Telecommunications Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening and welcome to Green City Council for the committee meetings for Tuesday, June 9, 2026. I'd like to call these meetings to order. First item on our agenda is the approval of minutes. We have TMP 5382, approval of the May 26, 2026 committee meeting minutes.

Motion to approve.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Adam Clark, please call the roll.

Mr. Neugebauer?

Yes.

Mr. Noble?

Yes.

Mr. Maker?

Yes.

Mr. Brandenburg?

Yes.

Mr. DeVitas? Yes. Mr. Humphrey?

Yes.

Mr. Spate?

Yes.

Okay, motion carries.

Thank you, ma'am. All right, we'll get into our committee meetings. The first committee to meet this evening is the Finance Committee, chaired by Mr. Humphrey.

Thank you, Mr. President. Finance will meet this evening. We have several items of legislative business. All members are present, myself, Mr. Neugebauer, and Mr. Spate. The first item of legislation is a second reading of 2026. R27 is amended. This is a resolution modifying appropriations within certain funds in order to provide sufficient funding and declaring an emergency. If you go to Exhibit A, that outlines all the items that are dealt with in this piece of legislation. The memorandum total for this piece of legislation is $481,802, The largest item on there is for $375,000. That's not a cash transaction. It's actually a book transaction. The county issued a tax assessment for a property owner on a piece of property that had a TIF attached to it. That property owner appealed the assessment. That appeal was granted. As a result of that appeal being granted, The city was due $375,000 or around there, less money from the county as a result of that appeal being sustained in favor of the property owner. And so we have to book that on the books of the city, but it's not cash that's leaving the city. It's just cash that we did not receive when we received our normal TIF payment from the county. So I'm going to have Director Goodrich just walk us through the remainder of the items on the exhibit.

Yes, thank you very much. In the general fund, you'll see that we are asking for an additional $34,625. I'm going to run through these as quickly as possible. I'm requesting $25,000 more in contracted services and finance. That is because some of our software, our financial software came in higher this year than we had anticipated the bill for that. And we are also... purchasing a software to help with capital budgeting, the capital improvement plan process, and for it to also prepare a more comprehensive budget book for city council and for the public with additional graphs and a lot more tools that can be used in the budgeting process so that people will no longer have to submit capital projects on paper. We won't have to make a paper book for you all during the capital improvement plan process um so that that is all electronic so we we want to purchase that software um under finance as well you'll see five thousand dollars for green cic we actually received five thousand dollars in grant funds from um akron community foundation and those funds should have gone to the cic So we just need the appropriation to pay those funds out to the CIC, but they directed them to us instead of the CIC. $500 additional in utilities and asset management for supplies and tools. $500 in general supplies for utilities and asset management. You'll see they took $500 from training to make up for one of those additional requests. And then we have a $5,000 request in fire station number one for repairs and maintenance. They depleted that line item so far this year. They've had a bunch of unexpected things come up. They had boiler repairs in a valve that they had to replace in the boiler room. plumbing and drain issues garage door repairs roof repairs and appliance repairs so unfortunately they kind of burn through their budget and that line item and we need to replenish that for any additional repairs and maintenance that come through the end of the year Gas utility, we are projecting that we're going to need more there in the tune of $1,500. Fire station number two, improvements. This is $10,000. This is actually from a donation from the Ranieri family a ways back. That money was deposited into the general fund and kind of was held there. until the fire department identified a project that they wanted to spend that donation on. They have identified a project. They are utilizing those funds to create a training prop behind fire station number two. They would like to purchase shipping containers to utilize for search and rescue training and hose line advancement training. Chief is here if you guys want any more details on that. Those were donated funds that we were kind of just holding in the general fund, and now they want to use those. And then we are subtracting $12,375 from the general fund. Engineering wants to purchase a signal. And that money, originally they wanted to charge it to that account, but I want it charged to signalization account and the street construction maintenance and repair fund, which is a capital account. So as you see, we will be deducting the budget from that line item, but adding budget down below in the street construction maintenance and repair fund. So that totals the general fund asks. We'll move on to street construction maintenance and repair. We are asking for $32,375. We need 15,000 additional in general supplies. These are funds needed for loader repairs. There is still needed for side chutes. Again, I think Valerie can expound on that if needed. We need $5,000 for tires and tubes, and that's because Gradle needs new tires. And then we're adding the $12,375 for the signal that we are purchasing for Graybill and Mayfair. Down below, you'll see we're taking $500 from training in Parks and Recreation, and they're now utilizing that instead of their $500 that they're adding in training up under Utilities and Asset Management. And then in the cemetery fund, we have already expended the budgeted amount for overtime that we had there. So we are adding additional funds based on this year's account trends. So we need additional funds there. And the Parks Capital Projects Reserve Fund, we are asking for $37,802.20. Creek Park, we need additional funds for utilities related to the restroom project. Those were requested. And then, unfortunately, there was some damage that was done at Butler Park. to a basketball court due to an accident, and we need to repair that basketball court. So we're asking for the funds to get that repair underway. We are coordinating with insurance for that accident, so those funds will be reimbursed by insurance, but we need the appropriation now to get those repairs underway. And then as Councilman Humphrey explained, we got our TIF distribution in April and we did have a large refund due to a property that had appealed their valuation to the Board of Tax Appeals. And we do have to book that refund. That money is just taken off of our distribution that we got from the county. But we do have to book that refund on our financials So I did not have enough money appropriated in that line item because I was not anticipating, you know us getting a large Refund like that. So with that if I if anyone has any questions, we will Be happy to answer them.

So it opened up the committee any questions? I Anyone on Council?

Mr. Humphrey. Yeah, Mr. Brandenburg. Just have a couple of questions about the refund that was issued or that we're not going to receive. So is that an annual reduction? So we see it not only this year, but every year?

