City Council - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

Good evening. I will now call the Auburn study session meeting for Monday, July 13th, 2026 to order. Tonight's study session meeting will be held both in person and virtually. Sean, can you please call roll?

Deputy Mayor Tracy Taylor.

Here.

Councilmember Ammer.

Here.

Councilmember Baldwin.

Here.

Councilmember Locke. Here. Councilmember Rakes.

Here.

Councilmember Sturgis.

Here.

Councilmember Clinton Taylor. Here.

Thank you, Sean. Do we have any agenda modifications this evening?

Yes, Chair, we do. We're going to have an introduction of Scott McCall, the new city chief administrative officer, second on the agenda tonight.

All right, second on the agenda. Or do we want to go first? You want to go first?

Yes. Okay. Mayor? Thank you. All of you know that we have been looking forward to having our new Chief Administrative Officer join us. This is an historic day because the City of Auburn has never had a Chief Administrative Officer before. And as he is coming in fresh from moving his car, I would love to introduce you to Scott McCall and have him, if you would like, to share a few words about yourself.

Sure.

There we go. Sure, thank you, Mayor and Council. It is very nice to meet all of you. I hope to get the chance to sit down with all of you individually in the next few days to have a chance to get to know you a little bit better personally. I most recently was city manager of the city of Sammamish. I'm very excited to come to Auburn and work with Mayor Backus. You have a great community, and I'm excited about all the things that you have going on and to jump in and try to help the team any way that I can. I have a sort of a diverse public service background if you will i've been a policy analyst i've done government relations and i've done the city management piece it has served me fairly well as a good combination of skill sets to have going into some of these roles and some of the challenging issues that you all have in front of you so This is my day one. It has been great to get to meet a whole bunch of the team. I promise that I probably won't remember most of the names, but I'm very excited to jump in with both feet and get to work with all of you and to make your wonderful community even better than it is. Thank you.

Next up on, and thank you, Mayor. Next up on our agenda for this evening, we have got our municipal court judge candidate presentation. Director Martinson.

Should I wait?

No? Yes? No? No, just have her come up and do it. Sir, come on up.

I wasn't sure if anybody else was going to be in this seat. Just take it away? Yes, please. All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for giving me the opportunity to speak with you all this evening. I know that you already heard from Judge Leyva a few months back, so some of this is probably going to sound familiar. It's a similar structure. And while the two of us came to this point in our careers from different paths, I think philosophies are gonna align pretty well. So I look forward to sharing with you a bit about myself and how I hope to lead the Auburn Municipal Court in a direction that our community needs from its local criminal justice system. So, like Judge Leyva, I'm going to speak to my professional background, my judicial philosophy, my vision for the court, what my ideas are for building community trust, and ways that we can start thinking about what a successful court looks like. First and foremost, I want you to know that I understand this community. I was raised in the neighboring Kent. I spent most of my life in King County and have called Auburn home for nearly nine years now. I am raising my family in this city and I am thrilled by this opportunity to shape the criminal justice system here. There couldn't have been a better fit for me personally and I hope you'll agree that my experience couldn't be a better fit for Auburn as well. I have experience in every attorney role that exists in the courtroom. I have experience with different judges, different prosecutors, different probation models, different court management systems, different court cultures. I began my career as a public defender. I was at that time working primarily in the city of Kent, but also in Lakewood, SeaTac, Kirkland, Sammamish, and Milton. After that, I relocated to California for a couple of years. There I practice private criminal defense work in both Orange County and Los Angeles counties. And then I was fortunate to come back to the Northwest to serve as a prosecutor for the city of Kent, where I've been since 2014. And then in 2022, I was promoted to chief of the criminal division, where I am very much a working manager. I was actually spending my weekend preparing for trial, which I was in this morning. We actually resolved efforts from pretrial motions just before picking a jury, but very active in my role there. And then last year I began pro teming in Tukwila and Kirkland municipal courts. I also attended the King County District Court pro tem training last fall and then added CTAC to my list of pro tem courts as well in early 2026. As the chief of the criminal division in Kent, I am responsible for leading a team of six other prosecutors, as well as three paralegals. I engage in training our newer attorneys. I engage in police training. I am constantly working with the court and the administration to figure out how to achieve the criminal justice goals for the city of Kent. And I also administrate our case management system. So I'm regularly working with that to extract data and statistics that track various ways that our work is evolving. And it really has been a lot over the last five years. I've also spent time testifying in Olympia on behalf of Kent on a variety of different proposed pieces of legislation as well as proposed court rules. I've also been a conference speaker multiple times at the association of Washington cities conference, as well as, um, the NA the annual conference for the Washington state association of municipal attorneys. Um, a few years back at the urging of our then chief, I created the Kent DUI court program. Um, that was in 2017 and really based on following the guidance from the national center of DUI courts. I saw it through its early years of implementation. I have since trained up another prosecutor to administer that docket, but I'm still heavily involved in the leadership, and I enjoy my role on that team. I also was involved in the early planning of the Kent Community Court, which we set up a few years ago. And most recently, we just started a DUI intervention docket, which is a new accountability model for our most dangerous DUI offenders. One area that Judge Leyva and I will really balance each other well is in our background. So I've been interacting with various court systems, or sorry, where he has been interacting with various court systems as an outside participant, I've really been integrated within one for a long time now. And so I have sort of this lived experience about how systemic changes to a court system can impact overall operations. But he will have that unique experience as really a customer of the court, right? Working as a private defense attorney, he has good perspective in what it feels like to interact with those systems. And so I think we'll really balance each other well with that. So I think Mayor Bax's nomination of me as your next judge, she's really presenting you with an excellent opportunity to have a well-balanced judiciary. Oh, I'm flying here. Wrong way. So in terms of, really went a long way, long way. This is a sensitive mouse. My apologies. So in terms of my judicial philosophy, as all judges must, I will ensure fair proceedings. I will interpret the law as it's written, not based on what I think the law ought to be. I plan to make rulings that are based on the facts presented, not on what I think happened. To me, being fair doesn't necessarily mean treating everybody the same. It means treating similarly situated defendants similarly. My personal approach to this role has been and will continue to be grounded in consistency, clear communication, and accountability. I think if the parties that regularly appear in front of me, your prosecutors, your public defenders, if they're paying any attention, they should be able to anticipate my rulings based on how I've handled similar scenarios in the past. I will communicate clearly with defendants to make sure that they understand their obligations to the court. I've seen sub judges actually require the defendant to talk back to them, right? Tell them what their obligations are before they ever leave the door. And I think that's a really simple tool, but it makes sure that folks understand what they're supposed to do and something that I imagine I will integrate into my practice at times. I think clear communication is a critical foundation for imparting defendants with that personal responsibility for their behavior and in turn it becomes a critical tool later if necessary to hold them accountable for their noncompliance. I think accountability starts and ends with clear communication. Defendants might not always be happy with what you have to tell them, but I find that they reflect more positively on the experience if they felt heard and respected throughout the process. They understand how and why you made your rulings, and they understand clearly their expectations and what's going to happen if they don't comply with those court orders. See if I can go the right way. Nope. All right. To, I think, effectively share my vision for the Auburn Municipal Court, we have to understand what the role is of any municipal court in our community. I think sometimes this is not something that's well understood by the public. But these courts were designed to be courts of rehabilitation. I mean, it's written by statute. They're designed to be problem-solving courts. They are meant to do more than just check boxes and send people on their way. That's what makes us different than county-level superior courts. We're supposed to operate in a way that keeps offenders from graduating to felonies. That's the whole goal here. And that will be my goal as a judge. What Auburn has had in King County was a one-size-fits-all approach. I mean, you have to be able to recognize that. But the needs of Auburn are not the same as the needs of Redmond. It's not the same as the needs of Bellevue and Shoreline, even Seattle, not even Burien, right? So what Auburn gets to create now is a local solution for local challenges, and that's really where I'd like to go and see the direction of this court come into focus. I'd like to see us develop procedures that are improving access to the court. It should be obvious to anybody who steps foot in that courthouse how to find and get an attorney if they can't afford one, plain and simple. I'd love to see simple e-filing processes, no need for user accounts or passwords if it can be avoided. Those are just hurdles, and folks who are interacting with multiple courts, that can become more onerous than you might realize. I'd like to see a limited use of phone trees, right? Real people answering the telephones. We have to have a robust access to language services for all interactions with the court, not just court hearings. We have, I think, roughly 100 different languages spoken in the Auburn School District, and you can guarantee we're going to see similar numbers represented in our court customers. I'd like to see Zoom appearances remain available for some types of hearings. That can certainly be a tool to improve attendance. So can text message reminders, I've seen some courts doing that. I don't have personal experience with it, I hear it works well. I'd love to see in-house probation services or an in-house resource coordinator who can help defendants navigate through their obligations. So these are just some of the thoughts that will help guide me in how I'm thinking about creating procedures for the court operations. And my vision, again, I've said it before, I'll probably say it more in this presentation, but my vision really depends on clear communication, trust, and respect. And those will be my expectations of anyone who comes to work at the court to represent the City of Auburn. If confirmed, I know Judge Leyva and I will be working closely with our court administrator who's here tonight to come to a consensus on court culture. But I'm confident in knowing that we all agree on a culture of teamwork and collaboration and that that goes a long way in fostering a workplace of buy-in and cooperation. I'd like to see a culture that will guarantee that when our employees are engaging with the public, and they will engage with the public, I mean, this is one of those high customer service opportunities, that that culture of helpfulness and respect will flow freely from our employees without even thinking about it. Judge Leyva and I both support problem-solving courts, and I think that you can trust that if I'm confirmed, that will be part of your new court. Transitioning to these types of court models has grown in popularity all across the state, across the nation in recent years. To put it simply, they're premised on the idea that warehousing somebody in jail often does little to help keep them from reoffending on a long-term basis. I think it's critical also if we go this route to keep in mind that long-term behavior change depends on community support. It also depends on following evidence-based practices. A lot of folks hear about treatment courts. It sounds like a great idea and they're going to call themselves a treatment court, but what they're doing doesn't follow evidence-based practices. we have to follow evidence-based practices if you want to see long-term behavior change in these programs they cost money so whether that's going to be through city funds grants donations of time and other non-monetary resources it's going to have to be something that our community supports it takes that type of commitment to fully realize the benefits which reduction in recidivism, long-term behavior change, as well as jail costs, savings, depending on how the program compares to past practices of the court. All Rise is the name of the organization that really puts in the labor on these types of courts. And they just published their most recent installment of best practices for treatment courts in January. And I believe that that should provide a good basis for how we're going to do this. Again, has to be buy-in and commitment to these evidence-based practices from all players, not just from the bench, but from the prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation, police department, elected such as yourself, and community members in order to realize that long-term success. So I'm eager to learn more about whether or not this is something that our stakeholders can commit to and really support. Lastly, I guess for my vision, coordination with city partners is gonna be an absolute priority for me, and it's something I'm familiar with and comfortable doing. Yes, I'm intimately familiar with what the misdemeanor criminal justice system looks like in South King County, I'm a resident of Auburn with firsthand observations of some of the areas of need, but I'm not so naive as to think that I have all of the answers. I don't think I can just come in here and wave a wand and immediately fix everything, nor do I think that everything needs to change. I know sometimes we talk about we're building this thing from the ground up, but that's not necessarily what needs to happen. I need to start with an understanding of what's been working. What does Auburn love about their court right now? What do we have to keep? And then figure out what the areas of improvement are. And that is, again, going to require direct, candid, sometimes difficult conversations with everyone involved. Again, police, prosecution, defense, even our local service providers. But I'm not afraid to have those tough conversations. For this new municipal court to be successful, there has to be community support, and that has to be built on trust. So this is also a top priority for me, and it's going to require some community participation. This court in my opinion, should be built together with input from all of the stakeholders. Again, electeds, police department, community leaders, service providers, prosecutor's office, public defenders, and the defendants themselves, and also community members who live here and raise their families here. So, you know, I guess, again, I kind of turn the table and say, what does a criminal justice system that all of those folks believe in look like? Does it depend on who the defendant might be? Does it depend on what the charges are? Does it depend on what the harm is? So these and other questions are the ones that I think need to be asked. I think task forces or advisory boards could be a real opportunity to try to get the answers to some of these questions and to shape what we're developing. Again, I think utilizing the problem-solving court models and therapeutic models help to build community trust as well. Again, that's something both Judge Leyva and I support. Those types of models really restore the community through rehabilitation. I think if there's a way we can co-locate services such that the court also functions as a hub, like a resource hub, I think that's a very useful tool, and I think Auburn knows that well from when King County was operating in community court there. When you have everything, it's sort of one-stop shopping that can be really successful. I don't think there's any reason we can't work with residents to try to craft community service projects that actively repair any harm that's been done to the community. I think that those kinds of projects also help promote personal accountability over punishment. I'd like to have transparent communication with the public. I think a lot of work can be done to try to demystify the judicial process for the public. I would love to build in methods to regularly share data, to share core policies, things like that with the community. And I'd love to create a mechanism that allows local residents to provide feedback, voice their safety concerns, recommend court reforms directly to the court. Somebody's got something to say, I want to hear about it. And I'd be happy to participate in informational sessions and find ways to bring the court to the community, help people understand both the capabilities of the court as well as the limitations of a municipal court, because there are some. As a prosecutor, I often spend time talking to crime victims and witnesses, and I don't know why, but I'm still surprised by the number of folks who either think the defendant's been in jail the whole time, or they think that once a defendant's convicted, that they're either gonna be hauled off to jail for a long time, or the victim is set for a payday and they're gonna get all of this restitution through damages or something like that.

