OAKLAND — Call them fees or fines, but no matter what the term, residents of the Oakland hills don’t want to pay to have their property inspected for fire safety.

Oakland Fire Department officials are conducting an audit to determine the validity of a rash of bills sent out to hill residents in the middle of last month.

The notices sought $330 from each homeowner who had violated city fire codes based on inspections done by city inspectors and firefighters. But many of the bills were for alleged violations that occurred several years ago, and some notices reportedly went back as far as 2012, one homeowner said.

The mistake has raised the ire of property owners, some of whom claim the problems have been taken care of and that they should not be required to pay.

While the audit is conducted, payment deadlines have been suspended along with any required hearings. Once the confusion has been cleared up, homeowners will receive notices telling them if their violation notice was accurate or that a mistake had been made and that they owe the city nothing.

Any decision can be appealed to a larger fire board.

Each year, the city inspects more than 25,000 public and private properties in the Oakland hills where a fast moving fire in October 1991 killed 25 people, destroyed more than 2,800 homes and caused more than $1.5 billion in total damage.

Homeowners must adhere to a set of state mandated rules that could prevent another such conflagration. They include clearing dry shrubs and dead vegetation, cutting tree limbs that are closer than 10 feet from a roof or chimney and removing tree limbs that are closer than six feet from the ground.

The initial inspection is free but homeowners have to pay $303 if the inspectors have to return for a violation follow up.

At a June 1 meeting at the Richard C. Trudeau Conference Center on Skyline Boulevard, fire officials announced that the city will waive the re-inspection fee if the property passes. That offer is good during the current fire year and officials said they are not certain whether that benefit will return in 2018.

The outstanding fees amount to around $400,000 leading some frustrated property owners to complain that the city is just trying to raise revenues to pay for more inspectors elsewhere in Oakland.

Given the confusion and errors in the program, homeowner Marla Schmalle suggested that the city cancel the bills and begin again.

“Unless this is some way to grab revenue, I would just wipe the whole thing out and start fresh,” she said. “Come up with a policy that doesn’t ask people to do things that are not reasonable.”

“It looks like a revenue thing and that is very irritating to the population,” she added.

But Angela Robinson Pinon, assistant to Oakland’s fire chief, said that kind of decision would have to be made at the City Council level and was above the pay grade of the fire officials who were at the meeting.

But the fees the city wants to collect are much lower than the amount Oakland could charge under state law. City Council members often set fees lower to avoid overburdening the public.

“The goal of this is not revenue,” she said. “If the state collected all that was legally permissible, the amount the city is leaving on the table is $1.3 million.

“This is not about paying for inspectors or generating revenue for the city, “she continued. “This is about fire safety and creating a disincentive for people to not be in compliance.”

Robinson Pinon referred to the bills as fees while those in the audience said the charges amount to fines

Other homeowners complained about the accuracy of the inspections. One property owner who was told to remove ivy was found to be out of compliance after she had dug the plants up. Months later, she was informed she had passed.

Resident Nancy Sidebotham was more blunt.

“When you say we have done something wrong, you have to prove it,” she said. “You better be taking pictures of everything you find because we are taking pictures and we are starting to compare one house to another.”

Fire officials said inspectors are well trained and that a supervisor can be called in to verify if the findings are correct.

Residents also asked about parcels owned by the city and other public agencies which are often out of compliance.

The city hires a private contractor to remove weeds and other flammable growth from median strips and other municipal areas, fire officials said.

The Oakland Unified School District, which owns hills property, clears its parcels in July when funds are available in the upcoming fiscal year.