Correct. It was a multi-year. Actually, the appeal was granted at the end of 2024 and it dated back to 2020. So it was a large refund because there was, you know, from 2020, to 2024. But yes, the valuation for that property was reduced from 5.9 million to 2.27 million. So the schools did object to that valuation reduction, but ultimately the Board of Tax Appeals sided with the property owner.

Okay, thank you. Are we seeing a trend at all in valuations being reduced? I know a couple years ago we had a significant hike in individual property taxes.

Yeah, I have not been here long enough to really state. This is the first one that I've seen since I've been here in the last year, so I really can't speak as to that.

Okay. appreciate that i understand so on the uh so it's a five-year period we refunded for so about 75 000 a year i would take it as do we expect that to be a future reduction as well yes okay and yeah i mean yeah they were paying a substantial amount of property tax and now that that amount is reduced based off the reduced valuation okay i understood all right thank you that was all the questions i had today thank you mr brandenburg anyone else have any questions about this

Mr. Humphrey, if I may just make a comment. I just want to mention on the overtime, I don't want anybody to think that we're like shucking our responsibility and watching our dollars on overtime. The overtime in the cemetery is basically based for time that we have to do burials after hours or on the weekends. So we do have a higher charge for that. So we do recoup some of those funds. Okay.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Anyone else have any questions or comments? It's always good to understand this legislation when I first came on council I thought government accounting was the the most confusing accounting I had ever seen before because you come up with a budget and Then if you need to move something around you have to have a piece of legislation in order to do it You can't just do a line item and say I'm gonna move the money over here it's all part of the legislative process and it it becomes something that gets integrated into a piece of legislation like this. So this is the second reading on this piece of legislation, and during our regular meeting, we'll request time on it. The second piece of legislation we have in committee this evening is the second reading of 2026-11. This is an ordinance authorizing the issuance of bonds in a maximum aggregate principal amount of $1,500,000 for the purpose of retiring notes issued to pay the cost of phase one of the Southwood Drive extension project and declaring an emergency. So we're all familiar with the Southwood Drive extension project. We've talked about it over the last several months with various pieces of legislation and in association with the Arlington Road project. But if council will recall last year, $1.35 million in what's called bands or bond anticipation notes were issued in anticipation of bonds being issued. Those notes now have to get paid back and the way they'll get paid back is through the issuance of bonds. The reason there's a disconnect between the $1.35 million in bond anticipation notes and the $1.5 million in the legislation is because obviously You have finance costs and whatever friction costs you have when issuing bonds. And so all of that is built into the bond offering. So this will go to phase one of Southwood extension. The general obligation bonds, the maximum interest on the notes, it'll differ according to the maturity, but the maximum interest will be 6%. We won't know exactly what those interest rates will be until it gets taken to market. and then those figures will be set based upon the market that's available at the time. So, Director Goodrich, if you could, anything else you would add to that?

No, I would say the legislation has a not to exceed rates at 6%. That is high. And obviously, we would have to rethink if we wanted to go to market if we were facing interest rates such as that. But they always put in a worst case scenario interest rate. Current estimated interest rates have us at about 3.5% interest. I have a municipal advisor and a bond counsel that are walking us through this transaction. If the market were volatile when we were planning to go to market, we could always pull back and adjust. Obviously, you guys are authorizing me to have the authority to make that decision of when the time comes. If we saw some high volatility, we could... going to market, you know, and reassess. But right now interest rates are, you know, they're, they're estimating with our strong bond rating that we're going to be at around 3.45%, 3, 5% in interest costs for this. And yeah. That's all I have. It is going to be a competitive sale. We are planning to go to market on August 25th and closing on September 10th, which is about a week before this note becomes due. So we obviously need to get this issuance closed before that note becomes due, and then we will use proceeds to pay off that note.

So what would happen if we went to market and the interest rates were higher than we were comfortable with at the time? Obviously, those notes that were issued had terms associated with them. How long can you hold those notes before they're refunded?

Well, we could roll them or we could decide to pay cash at that time if the interest rate was very volatile. I would come to you all and say that we're recommending to pay cash to get those notes paid off because the interest rate is too high. But ultimately, on the date that we go to market, people are bidding and we have the authority on whether to accept those bids. We are a strong city in regards to our bond rating, and we have desirable debt. And so, you know, people are going to be clamoring to get, you know, to buy the bonds that we're issuing. So we don't anticipate that the interest rate is going to be that high, but you never know.

All right. Thank you.

Open this up to committee if there's any questions on this Anyone on council mr.. Humphrey a couple of questions So they're thinking about the four pieces that we're looking at today, or I'm sorry the three new pieces, so we're looking at today This being the first one is there a reason why we're issuing them separately as opposed to just one six point eight million dollar debt and

Yeah, we have bond counsel and bond counsel states that we have to do them in separate separate pieces. So, yeah, I don't I wish they could be consolidated as well for for ease of us today. But, you know, we do have bond counsel who prepares this legislation and they do have to be done separately.

Okay. The reason I wondered, right, they're all in the same general area. They're all TIF. It just seemed like maybe the cost would be a little less if they were just one. Okay. And then the second question, the only other question. So I was looking at the 2020 bond issue. In Section 10, it specifically mentioned TIF revenues as a backstop for the creditor. The new ones don't have that section. I was just curious why that section's not in the new three versus the old one.

I'm assuming that goes to how those were originally issued because we are refunding, you know, potentially refunding for savings on those bonds. But again, I am not an expert in preparing the legislation. You know, that was done by our bond council at Calfee. I can definitely ask him that question and get you an answer, but I am assuming that that language was in the original legislation for the issuance of those bonds, and because we're refunding those bonds, that that is probably why that language is in that issuance.