Neither of those things are true.

Municipal courts largely favor treatment over jail time, even if they're not employing these community courts or treatment courts that we've been talking about. And the large majority of offenders lack the resources to pay any sort of meaningful restitution. So how does that change the conversation? I have to make that decision when I'm talking to victims and witnesses. And so the narrative often becomes less about looking back at what happened to that person and trying to help them understand how their participation in the criminal justice process can help prevent crimes from happening to somebody else. And I have to believe that having those types of conversations it almost empowers victims and witnesses to understand their role in the process, right? To understand how they're making a change in their community, even if something horrible happened to them. So those are the types of conversations that I wanna continue to have. I wanna continue to be transparent about the process, what we can and can't do. I wanna be accessible to the community, because I think that will build confidence in what we're trying to create here for Auburn. Again, the wrong way. So I've shared a bit about me, my philosophy, my vision for the court, as well as the community, but how will we know if any of this has worked, right? It's all great to say. And I'll give you the very lawyerly answer that I'm sure Jason has given to the mayor or council, and the answer is it depends. All right. I think measuring effective court operations should be the easier task, right? Have we avoided systemic backlogs? Are cases languishing in pretrial status? Are we using what we're paying for? Are we using our interpreters efficiently? That's a big problem area. A lot of places, you have an interpreter show up, they sit there for three hours to handle one case. That's not efficient. That's not a good use of city funds. Are we satisfying our budgetary obligations? Things like that. Following the data on that type of stuff, I think is relatively easy. But I would also want to sit back and ask ourselves, have we created a positive atmosphere? Have we created a culture of helpfulness? That's a place where I want to go to work. That's a place where people will come and engage in the process. Our customers, you know, defendants, victims, witnesses, lawyers, are they getting what they need from us or are they complaining, either formally or through social media rants? It's not as easy to track, but I think that if we have that two-way engagement with our community, we should be able to have this feedback pretty readily available. if we're being transparent and creating those opportunities. You know, data metrics and outcomes and things like that, they are useful. It's a useful tool. But I also think it can be too easy to pull data that supports the narrative that we want to tell. So I do want to sort of tread carefully with that type of information. You know, rising crime rates. It could mean that crime is rising. It could also mean that you have more police on the street who are discovering crime that's already existing. It could mean that you just have more reporting for whatever reason. Could mean that your population is increasing or your population density, right? People who live in apartments witness a lot more crime than people who live in single family homes and are further apart from their neighbors. Are you seeing more felony declines right because King County prosecutor's office due to public defense standards might be Limiting the number of cases. They're filing into King County Superior Court. So that could be Having an impact our new crimes simply being written into law either locally or at the state level So data can be tricky I can say In a city nearby to the north, 911 calls since last fall have been decreasing. And what that means is that there's more proactive patrolling. And in turn, that's increasing charges for certain quality of life crimes. It doesn't necessarily mean that that behavior has been on the rise, but that's what the data ends up looking like. because our resources are being pulled in different directions. So again, well, I think data can inform some of our decisions and I won't ignore any information that's brought to me. At the end of the day, my job is gonna be to follow the law and to be impartial. And I take this commitment seriously and if confirmed, I will honor it every day that I'm serving Auburn. So whether our system of justice has been effective, I think will largely depend on the needs of our community. I probably have more questions than answers. How does our community want to measure this? Is it going to be the cost of operating the court? Is it going to be the jail budget? Are we looking at recidivism rates, overall crime rates, or is it going to be quality of life? Do our community members feel safe in their community? As a community member myself, I participated in some public safety conversations that the city put together last year, and I learned a lot about the concerns of my neighbors. I also learned what solutions the city had to offer, and I gained an understanding of some of the limitations, right? We can't do everything. We can't be everywhere all the time. So I guess I'm eager to see another chapter in those types of conversations, see an opportunity where we can get input about what court effectiveness really means to the residents of Auburn, because I think that's what matters, and take that information and build it into our model from the start. That's all I have. I want to thank you all for taking time to learn about more about me. I love getting the chance to tell you what I'm all about and I would be honored to receive your confirmation next week and I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you, Sarah. Certainly appreciate the time and effort that you had put into this presentation for Council tonight. Council, any questions for Sarah this evening? Council Member Baldwin.

Hi. Thank you and welcome. I appreciate your presentation. I'm curious, with the work that you have done near with some of the King County courts, one of the areas that I have always been impressed with their system is making sure that for the judges that there is ongoing opportunity for training and staying current on making sure that data can be used to track equity, make sure that, you know, a sentencing is occurring within the community, that it's being distributed in, like you said earlier, a fair and reasonable manner, and making sure that there's work to, you know, avoid biased, like anti-biased training. What do you have in mind as far as training for the court system if you're taking the leadership role?

for myself or for employees of the court? Well, The Judicial College is going to be the natural place to start. There's also the District Court Municipal Judges Association that provides ongoing training. I was just speaking to one of the judges in my court whose area of focus for the state really is that bias training and things like that. So I know that he would be an excellent resource. In terms of the rest of the staff, I mean, that's something that Judge Leyva and I and Melissa and Patrick are going to have to figure out. I think ethics training is absolutely someplace that we need to start. Yeah, I mean, those are great things. Yeah.

Any more questions? Sounds good. Any more questions, Sarah? Thank you very much. Certainly appreciate your time. Thank you. All right. Our next item is the flock camera audit presentation provided by Attorney Whalen and Chief Collier.

well good evening council mayor jason whalen your city attorney this topic came as a matter of new business from the council to the mayor and staff In anticipation of the presentation that will be led by Chief Collier, I did send out to all council members an email that had some advance information. One was a well-written article by a former lawyer from our office here in Auburn from MRSC. And that was what to know about the new restrictions on flock and similar camera systems passed by the legislature most recently. One was a message from flock safety itself. You'll hear more about that tonight from the flock representative present. And the other was some information on some court decisions that were fairly recent that talked about plate readers and the concept of plain view to emphasize the fact that contrary to perhaps some comments you've been hearing there has not been court determinations or cases that the flock system used to identify defendant vehicles violated the Fourth Amendment. So I wanted you to have that information in advance so you could think about it in anticipation of tonight's presentation. And with that, I will turn it over to our police chief. Mark, call here.

With me tonight is Sherika Wilkins. She's with FLOC. So first off, I'm going to address the audit questions that were brought up or that requested more information on. So when you talk about Senate Bill 6002, it has been codified in RCW, so it's under Title 10.117. So it does not prohibit law enforcement from hiring an independent auditor. The bill holds law enforcement agencies solely accountable for the results of the audit. And if an agency chooses to contract independent third party to review their logs for compliance, they have to be provided in their annual report. So there's two types of data that FLOC provides, and it's spelled out in the RCW now. So ALPR data, so those are the physical images that officers review of the vehicle, the license plates, anything to do with the vehicle as far as color, times and geographic locations that it was located at. And then it's the audit trail data. That's all the metadata that shows who's logged into the system, when they looked up that vehicle plate, case number associated, reasons that vehicle was searched. So an external auditor will only be able to access the system data logs rather than the actual vehicle license plate images. So with the legislative distinction under Section 8 of now RCW 10.117, only the audit trail data can be viewed by an external auditor. And the law explicitly, very explicit in the law authorizes this audit data to be analyzed for tracking internal policy compliance. And then just talking about public records related to this, so there are data exemptions now of any flock data that is entered in the system or viewed in the system. So part of the law, it did amend the Public Records Act to shield the auditing and tracking data from broad public disclosure. It ensures that ANC or its hired compliance reviewers can handle these logs securely. That means, like, you would not be able to see visual of the license plate, the cars, any, you can't get, very limited circumstances, I believe, for doing studies, those types, like research studies, things of that nature, is the only allowances that somebody may be able to get it under the public records law. So they're not able anymore to, you know, if I know like my ex-spouse or something, their license plate, they can't request a public records of all the times this license plate was seen in FLOC, where it was seen, so there's no way for somebody to get that information right now under the law. So that is spelled out. It's part of the no investigative exploitation under that public records. The ALPR system that's retained by us, the audit trail, it cannot be searched, analyzed, compiled, or indexed for investigative purposes. An external auditor cannot use their access to mine the data for criminal behavior or patterns outside of the compliance audit itself. So that means an auditor can't, is not supposed to look at that information and try and get, you know, use it for nefarious purposes if that's what they intended. It does ban agencies from making any of that data that we have in our system because we own the data, which we'll talk about as well a little bit later. We can't make that available for purchase, sale, lease, rent to any outside entity that may want to do, like, you know, tracking for commercial purposes, that sort of thing. And under the bill, it is a gross misdemeanor for anybody, mostly law enforcement related, to willfully and intentionally permit unauthorized access or disseminate that ALPR data. So when I talked about prior, the law holds the law enforcement agency specifically and solely responsible for its data because we own the data. And so, agency requirements right now under the law, we are required to register our ALPR systems and policies with the Attorney General's Office by September 26th. We have done that as of July 7th. Beginning December of this year, any change that we make to our ALPR policy internally, we have to provide that to the Attorney General's Office, showing, hey, we made this change under, you know, whatever section may be affected. And then beginning in December 30, beginning December 31st of 2027, we actually have to publish report detailing our compliance with all the requirements, any audits that we have done, and our model policy. The model policy is not written yet by the Attorney General's office. Once that is published, we either have to accept it as written or if we choose to continue with our policy the way it is, we have to show how our current policy complies with everything that the AG's office will list in their model policy. So it does not really behoove an agency to stray far from what the Attorney General will eventually come out with. And that process, again, they are not required to provide that model policy to us until the end of 2027. So it's going to be a little bit, but we have to be in compliance with the law, which we've already shown, hey, we are complying with the law right now.

So we are on record with them as well.

So those are kind of the audit issues. Right now, I think Attorney Whalen, Jason, provided information on some companies that have done external audits in California. The one thing with those is those were done for specific purposes because they believed there was federal agencies that were using flock data. Our data, as we'll talk about again in a few minutes here, we don't have any federal sharing partners. Federal agencies can't get into Washington State. Washington State restricts any federal access to the system through FLOC. FLOC has complied with that. And so when we talk about future, we'll show you basically what our transparency portal looks like. It is available right now on our public-facing page under the police department that anybody can go on there right now and see all the agencies that we share with in Washington. We don't share with any other external agencies. states or federal governments we can see it sounds kind of strange they can share their information with us we don't share with them so we have partners outside of the state that that we can look for it like we have a vehicle that's stolen we can search their system but they cannot search ours So it's kind of a one-way sharing. That's the way California and I believe Illinois is as well right now. So with that, I'll turn it over to the next portion of our presentation to Sherika, and she'll talk about FLOCC as a whole and

