contributing about $13,000 more in administrative costs, according to Town Manager John Simko, who conducted the study.

“If our contracts with outlying areas cite the right of the town to cost share the ‘true cost’ of delivering solid waste and fire protection services, then we have not been providing a true cost for these services in the past because we have failed to identify the cost of administering these services into the budget,” Simko recently told selectmen.

For Chasse, the study brings fairness.

“I just want everyone to pay their fair share,” she said this week. She worries the revaluation under way will cause more stress and hardship on residents who have lived on the waterfront. Any way the town can help reduce taxes will benefit property owners and others in the community who are stretching their dollars, she said.

Simko said the study was not an easy one. He said the time spent by employees in administering the services was identified and a percentage was applied to the cost of operations, supplies and municipal building expenses associated with general government.

“I know it sounds like we’re splitting hairs, but it’s an example of how municipalities are being driven to find revenue to decrease property taxes,” Simko said this week.

Bills sent to Beaver Cove, Shirley and the unorganized territory which receive services from Greenville will reflect the additional costs, according to Simko.

Town officials also plan to shift the costs of repeated false alarms onto the property owners where the alarms originated.

Firefighters have responded to as many as nine calls in a 24-hour period to a camp where faulty security alarms sounded. Simko said the property owner lives out of state and left no key behind with a local resident.

These responses come at great expense to the fire department, Simko said.

To help offset these costs, residents at the June 5-6 annual town meeting will vote on an ordinance that would impose a $100 fee for the third false alarm at the same location within a 24-hour period.

Under the ordinance, fourth and subsequent false alarms at the same location within a calendar year would result in a $250 fee. Repeated false alarms at outlying properties will be addressed through contracts with the community where the properties are located, according to Simko.