Sure. No, I appreciate it. Yeah, I would appreciate it to know. I think I was most curious because, right, there's three sources of income listed now, the 2020 and the refi that you mentioned, right, for 26. They both have that fourth source. It would seem like a fourth source might reduce the rate even further, and that's why I was curious.

Yep, I will ask.

Thank you. That's all the questions I have, Mr. Humphrey. Thank you, Mr. Brandenburg.

Maybe is the answer, are all of those projects in that area associated with TIFs? They are. Okay, so that would be a commonality among all of them. Okay, so that's a really good point then. Anybody else have any questions or comments on this piece of legislation? All right, so at the appropriate time, because this is the second reading, the committee will request time on it. The next piece of legislation we have in committee this evening is a second reading of 2026-12. This is an ordinance authorizing the issuance of bonds in a maximum aggregate principal amount of $3,900,000 for the purpose of paying or reimbursing the city for costs of various street improvements and declaring an emergency. This is associated with the Arlington-Bettler Road project The total amount is going to be for these bonds is $3.9 million. Now, keep in mind, of the funding for this project, the city is responsible for 20% of the costs associated with the Arlington Road-Bettler Road project, and the federal government will pay 80% of it and will use kind of as a clearinghouse through the state of Ohio ODOT will process that 80%. And so this just represents the city's share of that portion of that project. And so in order to finance that, we're issuing bonds in this amount to cover the 20%. That is our responsibility after the federal government covers their 80%. And so this also represents the city's cost with contingencies, the project costs, financing cost, it's all wrapped into one for this bond issuance. So Director Goodrich, what else would you add to that?

You got it.

All right, well I got it from you, so I appreciate the education on all of this. So I'll open it up to committee. Any questions or comments on this? Open it up to council. Any questions or comments? Okay, so this is the second reading. And at the appropriate time, the committee will request time on this. The next piece of legislation we have in committee this evening, you're gonna start to see a pattern here very quickly. This is an ordinance authorizing the issuance of bonds in a maximum aggregate principal amount of $1,400,000 for the purpose of paying or reimbursing the city for costs of phase two of the Southwood Drive Extension Project and declaring an emergency. This again is for the Southwood Drive Extension Phase 2 that we've talked about at our last couple of meetings. The total bond issuance for this portion of the project is $1,400,000. And director Goodrich, is there anything else that you would add to that?

Nope. Um, this includes contingency as well. I think you said that. And, um, you know, this has already obviously been awarded and this, this, you know, pays for that construction. Again, this is going to be tipped. So, um, it will be running through the tip fund.

anyone has a hard time getting to sleep, I would recommend opening Granicus and reading the bond legislation because it's about 15 pages for each of these. And there's a lot of information that the lawyers have to include for a bond issue. It's like this. And they certainly did include it. So. At the appropriate time, the committee will request time on that.

Mr. Chairman? Yes. May I ask a question? Absolutely. Before we move on. You said that this included a contingency. So will we finance the full 1.4 initially? And then what happens to the money that's remaining if you don't need the contingency?

Yeah, it goes back into the fund to pay towards the debt service. We can't utilize that for anything else because the debt was taken out for this project, but then anything that's not used in contingency will remain in that fund and then be used towards debt service payments.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, so essentially it's like an escrow where you get to pay the financing costs from that.

Any other questions or comments on this piece of legislation?

All right, the next piece of legislation and the final piece in finance this evening, is the second reading of 2026-14. This is an ordinance authorizing the issuance of bonds in a maximum aggregate principal amount of $12,865,000 for the purpose of refunding all or a portion of the outstanding maturities of the city's general obligation bonds issued in 2016 and 2020 and declaring an emergency. So we're kind of hitting all the ways you could do bonds and all of the things that can happen with the city with bonds this evening in these pieces of legislation. But this particular piece of legislation, bonds were issued in 2016 and bonds were issued in 2020. When those bonds get issued, they go to market and whatever the market rate for those bonds, you get bids for those and that sets the interest rates for the different maturities on the bonds. when interest rates fluctuate, there's an opportunity if these bonds can be called back by the issuer, you can get lower interest rates. So if the interest rates go down, the city can make a determination after consulting with bond council that we would like to pay off those bonds and reissue bonds because then we can get it at a lower interest rate. If we get it at a lower interest rate, It doesn't change the debt, how much we owe, but it does change the amount that we have to pay for those bonds. So if you think about it, if we're paying the exact same payment at a lower interest rate, we could pay off the principal quicker if we chose to, or we would just have more money to fund other activities while having that same amount of bonds issued. So as I understand it, and Mr. Brandenburg asked some excellent questions on this and Director Goodrich provided some good information on this. This provides us the potential to call bonds back of certain maturities that we could issue new bonds at lower interest rates. That may or may not happen depending on the market at the time. We don't know that. It looks like that will be the case, but this just gives us the flexibility to be able to refinance at lower rates and so benefit the taxpayers of Green by doing so. And so when refunding makes sense, this is something that we have an opportunity to do, but we don't have to do if the opportunity doesn't arise. Anything else that you would add to that?

I would just add that that's a large number in there. We are definitely not going to probably come close to that number, but on the advice of bond counsel and our municipal advisor, they do put everything in there in case there were to be a large drop in interest rates and we could refund additional funds. additional bonds. I shared with you all what they anticipate we're going to be able to refund, which would be a net present value savings of 295,000 on the 2020 bonds. and then 23,931 on the 2016 bonds. But again, if the market were to go in our favor, there may be additional items that we call. So they want that flexibility. And that decision will be made the day before we go to market.