At the end, we'll answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Chief. Hi, everyone. I'm Sherika Ware-Wilkins. I'm the Public Affairs Manager for Flock Safety. I live in Seattle, Washington. Before this, I was leading in the Senate or a Senate campaign in Georgia, my home state. I'm going to have work in the United Nations within the US government. So I come by this work, understanding the civil liberties conversation that folks are having concerns about, as well as understanding the importance of community safety and community values not being opposites of each other. So I just kind of want to point a bigger picture. There's a lot of things going on in the news, a lot of concerns folks are having. And I want to answer those questions and be very transparent with what's going on at Flock and see where your guys' questions and where your head comment stands with the current legislation and how it impacts Flock. So I think starting off, I want you guys to know that you're not alone in some of these early conversations you're having about the technology. We have about 12,000 customers. Half of those customers are law enforcement agencies. So I'm going to have to come over because I'm a little blind. Okay. Thank you so much. Half of those folks are law enforcement agencies, like here in Auburn. But a lot of those agencies are within Washington State. And since 6002 has passed, we've had agencies not only come back to us when they had concerns, you know, obviously folks turn off their cameras to kind of investigate like you guys are doing. Some of them have came back. Some of them stayed alone. So you guys are in a process like many other cities here in the state of Washington. Around 2,800 crimes a day are solved with the technology. If you look at a map of flock cameras, they're very concentrated all throughout the country, in the south, over here. So this is like technology that is widely being adopted in a system that folks are using as a tool, one of the many tools that officers like the Auburn Police Department have. And 10% of those crimes are being used and being solved by flock. So we also have private companies like Home Depot, Lowe's, A lot of the grants are coming through retail grants and things of that nature. I think an important thing to note is that while a private entity can give Chief Collier access, he could never give access to that private company for the public good. So I think it's important to note that that data is being housed and protected within the city of Auburn. So I think Chief said it a lot. The data is owned by Auburn. You know, the city council, whenever we bring, when you guys bring forth what the policy will be for your ALPR, that's what it is. And if it follows the state and local guidelines, we don't have a say in what that looks like with your data, including the audits and things of that nature. FLOC, big picture, we delete 30 days. But within Washington, under the Senate Bill 002, you actually only have 21 days. And if it's an active investigation, you need an active warrant to be able to extend past that. Because obviously solving crime, as she knows, takes time. And that is like the guideline that Washington came up with to say, this is the guideline between access we need to stay safe with the data and what is actually necessary to solve crime. And there's no facial recognition. I think that's a bigger piece people have problems with, right? When you're thinking about, like, are they getting my fingerprints? Are they watching me? Are they tracking my comings and going? That's not what we do. That is a whole different can of worms that takes a lot of additional oversight from federal government. So we are only capturing a point in time image of the rear facing view of a license plate, which according to several federal judges, or actually all of them that this has went in front of, this is not a violation of Fourth Amendment rights. So we're not illegally searching and seizing. This is important to note. So Chief kind of mentioned this a little bit about the transparency portal. This is like our baby, our one in the kind thing that we've created so that anybody in this room can go to the website that you guys house to go look and see who you guys sharing with to make sure those things are under wraps. And that way, like a council member can say, OK, I want to see what's the latest in the last 21 days. of who they've been sharing and what that has looked like. So we're trying to create systems in place so folks don't feel like this is all happening in isolation, and that way folks feel like they have some visibility into the process. So every search requires a registered ID with an offense type so you can track what actually the offense was mapped to that thing. And we also have permanent audit trails. So while the data is deleted, you always can look back at what the audit was. So that never disappears. And we also, in addition to Senate Bill 06002, we encourage agencies to do regular audits of that to make sure that they're in compliance with what their counsel has agreed to and what makes sense to the department. So there is also within our system that you can flag atypical searches because like why is Officer Bob searching for the same license plate ten times? And chief will be able to identify that and that's how we kind of track misuse of the system. And anything you've seen, a lot of the things you've seen in the news about us, like different cases in different states around some of them issues has been because we've been pretty transparent through this system when different issues have arisen. So down in Texas, when there was a concern around abortion rights, it was because that was tracked to say someone looked up someone based off of this thing. And that was flagged to the attention. And though it was never brought to where this person was being prosecuted for that, it's just important to note that our technology is the one that's like being forth and bringing these issues to the table. This is a little bit about the compliance features. So you can talk a little bit about the search filters, what you're able to see. Obviously, under Senate Bill 602, you can't look up immigration or any reproductive things of that nature just to kind of make sure things are above ground and people like some of the bigger issues people feel unsafe around. Those conversations have already been happening. um the permanent autologues that we spoke to and the legal response right so like if the federal government comes to us and says hey we got a warrant for auburn we need to turn over their data we're contractually not obligated we can't do that we would have to say we would have to come to chief who would then bring it to you all and it would be handled through the city not through flock so i think that's an important thing to note when people have concerns about the larger federal government stepping in and insisting upon something that you know that is kind of our standard of how we operate and we can talk about some of the different the different instances as well. So let's get a little bit versus the myth and the facts. So one of the myths is that we're tracking everywhere you go. So again, this is like one point in time and these are deleted if they're not tied to an active investigation. So we can already talk about the Fourth Amendment and how those things work. And we also already kind of discussed some of that. FLOC sells customer data, compiling all of it into a national database. So the way we kind of keep things safe is that there is no centralized FLOC database. Everyone has their own central pieces. So I know one of the things that you guys were concerned about was, I guess one of the reasons why you want to do your own audit is because you have concerns about the safety of the system. So I kind of want to talk to you a little bit about the things that we're doing to kind of protect that. Whenever we are creating the product, right, it's a lot of things to threat modeling, which is like your what if questions. What if someone hacks it this way? Or what if someone is able to access it in another way? Scanning and fixing code as you create the code is something our people are doing. Vulnerability scanning. And offensive penetration testing. So this is actually our third party audit system. So we use a company called Bishop Fox, which is the industry standard. A lot of Fortune 50 companies use it, including our own, which is them taking the time to attack our systems to see where are we vulnerable. We also have ethical vulnerability disclosure program, which is also called a bug bounty program, where we pay folks who, if you're able to identify an issue in our system, we'll pay you for bringing that to us in an ethical way. Like they were able to identify this issue in our system, we can solve it and we can pay them for that service. So I think that's something that's been really strong. So facial recognition and private information. So there's no social security. We're not capturing date of birth. Like they're running tags. We're just providing that information for them to be able to confirm that. And that's how we also protect from, that's how we also reaffirm our accuracy where, you know, we encourage our officers and our chief can speak to this as like, We confirm how likely this is to be correct, right? And the officer goes and confirms that double text against the tag number that they're visually seeing. It's not, this is just a tool. We are definitely not taking the policing out of the police work. This is just an opportunity for officers to have something that's, you know, some would say is like one of the better things since fingerprinting to be able to do their jobs in a way when we have officers, you know, If cities are facing budget costs and it's kind of been an unaffordable thing, this is just a way that we've been able to support. So LPR negatively impacts community of colors. I think this is something that was really important to me before I started this work. So we're really grateful to have the endorsement of the Oakland chapter of the NAACP, but this gives us outside of those things, this is objective police work where people are not being identified for the color of their skin, but because of like their actions. And it's a separate thing to be able to do those two things. And people shouldn't be at stake where it's like people should be able to feel safe and also be in a position where they're being protected and not being identified racially. So we also have the endorsement of Hispanic chapters of Chambers of Commerce and Chinese chapters of Chambers of Commerce throughout the state, throughout the, I should say, throughout the country. So it's important to note that these are designed to detect something outside of this black and brown residence so folks don't feel that unsafeness. And we know we're grateful to be still solving crime. I'm happy to provide the council with a list of crimes we've been solving even over the last year. I know chief probably could speak to it as well before cameras were deactivated, how it has been impactful. So I kind of want to speak a little bit about customer data and you know, how we're able to do machine learning in ways that feel safe, because that's one thing people have concerns around, which is, you know, big picture is we take aggregate data from this, which is like you remove any identifying factors to make it something that is identifiable to Auburn. But it's the way we know the difference between a Dodge Camry and a Mustang. um so that's kind of how we train our systems but we also respect if councils don't feel like that's something they want to engage with so we have contracts that are amendable and up to conversation if you want to opt out of machine learning if you don't feel comfortable with that um so we are always evolving and trying to think of ways that counselors can engage in our technology in ways that are not um against what they would like to do i'm going to speed up a little bit because i have a few more And we kind of talked about Senate Bill 6002 a little bit, but this kind of just kind of gives you an overview of the law. We are actually doing a training on July 27th, which is just another opportunity for our officers to know how to pull the audit logs, just to make sure that you guys are not running into later issues with Attorney General's, with the Attorney General's office. So it kind of gives us some sharing overview and things of that nature. and the actions that we've been taking, like removing NCIC, which is the national database, and also making a connection with WSP, Washington State Patrol, so that every agency can do an MOU directly with them to be able to access WSIC alerts. So that data has, like, we have access to that data, and they're using hot lists that are not against systems that are against Senate Bill 6002. This is a little bit about the court challenges in which we've been able to communicate, that they've been able to communicate throughout the board that this is not a violation of Fourth Amendment rights. A quote from Yakima Police Department who says that this has been, like, life-changing to their agency and a really effective game-changer in their systems. And, you know, in addition to some of the things I mentioned earlier around the threat modeling and the protections, we are also FBI sieges compliant as well as National Defense Authorization Act compliant just around different certifications. And within the system, If you sign an NDA, you can get access to all the compliant measures that we are currently under compliance with. And some people think this is a left versus right conversation. We're grateful to have bipartisan support. And I always like to say sometimes people hate me equally in and out across the country. So it's just one of those things where there's tough conversations that are being had, but we also are grateful to have bipartisan support in so many places. it's important that we note that you know safety is not something that is debated around the aisle and I think as people think about their own political leanings that that's important to say for people members of the public as well as your constituents and then wrapping up with the Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and of course, NAACP, which I mentioned earlier. We have the support of them and many other trusted partners that this work is life-changing and supportive. And it's just one of the many things that officers have in their toolkit. So, you know, I think the understanding is that, you know, this, we don't have, I think the challenges in data is capacity to connect it to it. So, you know, we are grateful to be in a position where we just want to empower the agencies to be able to do this work. And I hope that, you know, we, something we can discuss more. I'm happy to answer any questions you all might have tonight for me or Flock. And if I don't know the answer to that, as I'm not a lawyer, I'll make sure that I get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chief. Thank you, everyone, for this presentation tonight. Chief, I'll start off with the first question in the sense that do we have measurable data on what FLOC has worked towards for solving crimes within our community?

So we do we do. Track cases that we've used flock for one of the the requirements that will is coming up under the the now RCW 10.117, is we'll have to track basically from initial flock hit all the way through was this case prosecuted. So it will involve some more collaboration with prosecutor's office. But various categories that we've used it through cases right now, we use it just in the first six months of this year on 90 plus cases. 24 of those regarding stolen vehicles, 23 gross misdemeanor or felony level theft reports, 10 assault reports, two burglaries, five eluding cases. The flock system, it can only be used right now for gross misdemeanors or felony level crimes. So these are... I'd like to say higher end crimes that we're using it for now. But it is becoming, we are using it a lot more as officers get used to this system. So I mean, I have plenty of numbers. If, I don't know, I can probably pull up our website on here. Obviously, I mean, that photo in time, because it does change. But if you go to our police website, just a second.

Capture your password.

Yeah, that's not my password so I Don't have the shortcut right to our police I have to go the long way to get there So once you make it to our police website if you go down to useful links It is flock safety or transparency portal. So we talked about this briefly. So this will pull up basically everything that's going on in Auburn, the basic facts of our system. Our data retention is set at 21 days. How many cameras currently are in operation? So we are authorized 40. There's some cameras that are down. We did have to adjust a couple cameras once the law came out, angle them away because they were set up near churches. So in interest of safety, you know, whether we captured somebody going into a church, it's considered a protected place. And so we angled the cameras away to make sure you can't capture anybody going in and out of those types of places. Yes. So our access policy there's on our website. Our policy is on our website as well. That's another requirement that we had, but down at the bottom of recent feature that we did add, we added all the agencies that we share with are all in Washington state. So you can scroll through the list of there, but we also added. A public search audit, so you're able to go on there. And open the audit trail. It doesn't have as much data, but it'll show like the date, how many networks were searched, and the offense type. So anybody in the public can go and get this data to show that, yes, we are searching it for reasons that are spelled out in the law, which is weapons offense, assault battery, a lot of domestics, things of that nature. So people are able to just kind of go through this. I think this one. This goes back a window of 30 days. So there was 499 searches just in the past 30 days of this system. That's also on our, save that. BUT RIGHT UNDER NUMBER OF SEARCHES, IT WILL SHOW HOW MANY SEARCHES HAVE BEEN DONE IN THE LAST 30 DAYS. SO THESE ARE DIFFERENT THAN WHAT'S BEING RETAINED. THIS IS THAT META DATA THAT'S RETAINED FOREVER FOR THE SYSTEM. SO IF SOMEBODY DOES AN AUDIT, THEY CAN GO BACK. THIS IS THE DATA THEY PULL. THIS IS DIFFERENT FROM THAT ALPR DATA WHERE IT'S RETAINING LIKE A VISUAL OF A VEHICLE OR VISUAL OF THE LICENSE PLATE. SO THIS IS ALL PUBLICLY AVAILABLE. now on our website.

Council, questions? Councilor Surgis. Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

In meeting with some folks and getting questions, I I'm curious on how do, I keep getting asked, how do we know the data's being scrubbed by FLOC? So when we hear, or I know, I'm confident we own the data and I'm familiar with vendor management and signing contracts. but there's just this additional belief that you know flock is keeping you know has this this all the data somewhere even though it's ours and then they're not scrubbing it and then they are sharing it with folks because for for business purposes so how do we know that that's I guess it's that that to put that worry away.

Yeah, thank you, Councilwoman. I think, well, first thing we could share with them, we use Amazon AWS Web Services, which is like the federal recognized standard for data deletion. I have a full package that can walk you through the full step-by-step basis of how it is scrubbed. So I'll send that over to you so you can have it for your constituents. Awesome.

The other half of that is the metadata. That's what we have to retain because we have to report on that starting in 2027, the annual audits, which is based on the metadata. So that's different, like I said, from the ALPR data. Awesome.

Any more questions? Council Member Baldwin.

Yeah. FIRST, THIS ISN'T QUITE THE PRESENTATION THAT I WAS EXPECTING BECAUSE I HAD UNDERSTOOD COUNCILMEMBER LOTT'S REQUEST TO REALLY BE SEEKING VENDORS TO PROVIDE A THIRD PARTY AUDIT. AND SO THIS SEEMS TO BE MORE OF A CONTEXT OF WHAT'S HAPPENED WITH THE NEW STATE LAW AND A PRESENTATION BY OUR VENDOR THEMSELVES. And one of the things that seems to be missing out of this presentation is the error rate that exists for plot cameras. Sherika, I'm not looking for your input.

Okay.

So you don't want to know the error rate?

I HAVE INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT HAS COST OTHER CITIES WHEN ERRORS HAVE OCCURRED BASED OFF OF ALPR ERRORS. THERE WAS BRITTANY GILLIAM AND HER FAMILY IN AURORA, COLORADO IN AUGUST OF 2020 WHERE their car had been shown up in a hot list, except it was not the right vehicle. And so that particular mistake wound up costing the city of Aurora $1.9 million because of a data error. There was a situation with Denise Green in the city of San Francisco where she had been paid out a settlement of $495,000 for her seizure at gunpoint, constitutional injury, and emotional distress from yet another flock data error. Brian Hofer received an almost $50,000 settlement for a similar instance. In one of these cases, the ALPR had misread three as a seven. In one, it had the wrong state. And so I think the situation that I see with this, and I am going to share a copy of this with my fellow council members, is that there's a reality if the fact that these are not yet you know, you're looking for consistency, but the information that I've seen in a number of periodicals is that there's, on average, a 10% error rate that tends to happen with your system. And I expect that you're going to continue to improve upon that through machine learning. But the reality, at the end of the day, is that when there are these mistakes, and they are mistakes, they are very expensive mistakes. And that is a concern that I have for our city, not only for the fact that I don't like the idea of our citizens having a chance of being inappropriately pulled over because of bad data that's being provided by a system that's not yet where it needs to be. And I don't like the idea of the cost that's associated with that from a risk perspective. So I would hope that my fellow council members can take the time to read through this as well. Council Member Taylor.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. My comment's going to be a little bit different. I didn't really appreciate that Councilmember Baldwin when our guest was getting ready to say something and it almost sounded like he shushed her. And so then you went into presenting information that you brought, but I think it's fair and also respectful to be respectful of our guest because you don't know what she was getting ready to say. And so if you didn't want to hear it or you wanted to wait, I would have preferred, hey, can I finish my comment and then allow that person to speak. So I thought that was kind of rude. And so I just wanted to call that out.

