LFUCG’s $15 CryWolf permit is annual, tied to the address, and still your paperwork
Lexington homeowners search “alarm permit Lexington KY,” “CryWolf Lexington,” and “do I need to register my ADT system” after they decide to order monitoring, not before. The permit is city paper. The system is a SafeStreets install monitored by ADT 24/7. Home Security Systems Lexington names the office on the quote. You still have to file it. Call (859) 710-8600 with the ZIP first. A wrong form is how a Georgetown house ends up with Lexington instructions it cannot use.
This article is the permit map we will actually say out loud. It is not a scare list. Inside Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, a monitored system needs a $15 annual alarm user permit through CryWolf. Georgetown deleted its user-permit in 2022 and still fines repeat false alarms. Nicholasville, Versailles, Richmond, Paris, and Winchester have their own desks. We name yours from the ZIP. We do not invent a collar-city residential user-permit dollar amount.
Ordinance 13-72 and the August 2024 CryWolf switch
LFUCG requires alarm users — residential and commercial, monitored and audible — to register. The city’s published purpose is to cut unnecessary emergency responses and to keep contact information current. The ordinance people cite on the city’s own alarm-system-registration page is 13-72. We are not the law department. We are the dealer line that will tell you the permit exists before you treat monitoring as the only paper in the stack.
Effective August 2024, Lexington Police started using CryWolf Services as the billing and permitting system. If you already had a current, active alarm permit, the city said no action was required; the next bill would come from CryWolf. If you did not have a current permit, you are required to register. That is LFUCG’s language, not a script we invented to upsell. New ADT customers in Lexington-Fayette are new registrations unless the house already has an active permit in the file — and even then, the permit is not automatically yours.
CryWolf is a vendor. LFUCG is the government. ADT is the monitoring company. SafeStreets is the installer. Home Security Systems Lexington is the 859 order line. Those four names are easy to mash together. Keep them apart. We do not log into CryWolf for you. We do not pay the $15 for you. We remind you after install. You file.
How to register: the city’s page, (833) 566-7734, and the $15
LFUCG publishes the process at lexingtonky.gov under government / departments / public safety / police / alarm-system-registration. Register online through CryWolf, or call CryWolf at (833) 566-7734 Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern. The registration fee is $15. The annual renewal fee is $15. You receive an annual renewal bill by mail from CryWolf. That is the city’s published schedule. Confirm it on the city page if a year has passed; we cite what LFUCG publishes, we do not freeze a number in our head against a future ordinance change.
The older paper form from the False Alarm Reduction Unit said the permit is non-transferable to a new address or a new owner, and that a non-refundable $15 had to go in with the application. CryWolf is the current front door. The non-transferable rule is the one that bites resales. A leftover keypad in a Chevy Chase hallway does not mean leftover paper in your name. Assume you need to register unless CryWolf already shows you as the user at that address.
Have the address, a phone number that you actually answer, and at least one other person who can get to the house. LFUCG wants contacts who can turn the system off. A UK student who lives in another state is a poor keyholder. A neighbor on the same block is a better one. Put the same people on the ADT call list after you have the permit number. Dispatch works better when the city file and the monitoring file match.
False-alarm fines when the system is registered
Fines are calculated on the number of false alarms in a calendar year. LFUCG’s published table:
- 1–3 false alarms: no fine
- 4th: $25
- 5th: $60
- 6th: $125
- 7th: $200
- 8th: $250
- 9th and after: $300
Those numbers are why the install walkthrough matters. A professionally installed system with every sensor tested is how you stay in the 1–3 band. A leftover panel nobody showed you how to cancel is how you climb the table. Ask the technician how to cancel an accidental trip from the keypad and from the app before the truck leaves. The first week in a Chevy Chase house is a poor classroom.
False alarms are not “the city being picky.” They are LPD rolling to a house that did not need them. Chief Lawrence Weathers’ department still has to answer real calls. Lexington recorded 20 homicides in 2025, the lowest in more than a decade, with breaking-and-entering down about 20.5 percent. That is not scare copy. It is context for why the city bothers with CryWolf: keep the file clean so the department is not training itself to shrug at your address.
The $100 unregistered trip
If your system is not registered and police respond to a false alarm, LFUCG says you will be fined $100 for each false alarm. That is the line that makes the $15 permit look cheap. Skip CryWolf, trip the system, and you have paid more than six years of registration in one afternoon. File in the week after install. Do not wait for the first accident.
Unregistered is not a loophole. It is the expensive column. New owners who inherited a leftover keypad often sit in this column without knowing it. The last owner’s permit did not become yours. The last owner’s monitoring did not become ADT. You order monitoring on (859) 710-8600. You register with CryWolf. You give ADT the permit information. Three steps. None of them is optional inside Lexington-Fayette if you want the city’s process to work the way it is written.