Okay. And just so it's clear to everybody in the public, we're not issuing new bonds. We're not taking on new debt. It's a big number, $12,865,000. This is debt that's already been issued that we may be able to refinance to get better terms. So that's what we're doing with this piece of legislation. I'll open it up to committee. Any questions or comments? Mr. Nietzsche-Bauer.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, I assume that when you go to financing that there's certain costs in evaluating our credit and all those things that you've spent and then you kind of throw in this refinancing because you went through the process. On its own, would you have started the process this year or would you have waited another year to see where interest rates were? Because I know the last few years interest rates have been high and we haven't considered it.

It probably wouldn't have been worth the cost of issuance if these were the only things that we were potentially refunding. But because of the other issuances and because we can get cost savings by doing the refunding at the same time, it was advised to go ahead and do the refunding. But it would have been unlikely that we would have done this with just those.

And then how will it work the day you said it's going to be August 25th that they're going to bid these? Will they bid all four separately, individually as items?

I don't know that, unfortunately. I don't know if it's a package deal or how they go to market. I mean, it is competitive sale, but I can ask that question. Okay.

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Any other questions or comments on this piece of legislation?

Okay, so at the appropriate time, the committee will request time on that. Any items of older new business to come before finance? Then we'll adjourn at 529.

Thank you, Mr. Humphrey. Our next committee to meet this evening is Environment and Parks, chaired by Mr. Neugebauer.

Thank you, Mr. President. All members are present this evening, myself as chair. Justin Spade is vice chair and Clark DeVitas. We have no items on our agenda this evening. Is there any old or new business to come before Environment and Parks?

Yes. Just a quick comment for our service director. I just want to say Spring Hill as well as the other neighborhoods are very grateful for the tree replanting project. I have one of my own front yard and I would say that the project went very smoothly, very quickly and professionally. Tree looks awesome. So I appreciate what you guys have done as well as our urban forester. I was curious if there's an update as to how close to completion or if we've reached completion on that and then also myself as well as others in my neighborhood were about when the mulching, the final step would occur for that.

Sure. All the trees were planted as of last week because of the rain and prepping for a large baseball tournament that was happening this weekend. We didn't quite get to the mulch. It should be happening this week, though.

Okay. Awesome.

But I'm glad you like the trees, and yes, it did go smoothly, and I have to give a lot of that credit to Bryce Zimmerman. He ran things very well.

Yeah, he was awesome. So I really appreciate that. And even like following up with some of the people in the neighborhoods concerns and even myself, I didn't really understand. I use that gator bag and we got a correspondence from you guys. So that helped. But no, I think it's awesome. So thank you.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Anything else?

Mr. Mayor.

Since Director Carr raised the issue, I thought I would let Council know that last weekend there was a really big baseball tournament here. It was the biggest of the year that's sponsored by GBSF, involved 78 teams from all over Ohio, teams from West Virginia, teams from Pennsylvania. It went from Friday through Sunday. It involved 14 fields, five parks and all hands on deck. And so I spent time Saturday and Sunday mixing with coaches and players and want to tip my hat to our parks department because the feedback I got is everyone was very pleased with the condition of the fields, how well they were prepared. had no issues, said things like, we wish we had fields like this in our community. Even the special needs field at Klechner was used for 8U for the smallest and youngest kids. And those kids really enjoyed that field. And also congratulations to GBSF because they really shined throughout the tournament. And, you know, it's something that when you have that many people in your neighborhood, you want them to have a good experience and use your restaurants and stay in your hotels. And so it's something that they're doing every year now. And I want to say thank you. We're proud of the result.

So may I ask, you said 78 teams this year? Is this the largest they've done?

Largest, yes.

But they've been doing the tournament over the last few years?

I think last year was like around 45. I think last year was around 60, so they keep growing. The only thing we need to tweak is parking, and that's something that we're going to talk to GBSF with. Our parking lots aren't quite built for tournaments, so that's something we're gonna see what else we can come up with.

Okay, very good, thank you. Mr. Mayor, anybody else? Okay, hearing none, we will adjourn at 5.33 p.m.

Thank you, Mr. Neugebauer.

Our next committee to meet is Public Safety, chaired by Mr. DeVitas. Thank you, Mr. President. Myself, Mr. Humphreys, Vice Chair, and Mr. Neugebauer are all present for Public Safety Committee tonight. We do have a few items of business on our agenda, the first of which is a liquor license item. This is TMP 5383, Friendly Express 7, LTD, new C1 and C2 liquor license, 4053 South Main Street, Green, Ohio, 44319. So this is a pretty routine piece of legislation for us This is at the former Rite Aid location at the corner of 619 in Maine a Potential new convenience store called friendly Express could be located there. I believe it's going through the process With planning and zoning and all that right now Currently has a couple issues held up in design review board, but they are in the process and However, at this time, again, it's not come to fruition. But I will say this is only about the liquor license, not the actual development. So they are requesting a C1 and C2 liquor license. Basically, this item comes before our council in case we have any reservations and would like to request a hearing at the State Liquor Control Board down in Columbus. Being a new business, we haven't received any issues or concerns from the Sheriff's Office. I personally don't have any comments or issues with this, but I will open this up to committee if there's any deliberation. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Humphrey.

I just have a question. So the business isn't even ongoing yet. Is it typical to get this first? I mean, do they need to know whether they're going to have this or somebody's going to object to it so that they can get financing or something? I mean, it seems like it's kind of backwards that we're not requesting a hearing on something that's not yet operational. I don't know. Has this happened?