Point of order. I appreciate your comments. Council Member Baldwin was out of line. We're going to get back to the information that you said there was a 10% rate Being wrong, I'd like to hear what our guest has to say, and then we can continue the conversation. Thank you. My privilege. I'm going to lean on my parliamentarian here.

What's the point?

The point that I would have is that it is the interest of this vendor to present information that is most beneficial to her company. It is not necessarily her mission to serve our residents and our community members.

It's factual information is what she's providing. So am I.

I may make one point. So the information that's entered in the flock database comes from WSP, from WASC. So WSP is the one that entered it. Under the state law, an officer cannot make a traffic stop or stop a vehicle just based on a flock hit. They have to verify the information that's presented in flock. So it may alert that a vehicle with this license plate was on this vehicle. hit but the officer has to actually see the vehicle they have to verify that yes it is the vehicle does this plate match now a wasic hit regarding the warrant or stolen or something of that nature they have to verify that that's written into the law in under rcw 10.117 and it's you know, any willful or intentional misuse of the system comes back on the officer as a crime. So it behooves the officers not to engage in criminal activity.

Councilmember Taylor, did you?

JUST REAL QUICK FOLLOW-UP, AND I APPRECIATE MY COLLEAGUE THE INFORMATION, AND THERE WAS NO COMMENT ON THAT. IT WAS JUST THAT I DIDN'T APPRECIATE THE WAY YOU WOULD CUT HER OFF AND BASICALLY SAID, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY, AND GOT TO YOUR POINT. SO I JUST THINK IN ALL FAIRNESS, WE JUST NEED TO BE MORE RESPECTFUL TO OUR GUESTS.

I'm going to do a quick question on this. Now, there is a lot of online discussion about other states. Obviously, bringing forward into this discussion tonight are other states. So, if I'm getting what you're putting down here is that the restrictions in Washington state are extremely difficult for misuse or anything of that sort that we are hearing from constituents talking about what's happening in other states. Correct me if I'm wrong.

It's one of the stricter frameworks in the country, for sure. We would never claim 100% accuracy rate. I actually was going to say, Councilwoman, you claim about, you think you said about 10. We are tracking about 93 or 90, about 7% on the accuracy rate of the failure. I think the bigger piece that we always say is, to the Chief's point, is that we do put confidence intervals. So before you make a stop, Celeste, you know how confident we are about the license plate. So I just want to add that context as well. But yes, you're right. Washington State, to our headache, is one of the strictest enforcement pieces. So a lot of the legislation can be trusted as a framework. Council Member Lott.

Yeah, I appreciate the time and the information that was put together here. I guess my question at this point after going through all this is, and this is for Attorney Whalen, is what are our next steps if the council wants to move forward with the independent audit? What needs to happen?

Sure, I think that you would have to have consensus for legislative action. to direct the mayor to procure the third party vendor, we would have to go through the procurement process, an RFP typically, to find an appropriate vendor that's qualified to do the work and then those would come to the executive's office for review and determination. But if the council were to get the consensus to direct via resolution for that to happen, and then the executive's office would go out and do the RFP and find appropriate members. Mayor. If they're available. I'm not sure. I haven't heard of any in Washington, but it can be.

So it's my understanding from what the chief has said, and you're far more an expert on this than I am, but there would be nothing for a third party auditor to audit other than what is available for viewing by the general public already, is that correct? Because of the way the state law is written.

Not exactly. So the metadata that's on our site, we have more metadata that we have an audit for. It does contain license plates, which we can't provide those to the general public, as a matter of course. So they would look at, it's basically an Excel spreadsheet of metadata that an auditor would look at.

If they don't have access to the system, it is a spreadsheet from the system.

They would only have access to the metadata.

Chief, what would be different between the legislative requirement now for the annual audit to be done by the agency submitted to the legislature from what a third party auditor might do? Is it frequency of the audit? Is it substantively different than what you would provide to the legislature required by law?

No. Well, the data that we have to provide is, I believe it's two years' worth of data. We retain data monthly, so we do an audit on a monthly basis. We would provide to the AGO's office. I believe it's two years. It might only be one, but I believe it's two years that we have to provide every year. and basically the result of any audit the and then that information the legislature can also do their own independent audit of the same metadata that would be if the council requires that. That same metadata that we would already look at by a third party auditor here is the same that the AGO's office would be doing an audit of as well. So it's doing double work, I guess. That's our point.

Council Member Hamer. Just correct me because my brain stopped working. You say the state will be doing audits. Is that correct?

Eventually, we are going to be required by the end of 2027 is to provide all that information, all the metadata to the state and publish a report basically on here's our audit, this is what we found. You know, we don't, because there's no model policy yet that's written, we don't know what they will require in that annual audit, but it will be based off the same information that we have right now.

Council member Sturgis. Thank you.

So just so I'm understanding, coming from the banking environment where there's, you know, federal regulations that we have compliance laws around that we have to follow anytime we're engaging with a third party vendor to house customer data, you sign a legal contract, and then the the the the financial institution has legal ramifications against the vendor should the vendor do anything with the data that if incorrectly. And so that's how I'm understanding based on what I've learned from seeing it in use, learning, you know, doing my own fact finding, also researching flock is that we do own the data that is signed in a vendor contract. between the City of Auburn and Flock Company. And so if we were to find out that somehow you have shared our data with Palantir, then we would be able to then sue you and take you to court for legal action, correct?

Correct. And we are happy to sign another written attestment to that end.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions? Council Member Baldwin.

Yeah. One of the slides that you have, I believe it's page 2466. This is for me? My slide? It is your slide. Okay. Regarding the recent court cases challenging LPR. Kate, can you please do me a nice, please?

That's rude. Yeah, point of order. That's rude. Point of order.

I challenge the point of order.

You're rude. We have a guest with a presentation. I don't think you'd want to be treated that way. So please be kind to our guest. Thank you.

The material that I'm covering regarding your slide is, it calls out the Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, and it says that the courts are uniform, that the use of LPRs does not require a warrant. In this article, which was produced by IPDM, it gives us a little bit more detail about the outcomes of that case wherein there's a difference between not having an expectation. It's about an expectation of privacy and whether or not people are being subjected to searches as a result of this. outcome from this, as you'll see in this article, is that the Supreme Court has addressed this principle within Carpenter v. United States in 2018, where it calls out that a person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere. It is the aggregation of individually public moments can itself constitute the constitutionally protected category. That aggregation principle is the framework every court hearing that FLOC is working within.

And so when we consider

Yes, it is a picture and a snapshot that could just as easily be taken by a person on a corner. But the outcome of that Norfolk ruling, there was a candid statement that came from Flock's chief legal officer himself, Dan Haley, where he said very directly, there will come a time where this technology could get ubiquitous enough and powerful enough that there needs to be a warrant requirement that day in the future is out there. When it comes, we'll build tools to enable that. It's just not yet. And so the question is about this expectation of privacy. At what point is your network sufficient enough, dense enough, widespread enough that it becomes a dragnet search where anybody could be picked up by it because of the network that is proposed as being the strongest part of your system. The network in and of itself is what will constitute the dragnet. And so, as noted in the article, There's nobody sophisticated in this debate that is arguing about whether photographing a license plate on a public road is legal. That question has, in fact, been settled for decades and is agreed upon by all sides. The question in federal courts in Virginia, Kansas, and California is whether Flock's national network constitutes a dragnet. And the does not presently, which is part of the ruling, is something that has an undefined expiration date. And the real debate is when Flock will cross it. And so the courts may not be ruling as yet, but your own chief legal officer has indicated that he thinks that time is coming as part of that Norfolk case. QUESTION FOR ME, COUNCILWOMAN. I DON'T HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU. IT IS THE SLIDE. MY POINT IS THAT BECAUSE THAT IS THE OUTCOME. BECAUSE THAT IS THE OUTCOME.

STATE YOUR POINT OF ORDER. COUNCIL NEED TO BE RECOGNIZED BEFORE TO RESPOND. THIS IS NOT DIALOGUE.

THE QUESTION WAS FROM OUR GUEST IS WHAT WAS YOUR QUESTION? SO I SUGGEST YOU GET TO YOUR QUESTION, PLEASE.

THE POINT THAT I'M MAKING IS, IT'S A QUESTION. DO YOU FIND THAT THIS SLIDE IS DISINGENUOUS BASED OFF OF THE officer who has indicated that the reason these have been successful to date is because it is not yet considered a dragnet, but he expects it will be in time as your company continues to be successful.

No, Councilwoman, I do not find it disingenuous. I think what our chief legal officer is intending to indicate is our willingness to evolve as the technology evolves. So should that day come, we'll be willing to comply with any of the legal parameters around it. And not only is this listed in Carpenter, but this case that is in Schmidt v. City of Norfolk within this U.S. District Court is not an isolated ruling. I can send you and be willing to send you and your office several other rulings to that end that follow the same ruling throughout the country. So it does not indicate just this slide. This is a conversation that's being had across the country in which all rulings, again, from U.S. District Courts have ruled that we are not against Fourth Amendment rights nor violating search and seizure rules. THAT'S MY ANSWER TO THAT.

THANK YOU SO MUCH.

COUNCILMEMBER STURGIS. THANK YOU SO MUCH, SHERIKA. I HAVE ANOTHER QUESTION FOR YOU ON, CAN YOU HELP JUST EXPLAIN FOR FOLKS THAT ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THAT, FIRST OFF, I'M A HUGE SUPPORTER OF FLOCK, AND I WANT IT TO BE CONTINUED TO USE IN OUR CITY FOR SAFETY. AND SO I JUST WANT TO PREFACE IT WITH THAT. very much care about finding out the answers of the concerns that I hear by a handful of folks that really want us to turn these cameras off. So it's a government overreach that either law enforcement or FLOC are using the data to study drivers' behaviors and patterns. And FLOC is storing our data on private servers and tracking demographics. So could you just, I took copious notes as this person was speaking their concerns. And so I used their exact words and those were the kind of.

Is it exploring different patterns?

Right. Are we tracking their driving behaviors? Are we tracking demographics? Are we storing it on private servers? so that we can track their physical patterns and routines.

Yes, Councilwoman. So thank you so much for that question. So we do not have a central database that is housing all this data information. That would make our systems extremely insecure. So I think I want to say that first. As far as getting any identifying features of an individual, we are a point-in-time photo of a license plate rear mirror A REAR LICENSE PLATE. NOW, SOME HIGHWAYS HAVE, LIKE, FRONT PLACES LICENSE PLATES BECAUSE THERE'S LICENSE PLATES ON THE FRONT AS WELL, BUT THE INTENTION IS A REAR-FACING LICENSE PLATE. SO WE'RE NOT TRACKING ANY IDENTIFYING FACIAL RECOGNITION. AND THAT'S WHY WE ARE LUCKY TO HAVE SO MANY CIVIL LIBERTY ORGANIZATIONS LIKE THE NAACP THAT ARE NOTING THAT THIS TECHNOLOGY IS NOT SINGLING OUT INDIVIDUALS.

I have a question, and it's a pretty basic yes or no. There is rumor, hearsay, of Flock now integrating recording of voices. Or, for instance, somebody walks by a Flock camera and their image is captured or they're recording the voice. Is that true or false? LPRs are not tracking the voice, no. Thank you.

Yeah. Do they have the capacity to track voice?

No, we have gunshot detection. We have other technology that the city of Auburn does not have. So gunshot detections, like a certain decimal is what is capturing not everyday voices.

Council Member Sturgis. Thank you.

As a follow-up to that question, those two questions, do they now have Bluetooth access where they are able to connect to folks' devices and listen in to voice conversation in that vicinity?

No, Councilwoman.

Thank you.

Any other questions, Council? Council Member Baldwin. Yeah.

We know the number of City of Auburn owned flock devices within the city. Do we know how many private ALPRs are in the city? And what is our process for authorizing and permitting those?

So we don't access private devices anymore. It is prohibited by law now under the same RCW. If we choose to try and access, we have to get a warrant issued by a judge. So private entities cannot share with us anymore.

Council Member Sturgis. Thank you.