Audible-only systems are in the ordinance too. This site sells professionally monitored ADT, not a siren you hope the block hears. If you already have an audible box and you are calling us to put it on a center, you are still an alarm user. Register. Then let SafeStreets make it a monitored system instead of a neighborhood noisemaker.
Permits do not transfer with the deed
Closing on a 40502, 40509, or 40513 house does not move the CryWolf file into your name. The older LFUCG language said the permit is non-transferable to a new owner. Treat that as the working rule until the city tells you otherwise for that address. Call CryWolf or use the portal and ask whether the address is already in the file and whether you are listed as the user. If you are not listed, register.
Sellers sometimes hand you a faded card and say “the alarm is already permitted.” That card may be years old. It may be in their name. It may be from before the August 2024 CryWolf switch. Photograph it. Do not treat it as your permit. The same is true of a sticker on a leftover keypad. Stickers are not CryWolf accounts.
Photograph the leftover keypad before you pull it. Reactivation is a hardware question. The permit is a city-file question. You can have working sensors and no permit. You can have a permit and a dead panel. Order ADT so the hardware is live. File CryWolf so the city file is live. Do both in the same week.
Georgetown ordinance 2022-22 deleted the user-permit
Georgetown, Kentucky is Scott County. It is not LFUCG. Ordinance 2022-22 amended Georgetown Code Chapter 12, Article III and deleted the user-permit requirement. We will not invent a Georgetown permit fee. There is not a $15, $10, or $25 Georgetown user-permit on this page because the city removed that requirement.
Georgetown still regulates false alarms. The ordinance allows three false alarms in a calendar year without a civil penalty. The fourth and later false alarms are fined:
- Fourth: $75
- Fifth: $100
- Sixth: $125
- Seventh and subsequent: $150
That is Georgetown’s published false-alarm table, not a Lexington table we copied south. If you own a 40324 house, do not file CryWolf as if you lived in Chevy Chase. If you moved from Georgetown to Ashland Park, do not skip CryWolf because Scott County no longer collected a user-permit. The ZIP decides the office. We name it on the 859 call. You file what that office actually uses.
Nicholasville, Versailles, Richmond, Paris, Winchester: confirm the desk
Nicholasville is Jessamine County. Versailles is Woodford County. Richmond is Madison. Paris is Bourbon. Winchester is Clark. Wilmore and Midway sit on their own maps. Each has a city or county desk that may or may not collect a residential user-permit. We will not invent those dollar amounts. Confirm the office from the ZIP. The specialist on (859) 710-8600 will name the office we know. You still call that office and ask what they want in writing.
Independent cities are not Lexington Police dispatch in the same way. A Nicholasville house does not use an LFUCG CryWolf permit. A Versailles house does not use Georgetown’s false-alarm table. Mixing those papers is how people get a bill they cannot understand and a dispatch file that does not match the address. House versus condo, ZIP, cameras yes or no, leftover keypad yes or no — then the permit office. That is the order of the quote.
If a clerk in one of those cities tells you something different from a forum post, believe the clerk. Forum posts invent fees. We would rather send you to the desk than publish a number we cannot source. The local security guide is the hub. This page is the LFUCG detail plus the Georgetown exception we can actually cite.
Who files, who installs, who monitors
Home Security Systems Lexington takes the order on (859) 710-8600. A specialist designs the system from your openings. SafeStreets professionally installs it on a date scheduled from this line. ADT monitors 24/7 from a U.S. center. You file the CryWolf permit (or the collar-city paper). LFUCG bills the $15 through CryWolf. Lexington Police respond when a request for help is appropriate. Those jobs do not collapse into one company.
We will not stand in line for you. We will not log into crywolfservices.com/lexingtonky for you. We will not tell ADT you are registered if you are not. After install we remind you. The reminder is not the filing. Put it on the same week’s list as transferring the Kentucky Utilities bill. The lights and the permit are both address paperwork. The alarm is the one people skip.
Promotional monitoring is still $53.99 / $63.99 / $74.99 a month* with a $99 install* on many plans and a 36-month agreement. That math is the price article and the packages page. The $15 is not a fifth package. Do not add it into the monthly and then ask us why the quote does not match a blog. Permit is annual. Monitoring is monthly. Install is once on the promotion.
After SafeStreets leaves: the week you should file
File in the week after install, not after the first UK home night, not after Keeneland, not “when we get settled.” CryWolf wants the system on the books before a trip happens. ADT wants the permit information so a request for help matches what LFUCG expects. Waiting is how an accidental disarm during unpacking becomes a $100 unregistered fine instead of a freebie in the 1–3 band.