I would say that the order of it seems out of the ordinary, but I'll ask the administration, maybe our law director or planning,

They've been hung up in Design Review Board for the last two months due to some issues. They're also providing a gas, gasoline at this facility and Design Review Board has not given a recommendation and has tabled it twice now. We have a meeting coming up later this week with Friendly Express to discuss modifications to that plan. But I will tell you this, with what I know of liquor licenses, getting that, if they do not get approved, they'll have a period of time. And a state liquor control board, if they don't have a physical presence somewhere in a period of time, this is anticipation of that. then they will end up giving back or selling back, probably giving back that liquor license. That's kind of how it works. I mean, I've seen it happen before where someone hasn't renovated like a restaurant or something. They need that place of operation. They need an address. But the State Liquor Control Board will only give you a period of time before you're up and functional, so to speak. But I think they're going to come back with revised plans to try to make this thing work and address design review board's questions.

So do you see any issues with us not requesting a hearing or acting on this before that process?

I think, as Mr. DeVitas mentioned, it's a new facility. So of course, there's no history. If, in fact, for some reason it doesn't fly, the state will just ask for their license back. I mean, that's kind of how it works. So they have to have a physical presence. at a period of time and the state just won't allow them to kind of just keep a liquor license out there for, with no, I say this, I think they want you to sell alcohol, right? That's how they make some money is off the liquor profits. So they want you to be functional. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Humphrey. Is there any further comments from Council?

Mr. DeVitas. Mr. Mager. Thank you. I could probably provide some context here. So this is just one step in the process. The Liquor Control will not award a license until you're operational. So you've got to get an occupancy certificate, and that's part of it. So we're just one step in the process. So if they don't become operational or actually open, then they can't issue the license to them from Liquor Control. So it's just one step in the process. Is this a TREX license, or is this one we have already available in the city? It's a new one.

I don't know. I didn't see the application. It's listed as a new license.

It says new, so I didn't know if they had one available or if they had to bring one in from outside the city. Okay. All right, that's it.

What did she say? Cole had her hand up earlier. Did you have something you wanted to add to your counsel?

Wayne kind of touched on it, but it is a new license that is available down on Main Street.

Okay. Thank you. That's all I had. Thank you for your input, Mr. Mager. So it seems like there probably isn't any sort of issue or reason to hold this up. being that it's kind of separate from the actual development of this facility. And if that doesn't go through, then they have to give the license back. So, um, I don't personally have any reason to request a hearing. Uh, is the committee okay with bringing this to a vote for not requesting a hearing tonight?

I'm fine.

okay just just just briefly i know sometimes gas stations get into um convenient sales of all sorts of things and we do have a moratorium on vape shops does would that moratorium prevent this business from offering any vape products under our current legislation i'm going to say yes wayne would you like to weigh in on what you know about that

I want to say we asked them that, and they would do nothing more than probably the cigarettes, and I don't think it's the full vape. I don't know about the vape business, but my understanding it was cigarettes primarily, and the rest of the convenient stuff. not a not out of a hopefully exclusively I guess we can we can tell them that no vaping products.

Well, I would say that based on our current legislative state that that would be make that a requirement.

Our moratoriums for one year and I'm not even sure they'll be open.

By the end of the hit with our next one. We'll have to see where that comes.

Thank you, Mr. Neugebauer.

Yeah, thank you.

Okay, so with the concurrence of the committee, we will bring us to a vote tonight. All right, the second item on our agenda is... 26-R26A, a resolution authorizing the City of Green to enter into a second amendment to the policing contract fiscal years 2024 through 2026 with the Summit County Sheriff to include flock safety cameras to enhance services within the City of Green and declaring an emergency. So back in 2024, we were presented with the initial offer to start a flock SAFETY CAMERA SYSTEM WITHIN OUR CITY. THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE USES THIS TO DETECT LICENSE PLATES AS WELL AS OTHER MARKERS ON VEHICLES TO POTENTIALLY HELP THEM IN INVESTIGATING CRIME. WE ENTERED INTO A TWO-YEAR CONTRACT WITH THEM AT 2024. THEY INSTALLED 12 CAMERAS I BELIEVE THROUGHOUT OUR CITY. AND BACK THEN IT WAS A $92,000 CONTRACT THAT WAS FOR TWO YEARS OF THE FLOCK SAFETY SERVICES AS WELL AS THE INSTALLATION OF THE CAMERAS. This amendment to the contract before us today is for $82,000, and that would be for the next two years of service. So I believe we have some presence from the sheriff's office here who would potentially like to come up here and talk about flock safety and how we use that within our city.

While he's coming up, I'll give a quick... summary to add just a minute to the chairman's comments you know how the system works is it takes a picture of just the license plate area of a car as the chairman indicated at key intersections what happens is if a crime is committed the law enforcement through the software that's provided by flock can run a hot list on a particular car. So if you have a blue equinox that people say, a blue equinox was involved in that bank robbery, without a license plate, they can look and see where a blue equinox has been in the city which gives law enforcement a really key lead to apprehend suspects. It's also handy when it comes to missing people, and I've invited the sheriff to talk about that in just a moment, how it's actually been used in our city and give us some examples of apprehensions and missing people who have been retained. From a public safety perspective, I want to say this, and I think the former mayor would share this. I wouldn't trade the problems we have in Greene for the problems that most cities have. I know from talking at least weekly with Captain McCutcheon and twice a week with the lieutenants and sergeants that are here at the building, the problems that we face, generally speaking, are minor. there is an occasion where serious crime happens in the city. And when that happens, very frequently, it's not committed by a green resident. It's committed by someone outside the city. Usually a car's involved. Either a car's involved in the commission of the crime or somebody drives in from outside, gets out, drives back in their car and drives away. So apprehending people who commit serious crimes in the city, is strongly associated with understanding, can you identify the vehicle? And this system is all about identifying vehicles. So it's real important to the crime-solving ability of our particular police force because so many of the fairly rare crimes that occur, so many of them involve a vehicle so with that i'm going to turn it over to captain mccutchen he's going to speak to instances in green numbers how often we use it and and also talk about the civil aspect of kind of retrieving missing people, and folks with dementia has happened a couple times. And then we also have, when they're done, a representative of FLOC, Kerry, is here this evening, and he's going to talk about how their system works, precautions they have in place that deal with concerns about privacy, the deletion of records after 30 days, and who's allowed into the system. So, Captain McCutcheon.