Can you explain the difference? For me, the way that I understand this is that when I have a Washington good to go account and I'm driving and the tolling camera is snapping my photo when I'm going through there to charge me, or I'm going through a speed camera and I get, which I unfortunately have gotten a few tickets, um uh that when i was out on police ride-alongs and got to see the the visual in person um it looks like it's pretty much the same type of picture where it is just that point in time picture of the rear license plate so uh how is it that um speed cameras or um tolling cameras are not a violation of the fourth amendment right however folks are thinking that the flock cameras are what's the difference there the difference in speeding cameras and lpr cameras uh tolling cameras in particular yeah because i mean it's you your license plate is in plain view when you're driving on a highway that has a tolling camera and they take the same type of picture and so i don't understand why that's not a concern of folks but flock is

I mean, I think obviously we're going through a really rough time visibly with the press and politics. I think coming from, as a good old Democrat myself, I think the bigger picture is folks are feeling unsafe in the climate that we're currently in. I think it's important to note that outside of this technology, there are larger conversations at play about people feeling unsafe. This is not new about the relationship between law enforcement and, you know, in the public, you know, so I just think that folks are joining all these things together. And within good reason, you know, I'm a black American, I think it's important to note that, like, this is the same conversation we were having in the 80s and 90s in 2020, you know, so I think that is a worthy one to have. And I think anytime, you know, this is why I appreciate all the council members for their their dialogue, because when civil liberties are up for discussion, we need to be willing to have conversations about it. SO IF IT TAKES US COMING BACK AND HAVING THESE CONVERSATIONS AGAIN AND US EVOLVING TO SAY WHAT'S WHAT, I THINK THE PEOPLE OF AUBURN AND ANYONE ELSE IS WORTH THE CONVERSATION.

I HAVE A QUESTION. SO I UNDERSTAND THE CONCERN BECAUSE WE KNOW LIKE THE MAYBE THERE IS try to get, like, ICE, get access, arrest people. My understanding the way, and you correct me, how the camera work. Camera work, if you have, you go specific, you have license plate number, which technically you need to have the number. To get this number, that means you already have a ID register in the state. You have your ID number be registered, your address be registered. So technically, if they want your... When the federal come to you, they know where your address. So there is, I see the concern about people that won't be in track. They know us. They're ready, your information there. And if they really want to get the people and get them, technically I will not go waste my time, follow the camera, get the information, pay private company because they can go WHERE PEOPLE FILE TAX, IT'S EASY. WHEN YOU FILE TAX, EITHER YOU HAVE SOCIAL SECURITY OR YOU HAVE WHAT THEY CALL AN INDIVIDUAL TAX BUYER IDENTITY, WHICH MEANS YOU'RE NOT CITIZEN, THEN YOU HAVE ADDRESS. MY COMMENT, I SEE THE PEOPLE CONCERNED THEY WANT TO PROTECT THE RESIDENT WHILE I SEE LIKE If you get to the website and you put the license plate, that means you know where is the person. Is that accurate? You need to have a number to be able to track the person.

So just to come back to your question as well. So the flock cameras alone do not provide registered owner information. It's strictly the license plate and the officers have to search a different database to get any of that information. With toll cameras and speed zone cameras, they are governed by different RCWs. With those cameras, those photographs are allowed now to be paired with registered owner information for the purpose of collecting revenue.

Council Member Sturgis. So that's not considered a violation of folks because it's under an RCW?

It's a different RCW. Okay. The same principles are there. It's not considered because they're in the public view. Right. It's plain view. Right. So you're not... Those have a little bit more backing under RCW of what now both the state and municipalities and counties can collect from those cameras, different from LPR, just straight LPR cameras.

Sorry, Councilman, I answered that way more ethereal than I did. Yeah, that's okay. That's okay.

Councilmember Baldwin.

Yeah, I don't think one of my questions was fully answered earlier. So to clarify on that, when it comes to private flock devices within the city of Auburn, how many are there?

I have no idea. We don't have access to them.

All right. May I follow up on that? Council Member Hammer had a question. No, I want to say thank you to the chief for answering my question, because to get the number that's mean, usually there is reason for people to find the number stolen car. I don't think, like, I'm mean. They want to find me. People, they want to find my license plate, and they know where I'm going. So thank you. You answered my question. And I'm trying to be good citizen and stay away from that toll. Please, I want them to stay there. Okay, Council Member Baldwin.

Attorney Whalen, what are the controls within the state bill that was passed with regards to the privately owned cameras?

I don't know off the top of my head without looking at it. I think that the legislation would require to the cameras in general. Certainly agencies are required to comply specifically with regard to the annual reporting and auditing requirements and the limitation on the types of crimes that can be searched utilizing the flock tool. So I just don't know the answer to that question on the private cameras. You, Chief, and all of you.

I have a couple of comments. So based on what I have here, agencies may obtain data from privately owned ALPR cameras with a warrant or court order. The law does not restrict private entities from deciding whom to share LPR data with. It is possible that they can disallow a private entity from voluntarily giving that information to the police. So you do need a warrant to access that data. And we are not at liberty to give it up to the city.

Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. Council Member Amer. the city has no say in that, even the police there. My understanding, even if you have car accident, they will not write ticket because it's still in private property. Is that correct? Even if they have camera, we have no say on it.

Right. So, like, for example, Lowe's, we know, unless they discontinued, they do have AOPR cameras. We used to have a sharing, well, a one-way sharing agreement where they could provide their cameras, but once the law went into effect, we had to cut off that connection to them. So all private entities, we have to cut off. So we can't, they would, I mean, there's nothing in the law that prohibits them from saying, hey, we have this vehicle in our database that we saw. We would still have to get a search warrant for it or some type of court order to get that information from them.

And we don't use, as I understand it, LPRs for parking enforcement at all. We do not currently, no.

I do want to make a quick comment and I do applaud Colby for using our social media platform for some of the wins, especially the most recent one by apprehending a domestic violence situation which was good, and I like to see those wins, especially when they are used for protecting our community, especially when it comes to achieve, like you had said, violent crime situations in this space. So again, I'm just really, I'm glad that we're starting to show that information. Any more questions? Council Member Baldwin.

Yeah. So I wanted to check. Chief, you had said earlier that we have ceased sharing with federal agencies for some time. Are we, just to clarify, are we still sharing with out-of-state local law enforcement?

So we can see some of their information. They cannot see us.

When did that change take place?

The ordeal changes took place when the law went into effect.

Council Member Sturgis. Okay. Going back to the, I guess, original reason of why this was put on the agenda for the third party audit, I am concerned that why would we do an audit if we don't, I mean, would there need to be a four to three or a winning vote in order to have to move forward with FINDING AN AUDITOR. I KNOW YOU SAID THAT I HEARD WHAT YOU SAID, JASON, IN RESPONSE, BUT WOULD THERE NEED TO BE A COUNCIL VOTE AND THEY WOULD NEED TO WIN THAT VOTE IN ORDER TO MOVE FORWARD WITH REQUESTING A THIRD-PARTY AUDIT TO BE DONE? YES.

AND THEN, OH, COUNCILMEMBER AMMER. I HAVE A QUESTION MAYBE THE ATTORNEY WILL ANSWER BECAUSE YOU SAID WE DON'T HAVE LICENSE BLADE READER HERE. MY UNDERSTANDING, SEATTLE, THEY HAVE 401. If you Google it, City of Seattle, they have 400 license plate readers. Is that going to mean ALPR cameras? Yes, ALPR. And their traffic. If you Google it, it will show up. I heard it from somebody, and it's confirmed that. I know we must speak out of order because we speak about another city. I'm taking my question back.

And I don't know if my question is, oh, go ahead. Council Member Sturgis. I don't know if my question is for you or for Mayor or for Jason, but my concern here is that I would not be in support of moving forward with an audit. We're not doing a vote. We're not. No, I know. Yeah, we're not. But I'm providing context for my question really quick, is that so unless we had concerns that our data was not being managed properly, And so I guess when we put this on the agenda, and you're saying that we didn't, or Councilmember Law is saying that he thought we were gonna be getting options for a third-party vendor, or Councilmember Baldwin, I apologize. To me, we would need to have a justifiable reason to move forward with an audit first before we start looking for, taking that next step to explore an audit. Isn't that correct? Or I don't know. I'll defer to Attorney Whalen. Okay.

The process now. So this was brought forward for his new business. We're doing the presentation today. Pretty much outlining the fact that if we were to do a third party audit, all you're getting is this sheet period around Washington state law. So now what are the next steps moving forward?

Sure. I think that if there was council consensus and council without taking a formal vote can articulate their positions and you as the chair of the meeting tonight, if there's consensus to move forward with a particular directive, that gives staff the opportunity to come back and prepare that agenda bill and legislation. If there's council consensus to do it otherwise, it's just kind of a waste of staff time, if you will. So if there were consensus to move forward with a particular direction, we would prepare something for council's review and consideration at the next meeting or whenever it would be scheduled. So that would be a step in that direction. But it would require council action. In terms of making the most of these meetings, I just want to throw out a thought for your consideration. One of the reasons I sent out a cover email 12 days ago was to kind of plant some seeds and to give you some basic information and to invite any questions you may have of me that may be helpful for you in your determination and review of the subject matter for the meeting. So if there are cases that are concerning from other jurisdictions or you wish to have me take a look at something for you, that's the time to go ahead and do that. I'm happy to do that for you. And that's why I kind of sent out the teaser email with adequate time for some of this information to get in front of you. So anytime that you have something you want us to take a look at, our department can certainly help with that to better prepare all of us working together as a team to make the best policy decision that you can.

Councilmember Lott.

Yeah, Attorney Whalen, is there anything prohibiting us from requesting the city to do an RFI and ask potential candidates how they would go about an audit and how it would be different from self-audit?

I think that still any time you have a request for an executive action, it needs to come through the mayor's office. And then the mayor has to receive some consensus of council for a work directive in the absence of electing to do it on her own.

Council Member Sturgis.

And that's where my concern, don't we have to actually have a viable issue or problem in order to be exploring these? I just don't see, we don't, our department hasn't done anything wrong with the data. They do their audit timely and promptly every month. And so we don't have any viable, at least it hasn't been shared with me, any viable concerns that have hurt our city. based on our use that would then necessitate an audit. Usually the audit would be because we feel that the data is being used incorrectly or wrong and we don't have any issues that have come up that show that that's a concern. And so I don't understand how we would justify using taxpayer dollars to go do an audit just because it's a very hot topic right now of sensitivity. But we don't have actual cases in Auburn saying we've misused our flop data. So how would we then justify paying for an audit when we're not, we don't have concerns? Councilmember Lott.

Yeah, and just to clarify, the RFI or RFP would require the council to vote on it. This is not an independent council member just asking for it for giggles. The council would have to discuss it. The council would have to vote on it. It would have to pass, and then the city would be directed to do it.

Ultimately, what action you're seeking is to potentially contract with a third-party vendor to do X for some amount of money. That would require, in the absence of... require some action by council to do it unless the mayor's interested in doing it herself and then depending on the value of the contract she could do it within her contractual purview or if it's above her contractual purview under the code council would have to approve okay um council member Baldwin mayor I'd like to hear what you had to say I said it would require a budget amendment

You could, depending on the cost, as most things typically do. Council Member Lott.

In the past, in the private sector, I've let RFIs and had companies respond to them where there was no cost to me. So how would that work here?

I don't know off the top of my head, because we typically don't do RFIs that I am aware of. I don't know off the top of my head. I'd have to get back to you on that.

Council Member Baldwin.

Yep. One of the things I was going to ask for was going to be a copy of the policy that was submitted to the Attorney General's Office for, I believe it was referenced in our packet at the beginning. It said ours had been turned in. I think just last week, the week before.

On slide, yes, by September 26th, 2026, this is slide or page 10 of the packet. It says policies with AGO by September 26th. APD did it on July 7th of 2026. Any? Yes, I can.

Councilmember Emmer. So for the audit, I understand that we need to have audit, but I feel like in the market. No, I understand the field. I know there is, so technically for me as a working company, when I see the Excel file, I know that who accessed, that mean you can know if anybody accessed. For me, what I see in the website, that's enough. IT'S GOOD FOR ME TO SHOW THE NUMBER WITH THE DATA. I GET CONCERNED IF THAT'S WHERE I'M GOING TO MY POINT. WE DON'T IDENTIFY TRUSTEE. audit company we know. I don't feel comfortable that go in marketing and find company we still don't know their work and we hand them our data. So until the processing states will be clear, because I know the public want to see audit, even my understanding you cannot share it, they will see same what we've seen. I think I need to wait till I see what the state, LEGISLATOR WILL HAVE, WHAT COMPANY WILL BE, BECAUSE I THINK THIS IS MONEY GRABBED FOR ANYBODY WHO SAID I CAN DO AUDIT IN YOUR FILE, BUT THEY WILL USE THE DATA, WHICH IS SO RISKY FOR ME.

ANY MORE QUESTIONS, COUNCIL? SORRY, IT'S MY STATEMENT. From what I understand of this conversation tonight, in order to move forward, we need to get a consensus on whether or not we want to move forward with this conversation and a third party audit. So I guess, Shawn, how?

So we are not voting. I am simply looking for a consensus of the council if they would like to have this brought back forward for a vote. The vote would be something along the lines of directing the mayor to direct staff to move forward with either an RFP or an RFI for this individual third party audit. I am not looking, again, not looking for a vote. I'm just looking for, if you would be interested, please nod your head. I see. Stop nodding your heads if you're not. OK. I can't help it.

Stop nodding your head. Point of order for me. Sorry.

So I see three heads. That is not a quorum of this council. We will not be bringing this back.

All right. Chief, our guest, Jason, thank you again for your time, your commitment, and all of the hard work that had gone into this presentation tonight. I appreciate it. We are going to take a five-minute recess and reset. So when we come back, we're going to have Jacob come up with the automatic traffic safety camera 2025 program extension and study.

Thank you guys so much.

Thank you.