Bring the install paperwork. Bring the address exactly as KU and the post office have it. Chevy Chase, Ashland Park, Kenwick, Distillery District, Hamburg, Beaumont, Masterson Station, Tates Creek — those are Lexington-Fayette names, but CryWolf wants a street address, not a neighborhood nickname. 40502 is not 40509. Say the street.
Then call ADT’s monitoring side (the specialist will tell you how) and give them the permit number. A permit that sits in a kitchen drawer does not help dispatch. A monitoring account that does not know the permit number is an incomplete file. Two minutes. Do it while you still remember the login.
False trips you can prevent on install day
Most CryWolf climbs start with a motion sensor aimed at a ceiling fan, a door contact on a swollen Tates Creek slider, a garage tilt sensor that bounces, or a person who does not know the cancel code. The walkthrough is the fix. Walk every opening with the technician. Open the slider. Open the garage walk-through. Open the side door on a Kenwick bungalow that nobody mentioned on the quote. If it is a zone, test it.
Pets are a Lexington motion-sensor conversation. Say whether a dog has the run of the first floor. The technician can place motion where it belongs, or skip it if door and window contacts already cover the house. A motion that trips every time the retriever hits the hallway is how you burn the three free false alarms before Thanksgiving.
Learn the cancel path with the lights on. App first, keypad second. Put a spouse on the app. Put a neighbor on the call list who is not also at Rupp. An outage night is a poor time to learn this; so is a Keeneland Saturday when you will not hear the phone. Cellular backup keeps the signal alive. It does not cancel an accidental trip for you.
Leftover keypads and leftover (or missing) permits
Resales in Chevy Chase, Ashland Park, and Kenwick often have both a leftover keypad and a permit history that does not include you. New plats in Hamburg, Beaumont, and Masterson Station often have a leftover builder keypad and no permit history at all, because nobody ever put the builder panel on a center. Those are different CryWolf stories. Both still need you to register if the system will be able to request LPD.
Do not call a random 800 number on the sticker and “cancel” an account you do not own. You may be canceling someone else’s monitoring, or poking a dead account, or alerting a company that you are not the customer of record. Photograph the panel. Order ADT on the 859 line. Let SafeStreets decide reuse versus replace. Then file CryWolf in your name.
If CryWolf says an account already exists for the address, follow their prompt and call their customer service rather than opening a duplicate. The city’s portal warns that you may not be able to register if a file already sits on the street address. That is a feature. It is also why new owners need to get their name on the existing file instead of guessing.
What we will not invent on the 859 call
We will not invent a Georgetown user-permit fee. Ordinance 2022-22 deleted it. We will not invent Nicholasville, Versailles, Richmond, Paris, Winchester, Wilmore, or Midway residential permit dollars. We will not tell you CryWolf is optional inside Lexington-Fayette. We will not file it for you. We will not hide LFUCG’s $100 unregistered fine. We will not pretend a $15 permit is ADT monitoring.
We will not hand a Lexington form to a 40324, 40356, or 40383 address. We will not take the order on a web form. We will not promise a rush truck. Professional install is scheduled from this Lexington line. Other coverage is other coverage. Confirm the ZIP. This is Lexington, Kentucky — not Lexington, South Carolina or Lexington, Virginia, and not a Pikeville mill.
We will not use the permit conversation as scare copy. Empty hours, leftover keypads, and KU outages are why people order. CryWolf is how the city wants the file kept. Occupancy is still the product. House versus condo, ZIP, cameras yes or no, leftover keypad yes or no. Then the office. That is the call to (859) 710-8600.
Source, and how to check it yourself
Primary source for Lexington-Fayette: the City of Lexington alarm-system-registration page on lexingtonky.gov. Fees: $15 registration, $15 annual renewal. False-alarm table: 1–3 none, then $25 / $60 / $125 / $200 / $250 / $300. Unregistered: $100 per false alarm. CryWolf phone: (833) 566-7734. CryWolf portal: crywolfservices.com/lexingtonky. Ordinance referenced on the city page: 13-72. Billing vendor change: August 2024.
Primary source for Georgetown: Ordinance 2022-22 amending Chapter 12, Article III. User-permit deleted. False alarms 1–3 no civil penalty, then $75 / $100 / $125 / $150. Do not carry those fines into Fayette County. Do not carry Fayette’s $15 into Scott County.
Then order the system. Call (859) 710-8600. How to order ADT in Lexington is the process. SafeStreets installs. ADT monitors 24/7. You file CryWolf if the house sits in Lexington-Fayette. That split is the whole permit story.
If you want a neighborhood page after the permit talk, Chevy Chase is a 40502 example. The permit is still LFUCG. The monitoring is still ADT. The order is still the 859 call.