Thank you very much. Good evening, everyone. I'm Captain David McCutcheon, the patrol commander for the Summit County Sheriff's Office. I'm going to introduce my team here to everyone. We'll provide you some information on flock and how we utilize it. First of all, we have Sergeant Kirk Hosteller. He's the Summit County Sheriff's Office FLOC supervisor, also the FTO commander. Kerry McCormick with FLOC Safety. He's with Public Affairs. And Ms. Jenna Terry, who's the Sheriff's Office Data Analysis. So some of the information we're going to provide you with, and afterwards, feel free to ask questions. We're going to cover some things such as crime reduction, officer safety with real-time alerts that we receive, community impact, and privacy. Some hot topics. So without further ado, Sarge.

Good evening. So as the captain mentioned, I'm Sergeant Kirk Hosteller. I've met some of you. Some of you have not. I have 23, almost 24 years now going on my time in the sheriff's office. I've been assigned to most divisions in the agency except for narcotics. Currently assigned as a patrol supervisor working mostly out here in Green. I started using FLOC when I was in the detective bureau. Initially, it was under the City of Akron's licensing and contract, so I've used it for various types of incidents and investigations. Through my experience, in my opinion, FLOC is an invaluable tool to law enforcement in not only protecting the citizens of this community, but the county and the state through the recognition of criminals, criminal activities, and crime prevention. The life of one City of Green resident who has been found when missing or their property has been protected or recovered, or a suspect identified in the offenses against them, makes the expense of the system money well spent. Some facts the mayor already briefly touched on. 70% of all crimes include some sort of vehicle attachment to them. Criminals are aware of FLAC, They know the cities that have them, where they are. They learn very quickly. So ultimately, that works as a deterrent to hopefully prevent any potential crime or keep it out of certain areas where the flock cameras are prevalent. Flock allows law enforcement to continue to grow with the times and sort of try to turn the table a little bit more to look at more of a preventative rather than a reactive type approach to the crimes that are going on. We have a quick PowerPoint, if you'll bear with me. So currently, Summit County Sheriff's Office through the City of Green with FLOC technology shares the FLOC system with 427 agencies across the state of Ohio. We have 1,327 agencies across the continental United States that we share our system with. There are four federal agencies that are listed there. The Indiana Dunes National Park, the Tennessee Valley Authority Police, the U.S. Postal Inspection Services, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Jenna, our analysts came up with some great numbers here. Um, the mayor spoke to hot list. Carrie can maybe help me here a little bit on explaining this, but a hot list is essentially something that a deputy can create to get specific alerts. When a vehicle comes into our area or hits one of our cameras, then they'll get the alert. They can get it on their phone and they can go to that area and try to find that vehicle. Um, there's been 2153 non-owned custom hot list alerts. That means that something from another entity who owns Flock, who uses Flock, has hit, and we have gotten the alerts with them here in the City of Green. We have 1,655 sex offenders. I mean, you can see the numbers. I would say... Stolen plates, stolen vehicles, 492. These are all City of Green numbers. These are from our cameras here in the City of Green. Protection orders. The warrants, 252 warrants. CPIC is the Canadian Police Information System. So it's kind of, it's their equivalent of NCIC, if you will, for the United States. 11 violent persons and 8 missing persons and 1 extreme risk. of our users in the last 30 days, 50% of them are using Flock pretty much on a daily. This is not just strictly to patrol deputies, though. This is our users as a group. We have people in our narcotics division that use them. We have some task force officers that use it as well. But 31% of our deputies are using it on their phone. So as they're on the road, they're getting the alerts on their phone so that they can go wherever they need to go where they're hitting the cameras. Some key cases. Flock technology has assisted with or solved the I-77 shooting a few years ago. That was a very prevalent part of that case. I actually was in DB at that time. That was a 24-hour day for us. Arlington Road, we had a Waffle House shooting there, which technically it's Springfield, but we had a detective who was... working an extra job at a nearby location and responded. And they ended up, the suspects actually ended up shooting at him as he was following them up the highway. So Flock was used to track those vehicles and ultimately find the suspects. We had a shooting in some county fairgrounds. They were, uh, suspects were located and arrested here in green Sarah Honda, the Lexus dealerships, catalytic converter thefts. We've used it to track vehicles that suspects have gone to after they stole the catalytic converters. Our detective bureau does a pretty regular underage solicitation operation. And we've had numerous individuals agree to come to Greene to meet our undercover deputy. And we use flock to identify their vehicles as they're coming into the city, whether we use another neighboring jurisdiction's flock and we track them all the way in. And that way, when they actually do show up, we know. It's them in their car, just as they described, which all builds to the case. As many of you lawyers already know. We also had a narcotic seizure and arrest in the city of green where. We got a significant amount of cocaine from them. Speaking of that, it was 3 kilos of cocaine. Flock worked in the investigation, allowing them to identify vehicle activity and assist in locating individuals associated with the suspected drug trafficking. I have numerous slides here for you guys, so I'm not trying to bore you, but I want to show you how it works for the City of Green and overall. Some of these ones here are the most recent. We had a gentleman, I was on this call, FOR WHATEVER REASON HE WAS FOLLOWING HIS WIFE TO AN AUTO REPAIR SHOP IN A SEPARATE VEHICLE AND DECIDED TO TAKE A DIFFERENT TURN. SHE PULLED OVER AT SHEETS, CALLED US. WE USED FLOCK IN THE SENSE THAT HE DIDN'T HIT ANY OF OUR OTHER CAMERAS, SO WE KNEW HE HADN'T LEFT THAT AREA, SO THAT ALLOWED US TO NARROW DOWN OUR SEARCH AREA FOR HIM. AS YOU CAN SEE THERE, TOTAL TIME FOR THE CALL WAS 41 MINUTES AND WE HAD HIM BACK WITH HIS FAMILY.