We'll be back at 7.20. And it is 7.20. I don't know where Clinton is, but we need to get back on track.

So with that being said, we'll just go ahead.

We're going to get off here from, okay, so the next item to review is the draft supplement to the automatic traffic safety camera 2025 program expansion study and program overview. Director Galb and Jacob.

So for the record, Public Works Director Inger Galb,

CITY ENGINEER.

AND SO WE'RE HERE TONIGHT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT A SUPPLEMENT TO THE STUDY THAT WE DID IN 2025, WHICH IDENTIFIED THE LOCATIONS FOR PUTTING OUR SPEED ENFORCEMENT CAMERAS, THE GENERAL SPEED ENFORCEMENT CAMERAS. SINCE THEN, WE'VE HAD SOME CONCERNS RAISED FROM THE MUCKLESHOOT INDIAN TRIBE, AND SO WE WANTED TO ADDRESS SOME OF THOSE CONCERNS AND WALK THROUGH WHAT OUR SUPPLEMENTAL FINDINGS ARE AND THEN DISCUSS NEXT STEPS. OKAY.

THANK YOU. I'm gonna start with the background of what led to the original study and then this supplement. So almost two years ago in October of 2024, the city council passed resolution 5789, which established a safety goal to reduce and eventually eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on our city streets. There was also a safety action plan associated with that goal that had various different ways to try to reach that vision and goal. Then in July of 25, it's actually almost a year ago to this date, we sat in this room and we talked about Resolution 5847, which included a study to look at various locations to put automatic traffic safety cameras that would enforce speeds on our city streets to support that goal that was established the year before. That study recommended three different locations for our first speed cameras outside of school zones, and the council adopted that study. Later in January 2026, those three cameras were installed at those three locations. And then very quickly after that, we did hear concerns about one of the cameras from the Mokshu Indian Tribe. This is the camera that was placed on Arboy South between R Street Bridge and the Mokshu Indian Tribe, the Mokshu Plaza, sorry. One of the concerns we heard initially in February from the tribe was the actual placement of the first of the camera on our way south. It was just within the boundaries of the tribal reservation. So in March, we actually moved that camera outside those boundaries to address that concern that we heard regarding placing the camera within the boundary of the tribe. Then those discussions continued. We heard additional concerns from the tribe. A lot of those concerns were focused on the equity analysis that we performed. It's the original study that we talked about back in July last year and how the equity analysis looked at potential impacts to the Moksha Indian tribe.

And then here we are tonight.

We had various meetings with the Mokshutian tribe. There was letters that went back and forth. And through those discussions, we actually performed additional analysis, collected additional information, and compiled that information into what became the study supplement that we are looking at tonight. So the original analysis, the original study that cited the three locations, it went through various steps. These are those steps. Those steps were all put together to comply with the state law. It included an initial site selection evaluation. Then we did detailed speed studies. We looked at 10 different locations and looked at the different rates of speeding that were happening at those locations. And then we looked at crash history and what kind of crashes were occurring at those locations and what were the causes of those crashes. And then, of course, we included an equity and alternatives analysis that was in the original study. And then we looked at these selected sites and made the recommendation to adopt those for implementation of the campus. The supplement, like we said, looks at some of the issues that were raised by the Muxul Indian Tribe. There was concerns raised that we heard from the tribe in letters and meetings about potential impacts to Muxul Indian Tribal members that use the corridor. We also heard concerns about potential impacts to Muxul Indian Tribe businesses on the corridor that were near the Armory South camera. And we also heard specific questions about our analysis and how we determined the location for that camera and whether or not that was the appropriate place to be sighting the camera. Then finally, in the supplement, we also, in reviewing these different issues with the Moksha Indian Tribe, we came across additional information that wasn't previously available. Recently, the Puget Sound Regional Council published a tribal supplement to their Regional Safety Action Plan, and it had a lot of valuable information that we felt was important to include by reference in our supplement as well. So I'm going to move through the rest of the presentation just talking about various pieces of the supplement study. And then towards the end, if you want to talk or ask about specific questions on the supplement, we'd be happy to take those. So the first part of the supplement looks at an equity analysis based on ethnicity or ethnic groups that would be using the Albemarle South Corridor. And we actually had this information before in a different form in the original study. The original study looked at, instead of ethnicity, it looked at income demographics. So this is additional information that we had, but we just didn't include in the first study. But we thought it was important to include now this information because one of the things that we heard from the Moksha Indian Tribe was the concern that their tribal members uh use this corridor quite a bit and rely on it it's one of the few ways in and out of the tribal lands so what this uh this information here shows uh in the bluish color it shows the general demographics from the 2022 census data of auburn throughout the city and the different percentages of the different ethnic groups ethnicities. And then in the greenish color, next to the blue, it is actually specific information about the ethnicity of people that are using the Albemarle South corridor near the camera location.

I'm going to clarify. Other way around. Blue is the location of the camera, and the green is the citywide.

Yes. Sorry about that. Thank you. And she knows that because in looking at this, one of the things that stood out when we looked at this was the American Indian and Alaskan Native, which is towards the middle of the bar chart. So citywide, about an average of 2% of our population of that ethnicity. And then on the Albemarle South Core, near where we collected this data, which is near where the camera location was and still is, it was higher at about 5%, which confirms what we heard from the tribe, that there are more other tribal members using this location. and it makes sense so this led into us uh looking into some of those concerns and asking the question uh more about what okay what could some of these impacts be uh to the tribal community since they definitely are using this corridor more than other uh corridors throughout the city The first question was OK, would there be additional financial burden? Is somehow a camera placed here initiating infractions likely to create a financial burden on the drivers that would be receiving infractions? And this slide. IT WASN'T INCLUDED IN THE ORIGINAL STUDY. WE HAD MOST OF THIS INFORMATION, BUT WE THOUGHT IT WAS IMPORTANT TO POINT OUT THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A STANDARD SPEEDING TICKET AND AN INFRACTION THAT WOULD BE ISSUED BY A CAMERA BECAUSE THERE DEFINITELY IS A DIFFERENCE, AND THERE'S A LOWER POTENTIAL FINANCIAL IMPACT ASSOCIATED WITH THE CAMERA. because they are designed to educate. They are designed to change driver behavior and to do so in a way that doesn't create that financial burden that does so in a way that doesn't have some of the other increase. Other. Things that happen basically when you get a speeding ticket. So this goes through some of those speeding ticket goes on a drivers record for three to five years and impacts insurance rates and that can be dramatic. In some cases the camera infraction it does not go on your drivers record. It's very similar to a parking ticket. It's not going to impact the insurance rates. The cost of a standard speaking speeding ticket is approximately $222 for the types of speeding that we're seeing up on this corridor. The camera infraction is set at $145. Is there a grace flexibility as far as a standard speed ticket? It's up to the officer. As far as, you know, you could be going one mile per hour over the speed limit and get a ticket. With the cameras that we have, the speed cameras, there is a very... Very wide margin. There's a big grace as far as the speed that is used for a trigger that trigger speed can be modified as this police department sees fit to encourage the safer behavior, but it does provide a pretty good grace. Speed. Low income reduction with the standard speeding ticket. There are no reductions for low income. With the camera program, there is actually a required reduction by state law. So qualifying individuals would be able to get a 50% reduction on their infractions. So cut that $145 in half. As far as disputing the infractions, a standard speeding ticket, you take it to court. You could also take a camera infraction to court, but you could also contest the camera infraction in writing and not have to take time to go to court. You could just mail in if you believe that it was not issued correctly. Warnings. The warnings for a standard speeding ticket, of course, are up to the officer to decide if they're going to issue a warning or not. With the cameras, we have a minimum 30-day warning period, and that is, per the state law, we have to have the camera signage posted for 30 days before we actually activate the camera and start issuing infractions. So far, up on our way south, since we moved the camera to its current location, I believe it was on April 6th, It's been issuing warnings that entire time since April 6th, in addition to having the warning signs. So at this point, we are well beyond what the minimum stay requirement is for warnings for a camera on the Armory South camera. What that's doing is it's giving people the education to slow down, and you'll see later that people are slowing down with actually without the infractions being issued yet. The longer that goes on, though, the more likely people are starting to realize that, hey, I'm not actually getting a ticket, I'm getting a warning. So I suspect that would not last indefinitely. And then finally, the other component, there's a component of being pulled over. How do officers decide who they're going to pull over, why they pull over? Often it's because there might be other suspected issues associated with the driver as far as maybe potential stolen vehicle, whatever it may be, but someone getting pulled over often can lead to other things besides just a speeding ticket. The camera infraction, the cameras that we're using for this can only be used for the speed infractions and absolutely nothing else. So this slide, so it's a compilation of a lot of different information that's in the supplement. So I'll try to walk through it from left to right. So on the top left is actually from the original study. This was information about income demographics that I mentioned before. So in general, the median household income in Auburn is about $93,000 per year. The original study looked at different camera locations and said, OK, the people that are driving or moving along that corridor, what are the average incomes of the people that are moving through that section? So the people that were moving through the section where the Auburn Way South cameras located were shown to have about a $92,000 annual income per year, which is very close to that average. So the story that that tells is that people mostly driving along that corridor are about of the average income through Auburn, not higher, not lower. And then the additional information that we looked at on the right is a map of Auburn and the different colors represent different census blocks, different census tracts within Auburn. The orange boundary that's shown on the area around Auburn Way South are the three census tracts that border where the camera is actually located. So these would be the census tracts that actually see some of that impact of the camera and the speed reductions themselves. So those three census tracts, information for those three census tracts are shown over on the left in the table. And what this shows is for those three census tracts along where the three cameras are, it shows the median household incomes. And all three of those census tracts actually come in lower than the average incomes for Auburn. As well as there's another column that shows the trash per capita rate. AND ONE OF THE CENSUS TRACKS, WHICH IS LOCATED DIRECTLY ALONG THE CAMERA, ACTUALLY HAS A MUCH HIGHER AVERAGE FOR CRASH PER CAPITA, WHICH IS PROBABLY BECAUSE THAT CENSUS TRACK IS WHERE A LOT OF THOSE CRASHES ON AUBURN WAY SOUTH ITSELF ARE BEING PICKED UP. AND THEN THE OTHER TWO CENSUS TRACKS ARE COMING IN SLIGHTLY LOWER THAN THE CITYWIDE AVERAGE, WHICH IS REALLY ABOUT, YOU KNOW, IF A CRASH HAPPENS ON AUBURN WAY SOUTH, ARE YOU GOING TO ATTRIBUTE IT TO THE CENSUS TRACK ON TOP OR ON THE BOTTOM? And I suspect from the data that a lot of them are being attributed to that top census tract, just the way they land. But the story here, and the reason that we felt it was important to include this is because from an equity standpoint, this is really a best case scenario of you don't, you're concerned sometimes when you're looking at the equity that you're placing the camera that's going to financially burden the people that live around it without providing them a good benefit. In this case, The average incomes of people that are traveling along our way south are higher than the people that live around it. So it tells you that it's the people that necessarily live all around the camera aren't the ones who are mostly driving on our way south. It's mostly people who are passing through and on average have a higher income. And then the people who are of lower income and also the tribal areas, who we'll get to in a minute, are more likely the ones that are also, that they're walking, they're busing, and they're riding in the community around where the camera is located. And so they're receiving that benefit without necessarily having that benefit. THAT BURDEN OR THE FINANCIAL BURDEN OF, SAY, A STANDARD SPEEDING TICKET, IT'S A LESSER IMPACT BY HAVING A POSSIBLE CAMERA INFRACTION, WHICH HAVING LIVED AROUND THE AREA NOW IN A WARNING PERIOD THAT'S BEEN IN PLACE SINCE APRIL, WE FEEL THAT THAT'S A PRETTY EQUITABLE APPROACH TOWARDS TEACHING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY TO SLOW DOWN AS WELL AS THE PEOPLE THAT ARE PASSING THROUGH. Another concern we heard from the Mokshu Indian Tribe was a concern that somehow placing the camera on Auburn Way South at this location would dissuade people or have an impact on their businesses. There are several tribal enterprises along this corridor that are vital to the Mokshu Indian Tribe and the tribal members. We talked a lot and thought about how we could measure or determine this impact, and some of it we wouldn't know, and so we do have a commitment to continue working with the tribe and getting feedback from the tribe about if they are seeing some sort of impact, if they feel there's something happening there. But we wanted to look at some data, and so we went back and we looked at traffic counts. So we looked at traffic counts going back to 2022. Prior to 2022, the numbers looked a lot different because there was still a COVID effect as far as the number of drivers on the roadway. And then in 2024, we simply didn't collect the data. But what we see from the data comparing April of 26 of this year when the camera was in place, comparing that traffic count to the average traffic counts that we're seeing in the previous years, the numbers are very insignificant, about less than about a 1% difference from the average as far as the variation in the number of vehicles. The sample size isn't huge, and as we go forward, we'll be able to collect more information and keep our eye on this. And like I said, I think this element of the analysis does require some ongoing discussion with the tribe to hear what they're thinking may or may not be happening there. In our discussions, we also heard the question of, you know, in our comprehensive safety action plan on our crash data, we looked at corridor-wide crash data, which spanned all the way from SR18 out to the Poplar Curve, I think is the range for the corridor data that we used in the original siting study. So hearing that, we went and we looked at the crash data in a more detailed and refined nature. We zoomed in to say in this area where the camera is located, and we pulled the specific crash data, which is here on the screen and in the study. So in that 2018 and 2024 period, uh in the area along where the crash is and this is an eastbound direction only because there's also the question of well okay eastbound or westbound are you sure you are choosing the right direction there were 106 crashes 57 crashes included injuries or fatalities and 23 crashes related to speed directly and 10 crashes that were related to speed and had injuries or fatalities And those numbers confirmed that we, in fact, had chosen a location where the data does support that slowing people down will help support the city's goal to reduce injuries and fatalities as a whole throughout the city. So this data is included in the supplement as well. These particular figures were produced by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, and we've looked at these before, but it was a particular note, and I thought it was valuable to include in our supplement, because on the left here is a graphic that shows how slowing people down, slowing cars down, if there is a pedestrian car crash, the slower you go, the more likelihood that that person actually would survive. On the right, we see a graphic that talks about ethnicity again and the people who are getting hurt or killed, actually, while walking on the roadway. And we see a disproportionate impact to American Indians, where per this slide you see that An American Indian is eight times more likely to be killed as a pedestrian than, say, Asian, multiracial, Hispanic, or white person. So if you've driven this corridor, there's a lot of people walking around. The people that are walking around are the people who are gonna benefit the most from the camera being there because it slows cars down and it helps address this exact disproportionate impact. It helps offset and hopefully reduce the total number of fatalities that are happening because it does in fact slow the cars down. People ask and the tribe has asked and part of the state law requires that we say, well, what can we do besides a camera? Well, what can we do to slow people down? What can we do to prevent these injuries and fatalities besides the camera? And this corridor near where we put the camera is actually a prime example of where we really have done everything. Over the last 10 to 15 years, the city and its partners, including the Mucklesweet Indian Tribe, have invested Roughly $30 million and everything from sidewalks to narrowing the lanes to get to try to get people to slow down to putting in streetlights to improving the intersections. There's a new roundabout there. Pretty much everything that the state has in their toolkit that they would allow on the state route, we have done in this corridor, and yet the speeding was still happening. Now we have the benefit of knowing what what effect the camera has actually at this location because it's been in place for a few months. This graphic shows that from when we did our initial speed studies that showed 24% of people driving on the core were going over 50 miles per hour. With that camera in place as it is today, that's dropped down to less than 3%. A significant increase in safety by reducing those speeds. which I would love to say all the engineering that we did here, I wish we could have the same impact with those speeds, but it just simply hasn't done it. Now, you combine all these improvements with that speed camera, and I think that this corridor is much safer, especially from the pedestrian experience. Some other different elements that came up during the discussions with the Mokshu Indian Tribe, we were asked what we did in our equity analysis to address education. The state law lists different factors of equity that need to be considered and we DID ADDRESS EDUCATION IN OUR ORIGINAL ANALYSIS, BUT WE WERE ASKED TO LOOK AT IT A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY. ORIGINALLY, WE LOOKED AT EDUCATION OF, OKAY, SO HOW IS THE CAMERA EDUCATING DRIVERS AND PEOPLE TO SLOW DOWN AND DOING SO IN AN EQUITABLE WAY? IT WAS A GREAT SUGGESTION, AND I'M GLAD THAT THE TRIBE SUGGESTED. THEY SAID, WELL, HOW ABOUT YOU LOOK AT THE ACTUAL IMPACT ON THE SCHOOLS AND THE STUDENTS THEMSELVES? SO WE DID. WE LOOKED INTO THE ANALYSIS. THERE ARE THREE NEARBY SCHOOLS THAT ARE IN PROXIMITY TO THE CAMERA LOCATION, ALL THOSE SCHOOLS WILL REALIZE THE SAFETY BENEFIT OF THE CAR SLOWING DOWN. NONE OF THOSE SCHOOLS ACTUALLY HAVE A WALKING ROUTE WITHIN WHERE THE CAMERA IS LOCATED ITSELF, BUT AT ANY GIVEN TIME YOU SEE SCHOOL BUSES DRIVING ON THE CORRIDOR, SO THE SCHOOL BUSES THEMSELVES WILL REALIZE THAT SAFETY BENEFIT. And I think it's important to note that the Auburn School District, you know they are largest educational institution that we have and they have strong support for the cameras and we hear nothing but encouragement for programs and they really say that it does help improve the safety for their teachers and the students near those schools. And I mentioned this before, there's additional information that was included in the supplement study, this tribal supplement by the PSRC. I encourage reading it if you're interested, but it was very telling. Even just those two graphics that we saw about the disproportionate impact to the Native Americans, there's a lot more information than that. It's, you know, it's troubling. And it actually, seeing that American Indians have been impacted and actually experienced traffic deaths and issues more than other groups It actually, you know, it makes me feel, tell you how I feel, and it's in the study, that it's vital to have this camera here and do all the importance here to try to offset and try to address some of those inequities that you see in the study, like the PSRC study. They identified the Albemarle South corridor as a high-injury network, just like we did. We call it the safety emphasis corridor, but they also identified the corridor. And actually, they didn't identify the whole corridor that we did. They had parts and pieces of it, and they definitely included the piece that we had the camera on as part of the high-injury network. And they didn't go further to identify specific solutions to the types of crashes that are happening on the corridor. And they suggested as one of the solutions to put speed cameras in. And so we felt it was important to include that in the study as well. So current situation and next step options. So the Albemarle South camera is currently issuing warnings. We are currently paying our vendor to issue those warnings. So the cost of the camera itself and the cost to mail those warnings is approximately $2,500 per day. So it adds up pretty quickly. The study that is in the packet was sent to the Muxo Indian tribe for their input. We haven't heard that back yet from them. It was also sent to the Puget Sound Regional Council and the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. We heard back from the Puget Sound Regional Council last week that they appreciated how we demonstrated their information and they found our analysis very helpful in their own safety considerations. And we are still waiting to hear back from the Safety Commission. A potential path forward here would be to take the draft study and address comments that we could hear tonight or from these other parties and then finalize it with a council action on August 3rd through a resolution that would adopt this study supplement. That would essentially confirm the appropriateness of the Auburn Way South location, and following that adoption, the plan would be to switch from the warnings to the infractions. If a study supplement is not adopted, the warnings would continue and there would be additional discussion that would need to happen until or if the council took action to actually remove the Auburn Way South camera from the study locations as recommended. And that would then, it would then follow that we would need to turn off and remove the camera because it would no longer fit the requirements of the state law that requires council to have that approved in a study. If that was the action that was taken, the new, and we wanted to move forward with placing a camera in a different location, we would then have to restudy and do another analysis. And we would also have to pay for the camera removal and for a new camera placement. uh at that point we would likely uh also want to hire perhaps a consultant to do additional analysis forests and we estimate that cost to be in the 300 000 range in total and would take probably about a year to implement and get another camera actually set with that i'm happy to take questions thank you jacob council any questions for jacob or

Yeah. On the slide that showed the pedestrian fatalities by race, ethnic group, where it indicated the eight times or the eight deaths per 100,000 people Where was that sourced from? I was curious what the context was, if that was data gathered over a set period of time or within Washington or nationally.

Sure. Yeah, so that's nationwide. Okay. And that was from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission's camera readiness guide. They have a couple pages on equity analysis. The readiness guide has been published a few different years. I think the latest one was in 25.

Council, any more questions for Jacob or Director Gump?

Here.

I believe at one point prior to the roundabout being put in, Near Chinook Elementary School. We did have one of the speed zone. The school speed zone cameras in place there. Is that correct?

Yeah, so in front of Chinook Elementary back prior to 2014 we had a speed scammer there for the school zone that was operational from about 2007. I think until about 2014 when Council chose to remove all the speed cameras at that time.

Yeah. One of the questions I had is If the average daily traffic has significant changes, is that something that we're going to be continuing to monitor on an annual basis, or where would we see kind of that change of volume versus speed? Sure.

So we do our traffic counts every year, but one year it focuses on turning movements and classification counts. The other year it focuses on volumes. So it would be on every other year where we get additional data points. Now, everywhere we have a camera, it actually does count the cars for us, so we would be able to actually pull more granular data at those locations where we have the cameras, and we can pull that at any time to see if there is some change happening.

Councilmember Baldwin. So that would be data that we could share with the tribe if they asked to have those updates. Great. Anyone else? Questions? Councilmember Baldwin. Just a comment, which is I just want to thank everyone on staff for your diligence in going through and taking the time to put this additional supplement together. you know, the $30 million investment across the corridor is substantial and significant. And I think the ultimate goal is to make sure that there's safety for pedestrians in the community. And so I think having the intentionality to make sure that we're communicating with our partners in the community is important. And I just thank you for the approach to continue to work with Muckleshoot Tribe and community as we

Any other questions? Thank you.

Appreciate your presentation.

Wrapping up our discussions tonight. Our last agenda item is ordinance number 7029 provided by Attorney Whalen, Chief Collier, and Director Krueger, please.

Well, good evening again, council members. Jason Whalen, city attorney. This matter came back to council as a result of new business directing council to bring back some changes to the law in Auburn dealing with electric motorcycles and electric bicycles. And so my staff worked with the Parks Department and with PD and has created the draft ordinance that's before you. I guess I'm pulling it up here because I'm not familiar with it. Can you see what I've got here going on? Great. What you see is a new set of definitions. Let me scroll down here. That include the incorporation of the term bicycle in state law. So that helps bring in RCW 4604-071. And then you'll see that implication as we get to the definitions in our own new proposed code, Chapter 1057. Again, bicycle will have the meaning as defined in state law. And then you have the additional definitions of electric assisted bicycle and then electric motorcycles within the statute. So I can walk you through what the heck's going on here. God help me. Stop. Okay. My IT people need it. Exactly. Pursuant to council's direction, they wanted to make sure we defined a bit of teeth to the law by prohibiting certain actions of electric motorcycles and electric bicycles within the city. So here we've got the prohibited operation of electric motorcycles. You can't be under the age of 16. You can't operate an electric motorcycle that's not registered with the Department of Licensing, doesn't have a valid license plate. You can't operate it without a valid driver's license with a motorcycle endorsement, et cetera, et cetera. So working with PD and parks, And hearing the comments of council, you can't operate an electric motorcycle on a public street or road unless it meets certain requirements under state law. You gotta have safe operations, gotta have a light, those kinds of things. You can't operate it on any sidewalk, pedestrian path, shared youth path, or park trail, and not within city-owned or controlled parks, open spaces, or other city property except parking lots. Councilmember Lott's point when he raised the issue, how do we impact those parents who might be doing things that aren't appropriate with their children on electric motorcycles or e-bikes? Here we have a guardian may not authorize, knowingly permit, or cause a minor in their care to operate an electric motorcycle in violation of the chapter. And as we'll reflect down below, there are provisions for infractions of certain dollar amounts if they violate this section with regard to electric motorcycles and then this other section 1057030 with regard to electric assisted bicycles which is a slightly different class obviously those are defined up above in the definition sections so similar prohibit prohibitions on class three electric assisted bikes those are the ones if I skipped over that I'll jump back up on the definition of a class three electric bike Electric-assisted bike has the same meaning in the RCW, but it also includes those electric-assisted bikes in which the motor is used exclusively to propel the bike and isn't capable of providing assistance when it reaches 28 miles an hour or greater, which is kind of a gap in the law that our parts department noticed and asked us to include here in this definition. And then Chief can talk a little bit about what he sees on the street. But here are the impoundment and penalty violations. You've got infractions of O20 of 250, 500, and 750. And then you've got the infractions for the electric assisted bicycle penalties. 125 250 and 375 again. These are suggestions. They can be different as council directs These are suggestions to provide some teeth in a new code that certainly will require some education of the public I Assume we would want to do after the council adopts this or a version of this new law So chief I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add or I

No, one of the things we really looked at, probably talked about it before this council, is juveniles under the age of 16 that are writing there, it's very difficult to enforce. They can't actually be issued an infraction. or violating park rules, violating these ordinances, you actually have to send those cases to the King County Juvenile Court. The maximum fine is $100. So regardless of what Auburn enacts in the ordinance, any ordinance, the maximum fine for a juvenile is $100. But it has to be sent to King County because we don't have a mechanism for juveniles here in Auburn. And so we are really looking at something to hold parents or guardians accountable for their children's. Once you hit the age of 16, you can be cited into our local court for traffic-related offenses, but it's the ones who are under the age of 16 that are causing a lot of problems out on the roadway. You know, at that age, you're indestructible. you know, in your mind. So they're causing a lot of problems for other drivers on the road, people in parks, you know, that are jumping out of the way, running on trails. So we really wanted to provide a mechanism to make the parents a little bit more responsible for the actions of their youth. So that's detailed in here because the parents, you know, if we do end up issuing a citation or a violation, it would go to our local court. So it wouldn't be at the discretion of a juvenile court at that point.

And I can address some class three bikes on the trails specifically. We're following other jurisdictions as well. So King County, Pierce County, and many of the neighboring jurisdictions that have enacted new code around e-motorcycle and e-bike usage. the class three matches their codes for use on trails. So King County does not allow class three e-bikes on trails. And it's primarily due to safety concerns over their higher speed and the risk of severe crashes at that speed. With others using other shared use of the trail. So like walkers, roller skaters, wheelchair users. And so that higher class three speed of the 28 miles per hour are restricted on trails.

So Council, Deputy Mayor, that's what we have for you tonight. Subject to questions or comments or suggested revisions.

Questions for our presentation tonight. Council Member Lott.