Where did he end up going, Sarge? Was he in the doctor's parking lot?

Yeah, he parked in the doctor's parking lot across the street there at Children's, and then parked the car and then just started walking. And actually, they normally walk over by the chapel, so we were all starting to go that direction, and we got him walking back to his car. Most recently at the Stein, Massillon Road Stein roundabout, a vehicle... FOR WHATEVER REASON, LOST CONTROL AND KNOCKED OVER THE YIELD SIGN AND THEN FLED THE SCENE. WE WERE ABLE TO USE FLOCK ALONG WITH THE CITY CAMERAS THAT WE HAVE ACCESS TO. FLOCK PROVIDED THE VEHICLE, BUT IT ALSO PROVIDED OTHER SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VEHICLE. It was a van, like a commercial work van with ladder racks and stickers and stuff on it. So we were able to use that and identify those characteristics in the pictures from Flock. We tracked that down to Canton. We went down and had a conversation with the individual. He admitted it, which ultimately gives the city recourse for restitution for the sign and all of that. February of this year, Pennsylvania State Police reported a 70-year-old female with cognitive decline. She left her residence in Springboro, Pennsylvania on February 19th, so she was gone for at least a day. They used their access to our flock system and identified her as being here in the City of Green. Our deputies were able to find her. Got a hold of her, kept her safe, bought her food, and waited for her family to come from Pennsylvania to get her. There's several in here with serious medical conditions where it's similar situations where individuals have wandered off and we found them with that. This one was one of ours that wandered into Pennsylvania, ultimately located and returned home. Theft investigations. $500 worth of merchandise from a local business, threatened a loss prevention employee before fleeing. Flock data helped investigators identify the vehicle and suspect, providing the critical lead needed to advance the investigation and recover stolen property. Drug warrant investigation identified the vehicle associated with a missing person who also had felony warrants. Following the traffic stop, Your canine deputy was able to alert on the vehicle and discovered methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia in the drug. So the two individuals were charged with drug related offenses and transported to the jail. Another missing City of Green resident that we use FLAC to quickly locate and we actually found her in a neighboring jurisdiction and get her back with her family. Another one, dementia, that seems to be the biggest thing that we're really finding with this is that the family members that wander off, it comes in incredibly handy. Like I said earlier, if it's nothing else, just to narrow down the search area from the cameras that they haven't hit. A hit skip accident, again, tracking the vehicle down based on the pictures and the characteristics that we get off the flock cameras. If you're not aware, FLOC takes a picture of the video, or FLOC takes a picture of the vehicle, sorry, and obviously it's getting a picture of the license plate. Depending on the position of the vehicle, where it's at on the roadway compared to the camera, you may get more than just the license plate as far as the back of the vehicle or the side of the vehicle. So you can get your characteristics there. Another, so, Some key takeaways for this is it enhances collaboration between law enforcement agencies. It assists in locating vulnerable and missing individuals, provides investigative leads that may not otherwise exist. A lot of these, even with the vehicles of the missing people, if that's what they're in, sometimes if we didn't have FLOC, people don't remember their license plates or people don't remember a sticker that's on their car or whatever. And you can search just by the make and model of the car if you don't have the plate. So like the mayor said, we can narrow it down to the blue Chevy Equinox. It supports criminal investigations and suspect identification and helps recover stolen vehicles and property. So that's my quick little slideshow for you guys. You guys have any questions? I don't know if Janet wants to, but if not, if no questions for me on that, then I'll let Kerry take over. He is the flock guru. Thank you, Sergeant.