Yes, section, I appreciate you putting this all together. Section 1057.020 and 030. Section D, in both of those, where it reads, In section D where it says, no, let's see, 57020. It's on the next page. Next page. There we go. The guardian may not authorize or knowingly permit. Wouldn't you want to state that the guardian, where it says the penalty is if a guardian authorizes, knowingly permits, or causes, or allows the minor? I feel like the language ought to be fails to reasonably prevent the use of said vehicle. I think that that's a better position to be in because I would assume that any parent that got the ticket would say, well, I didn't know they were using this.

We could even add that as part of that prohibition. You may not authorize, knowingly prevent, cause, allow, or fail to reasonably prevent a minor in their care to operate said vehicle. Not a bad change.

Any other questions? Council Member Amer.

I just want to say thank you. I just saw video for Upham Police Department. They share video on their website about minors. They only held, like, how fast they were. just watch it it was really and they didn't even full stop and that it was a Sunset Park I think they didn't they didn't follow the rules so having this I think probably will help the officer and when he see them so thank you yeah one question that I had is it seems like we're

In effect, I mean, we're saying where people get to ride either their e-motorcycle or their Class 3 e-bike with the new ordinance. And it seems pretty clear if it's an e-motorcycle, it's a motorcycle. It should be in the street. It should be in the street. Makes sense. I think the question is more in the space of the Class E assisted bicycles. We may be following the model that is in King County and Pierce County and other places, but I think the concern that I have is that There's no dispensation to allow an adult who wants to be a commuter or who wants to commute by bike from one of our neighborhoods to a transit center to be able to use major trails that are available. And so I think for me that's a bit of a concern because if you're in West Hill, Lakeland Hills, Lee Hill, you're looking at a 500-foot elevation gain. And I can't speak for other people, but I know for myself that would be – you know a pretty substantial climb without having an assist and so you know I think there's maybe an assumption happening that just because it can go a certain speed that creates a risk but it doesn't mean that the user will go those speeds if they're following good practices I think that it dissuades a subset of our residents from being able to use a Class 3 e-bike in a way that's safe and allows them to participate in more modes of transit. That being said, I do recognize that we have challenges with youth in the community, and I'm not sure if a way to address that would be having a minimum age limit for a Class 3 e-bike, given the speed and the risk, similar to a motorcycle.

that space fair question councilmember so the question assumes of class 1 and class 2 types are allowed class 3 maybe the parks director can give some feedback on that with regard to the trails I mean it's a fair point to promote access and

Class 3s are allowed on streets and bike lanes right now. And so I think commuters could still use those forms that a bicycle would use on the street to get to and from as a commuter, just not those trail spaces that have more joint uses at that higher speed. And I think Class 3 actually identifies 16 and older now as well as part of state law. It's not in our ordinance, but I think it is part of the state law. Let's see, RCW 46-2500. Is Class III e-bikes are allowed for age 16 and over?

Council Member Baldwin.

If that's the case for the RCW, do we need to add that into Section 1057-030 then for the age requirement?

Certainly can.

Can I, sorry, wouldn't that be redundant though because we do state that in several different areas, right? That would just be, when we say class three, it should already be indicated in previous language that that's the age limit on that, so.

46, let me take a look here.

On class three?

There's no age limit on class three? Not under the section listed.

What's the statute, Julie, on that?

46-20-500. 25.100. 20. Sure.

Oh, under Agent 18 right there.

Section 3 is a special endorsement.

No driver's license is required. Persons under 16 years of age may not operate a Class 3 electric-assisted bicycle.

YES. THE REASON I BROUGHT IT UP IS IF WE'RE PUTTING NEW ORDINANCE LANGUAGE OUT THERE AND WE HAVE UNDER THE ELECTRIC MOTORS, NO PERSON UNDER THE AGE OF 16 MAY OPERATE IT, I THINK IT WOULD BE RELEVANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE INCLUDE A SIMILAR ITEM UNDER THE PROHIBITED OPERATION OF THE ELECTRIC ASSISTED BICYCLES. STAYING IN LINE, OF COURSE, WITH STATE LAW, BUT JUST IF SOMEONE WAS TRYING TO COMPARE THE TWO, THEY MIGHT THINK THEY HAVE A PASS BECAUSE IT'S NOT PROPERLY PUT HERE.

got it they may not go reference the rcw any other questions council member lot yeah i had a question about the e-motorcycles under 750 watts What are those, for ones that don't have pedal assist, where there's just two wheels and electric motor, that's under 750 watts, what does that classify out as?

They're still classified as a motorcycle. If there's no pedal assist. Under state law, they're still considered a motorcycle. They have to be licensed and registered.

Okay. But I think that our laws specifically target anything 750 and over, correct? Yes.

for each motorcycle that exceeds, right? 750.

So is that correct? Or do we want to reevaluate the number of watts?

I don't know enough about the wattage of the bikes.

Well, it's just the more powerful they are. But if there's no pedal assist, they're not classified as a bicycle. If they have any type of motor, electric or gas, they're classified as a motorcycle. So they do have to be licensed, registered with the state. So they have to have a license plate to be ridden on the roadway. They're not like... That's what you mean.

Well, I guess, and I'm sorry if I'm adding on here. So a two-wheel scooter that has an electric motor that's 300 watts is classified, that I see kids riding on the sidewalk, is classified as a motorcycle?

To ride in the street.

Okay. But if I'm seeing them ride it on the sidewalks, what do we call that?

If I mean we could spell that out in in in this the city code. Because it would I mean there's no you know if it's talking about right yeah, if it's on if it's on the sidewalk right now, there's no.

For low wattage thing I. Scooters are in the city code already 1054040.

I was honing in on the 750 watt for the e-bike thinking that anything under that, take away the circumference of the wheel. It's just got two wheels and no pedals. What's covered under 750 watts? It's the existing city code.

So if I can jump in. So yeah, so we do have another code that talks about scooters and those types of things and how those are treated. And it's separate from this code. This code is specific to the e-bicycles and the e-motorcycles only and is not intended to cover what we already have in other portions of code about the scooters, if that helps.

Fair. Thanks. Councilmember Lott is getting to item C2 where it says exceed 750 watts. Is that what is defined in the RCW or are we putting that limit on there? Because if the RCW doesn't state a wattage, why would we? I don't know.

If I'm reading their current update, THEY DON'T DEFINE ALL OF THE RULES YET FOR THE ELECTRIC ASSISTED BICYCLE. SORRY, ELECTRIC ASSISTED MOTORCYCLE. and that they're putting together a statewide task force to identify those Emoto classifications. So in the interim, this code is trying to address some of those, what the Emotos are currently wattage-wise. I think if I'm recalling the conversation with Paul, there's not the update that they just recently made says will be defining this within this next period of time.

We can take a look and get back. I did not draft this. Our staff did. And then we're not able to come tonight to present. And I can check the language and see what the rationale was for the exceeds 750 watt provision in C2.

If I remember correctly, I think we pulled that from another jurisdiction.

Waco was an example, and I think Issaquah provided examples. Issaquah. Issaquah.

There's a couple examples that we've done. Yeah. Okay.

Councilmember Rakes.

Back to the fines, my question was, I MEAN, I KNOW WE'RE NOT DOING THIS TO MAKE MONEY OFF OF IT, BUT WE'RE DOING IT FOR SAFETY REASONS. COULD THERE BE A THING IN THERE THAT THE FIRST TIME A PARENT NOTIFICATION, SO THE PARENT HAS TIME TO DEAL WITH IT AND MAYBE TAKE THE BIKE AWAY BEFORE ADDING A FINE? completely up to council.

Yeah, I would agree with that. It would be up to council if they wanted that in the ordinance. That way the parent can get the education and understand the law. Officers do use discretion if it's first time, you know, if it's not been a persistent problem with the same individual, more likely an officer would not issue an infraction the first time and leave it up to the parent. The idea is not to go out, and it's unrealistic to think that we would be able to go out and start writing infractions to everybody, but it's to get the message out to the public that we have an ordinance that allows for this if you're not better managing your child and a pretty expensive piece of equipment.

Council Member Sturgis.

Just on the Washington, it looks like it's updated for the 2026 changes, Deputy Mayor, is that the e-bikes exceeding 750 watts or class limits are treated as motor vehicles and must follow motor vehicle laws. So that it does look like it is updated on the Washington state law. And then I do have a question, but I'll separate. Yes, go ahead. Thank you. Just something that when I was looking at, I went and looked at Washington D.C. just because I rode for the first time at any bike there, and they have specific call-outs that each city, for the state of Washington, we don't have any helmet requirements. It says per city, and I would just like to look at putting the helmet requirement for anyone under the age of 16. AND I DON'T KNOW IF THIS WOULD BE, IT FEELS LIKE THIS WOULD BE THE CORRECT PLACE TO PUT THAT IN THERE, SO I JUST WANTED TO MENTION THAT.

I CAN ALMOST SAY ANYBODY THAT RIDES ONE OF THOSE WEARS A HELMET, NOT JUST UNDER THE AGE OF 16. I AGREE, DEFINITELY FOR MINORS. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?

Yeah, Chief, you might be able to answer this best. I have never had anything towed or impounded. So if we are potentially impounding these motorcycles or bikes, what's that process look like and what's the cost? If you have any sense of.

uh so cost of impounds are set by the court um so they would have to we would have whatever companies on rotation impound the bike and then they would have to make arrangements to basically pay their vehicle out of impound but that that cost is set by the court so correct we don't have any idea what that cost could look like there's different impounding and storage yeah there's impounding storage fees so like our local court doesn't I mean those are set by the state and all tow companies have to abide by the same rules so I don't I don't have offhand knowledge of the fee because they're they can make arrangements to reduce that if they choose there's a map that the state basically says this is the max you can charge for an impound system actually to charge per day of storage. But they do, I've known them to make, all companies can make other arrangements depending on the situation.

One might think it would be less, less space than a car for storage. At least the impound might be the same, but the storage fees, one could say it could be less. It may be something we could look at because we do an annual contract with a towing company. And there are chart schedule of fees and storage fees. Could be something to look at on that.

Council Member Sturgis. Thank you. I think this question is probably for you, Julie.

It's just on, I'm just not understanding. I just need more clarification on the 10.57.030C. A person may not operate any class of electric-assisted bicycles within the park if the park contains bicycle-specific facilities. And I know you were mentioning it, but I'm just not understanding. When I look at the Washington state law, it's saying that they're typically allowed or they're generally allowed on paths and sidewalks. within parks unless it's mandated by the city that they can't, the local city. But then when I look at some other areas, they have just some verbiage that says, they can use paved pathways as long as they're yielding, that must yield to pedestrians.

I think this was an attempt to address the use at Cedar Lane's bike park that's specific on the pump track that is not intended for any type of classification of e-bike. or e-motors and so perhaps it just needs to be more clear such as Cedar Lane's bike park that's intended that has a pump track or something versus a bicycle facility but that was the intent was to help address the the use that we're seeing at Cedar Lane's bike park that was not intended for any type of assisted bicycles.

Any other questions council? I see none. Thank you. Appreciate your presentation.

Just to make sure I'm clear on the consensus with regard to the penalties we've listed, are those in my sense consensus for the penalty amounts under both provisions for bikes and motorcycles?

Great.

I think the amounts seem reasonable and appropriate to the different type of vehicles. I would like to maybe understand what the limits are related to impound costs, just because as it's written currently it says that a law enforcement officer would be authorized to impound without notice. which means on kind of a first potential interaction. And so if that would be additive to the violation amount for a first violation, I would like to know what that could mean for a family.

We can get that information.

I think essentially coming back with some updated.

Yeah, some suggested revisions in red line form. Please, please.

Thank you.

GREAT. THANK YOU. APPRECIATE IT.

ALL RIGHT. SECTION ON THE AGENDA WHERE COUNCIL CAN SHARE TOPICS OF INTEREST AND OR REPORTS ON SPECIAL FOCUS AREA MATTERS. REPORT SHOULD BE LIMITED TO FIVE MINUTES. LET'S START WITH COUNCILMEMBER STURGIS. NOTHING FOR TODAY. THANK YOU. COUNCILMEMBER TAYLOR.

GOOD NIGHT.

COUNCILMEMBER LUTT.

NOTHING TO REPORT.

Well, we just had our Public Works and Community Development Special Focus Meeting. And I believe there's a... We talked about it today. We talked about it today. We had met with directors Gaub, Krueger, and Crum for the monthly public works and community development meeting. The directors provided us with summaries of various items anticipated to come before council in the next several months. Amongst the items discussed were the agenda items planned for the July 26th COUNCIL STUDY SESSION AND OTHER ITEMS SCHEDULED FOR COUNCIL ACTION AND OR DISCUSSION ON OTHER MEETING DATES. ITEMS OF NOTE INCLUDED A VARIETY OF CODE UPDATES RELATED TO DEVELOPMENT, SEWER AND PARKING REGULATIONS, THE ANNUAL COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AMENDMENTS, CLIMATE IMPLEMENTATION PLAN, GRANT ACCEPTANCES, AIRPORT PLACES, AND A PUBLIC WORKS ASSISTANCE ACCOUNT LOAN. SO THANK YOU FOR SUMMARIZING THAT, DIRECTOR GAU. THAT'S ALL.

Thank you. Council Member Rakes? No report tonight. Council Member Amherst?

No report.

I have a quick one outside of what Council Member Baldwin just spoke about. I do meet with our SEA Regional Transit Committee on Wednesday, and this week Metro is bringing their First Stop Future Investments to discuss, and Metro's Transit Safety Planning and Regional Transit Safety Task Force presentation. With that, this session is adjourned. Thank you.