All right, bear with me one second while we get this thing open. Wonderful. Alrighty. Good evening, Mayor, members of council, Mr. Chairman, members of the city administration as well. Thank you for having me this evening. My name is Kerry McCormack and I'm on the external affairs team at FLOC. So I'm a part of our public affairs team. So we are on the public information team that. goes around the country and talks to people about who Flock is, what our products are, what they're not, and provides information to the general public. I'm not on our sales team. I'm on a separate team that does public information. And happy to be with you here today. I cover about 10 states, but thankfully I live in the state of Ohio, so I live just about an hour north on the west side of the city of Cleveland. So I appreciate the mayor asking me to come out tonight and to talk a little bit about Flock and answer any questions that you have. So just to start on who is Flock. So Flock is an American company. We were founded in Atlanta, Georgia about 10 years ago. And we are still headquartered there today. But as I noted, we are in 49 states across the country, one exception being Alaska. And we've got staff that live around the country. So those are going to be engineers, technicians, folks that sell our product, the whole gamut around the country. And we work with about 6,000 law enforcement agencies across the country to provide an important tool to help keep communities safe while ensuring that we are prioritizing privacy and transparency, which we'll talk about here in a minute. So again, a snapshot, about 12,000 total customers. And again, we're about a part of about 10% of crimes that are solved across the country. And again, that is a national figure with our departments, about 6,000 departments across the country. So we look at our technology as a collaborative technology. We do not replace police officers. We do not replace the great men and women of the Summit County Sheriff's Department. But we are a tool in their tool belt to help them more efficiently and accurately solve crime and find missing people. And I think you heard quite a few stories just now about how that is applied in real life. And we're proud to be a tool. Again, that sheriff's offices and local police departments and state police across the country utilize every single day, bring grandma home, find missing children, as well as solve crimes across the country. So I'll just give a kind of a basic overview of how license plate readers work. I don't want to assume that folks know exactly how this works. I know it's been a couple of years since we've been in front of you. So I'll just give a quick refresh on how these things work. They are a camera, a physical camera that are in the public right of way that are focused on a public road. And they capture a photo of the back of the vehicle when it passes the cameras. There are essentially two ways that law enforcement use license plate readers. The first way is an active alert, which you can see here on the screen what that looks like. An active alert is generated when a vehicle is known to law enforcement. So let's say that there was a robbery at a convenience store. The convenience store's camera caught the blue Chevy Equinox. I'll use the mayor's example. Ohio ABC 123. So the Summit County Sheriff can put that plate into their system as a hot list. Blue Chevy Equinox ABC123. So that means that if the vehicle passes one of your cameras or a camera that you're sharing with, and I'll talk about the nuance of sharing in a moment, it will send an alert that looks like this to your police department. So historically, what would happen generally is whether it's the sheriff or local police department, they'd have a morning roll call or an evening roll call, and they would say, hey, we're aware of a blue Chevy ABC123 that robbed a convenience store. Be on the lookout. And while we know our police departments and sheriff's departments work very hard, they are low on manpower. They're low on resources across the country. And so it's going to be difficult just to find that individual, whether it's a missing person or a vehicle associated with a crime, on your own. And so what the license plate readers do is when those vehicles that are associated with a crime or missing person pass them, they provide that precise alert to the law enforcement. So it's not only telling them, hey, that blue Chevy you're looking for just passed 1st and Main Street, it's also, again, extremely accurate. So it's going to say that blue Chevy, that specific vehicle you're looking for just passed 1st and Main Street, allowing law enforcement to then be deployed to that area to then identify that vehicle. An important note that we encourage all of our law enforcement partners to do is to use your human eyes to confirm that vehicle prior to initiating a traffic stop. These cameras are extremely accurate. Nonetheless, having that additional human stop in there is an important safeguard as well. From that point on, they're going to make a traffic stop as they would with or without our technology. So without our technology, if they saw that blue Chevy by happenstance, they're going to initiate that traffic stop. From that point on, it is the same policy. The other fundamental way that the system is used is retroactively. So what the Summit County Sheriff's Office can do is let's say we learn about the blue Chevy two weeks after the incident. They can go into the system and search for that blue Chevy ABC123 to see if it had passed any of the cameras over the last 30 days. Again, I'm going to put the 30 days in a parking lot for a moment. I'll talk about that in a little bit. But those photos are saved for 30 days. Importantly, when they go into the system to search, each officer has an ID. And all of the activity on the system is saved and audited into perpetuity. So if Officer Carey goes in, I'm logging with my ID, I'm looking for a blue Chevy, I have to choose a reason from a drop-down menu that's related to a crime or missing person. And then anything else I type in there is saved into a log forever so that the sheriff and the leadership of the sheriff's department can see exactly how the system is being used. And we've actually recently rolled out more auditing practices, which I'll talk about in a minute. So that really allows for a peace of mind to understand exactly how these are being used. So in summary on the use here, when a vehicle drives by, the only alerts that are being sent to the sheriff are vehicles tied to crime or missing people. Everyone else that drives by the cameras, no alert is generated. The sheriff's department is not made aware of that vehicle. And then when you look retroactively, again, there are various fields and a permanent audit log saved on what you're looking for and why and who is looking for it too. So this is just a kind of visual and explanation of what is captured. So again, it is the back of the vehicle. It's going to capture the plate in the case that there is no plate. We understand sometimes folks that are especially connected to organized crime may remove a plate. They may switch a plate. It also captures the back of the vehicle. So it can capture vehicle make, body type, color. Does it have a bike rack on it? Essentially what you would get if you took your iPhone out and took a picture of a back of a vehicle. Importantly, the cameras do not capture, they're not tied to DMV information. So law enforcement has to run that through their own systems separate from the cameras. They're not automatically tied to DMV information. And they don't capture anything about the people in the vehicle. There's no facial recognition. There's no way to tell who's in the vehicle. They're associating and placing a wanted vehicle, either a missing person or associated with a crime, at a place and time. This is just a slide to say they work at night. So obviously, we know that whether you're a missing person or it's a vehicle associated with a crime, they also travel in the evening, not just during the day. So this just shows that they work at night. So again, the tool is extremely effective to identifying vehicles associated with crime or missing people. We also know that privacy is critical to all of us as Americans. It's a fundamental principle that the importance of balancing technology in general, but definitely public safety technology with privacy. So I'm just going to review a couple of those main pillars that apply to every single customer that partners with Flock. So first and foremost, the data, and here data is the photo of the back of the vehicle and any metadata associated with it. When was the vehicle taken? At what camera? That type of information is 100% owned by our customers. That is in our contracts. It's in our terms of service. Those photos are owned by the customers of Flock. Any private customers, so we have mom and pop shops, we partner with Lowe's, for example, they can provide information to law enforcement. They have no access to any law enforcement databases or hot lists. So just an important thing to highlight there, while they can give information to law enforcement, they have no access to law enforcement databases. That data is deleted after 30 days. So the 30-day deletion period is a best practice for ALPR photos across the country. And the reason that's in place is because it gives enough of a window for law enforcement to be able to utilize those photos. Again, we think about situations where law enforcement might get a lead later on, or they'll get a video later on where they identify a vehicle associated with a crime or missing person, it may be a week or two weeks later. So that 30 days allows for enough time for law enforcement to find the photos useful while also providing a finite period of time where those photos exist and then they are hard deleted and unrecoverable. 30 day window while those photos lifespan of the photos and then they're hard deleted. The one exception here in the state of Ohio is if they are downloaded in connection to an investigation. So there's an ongoing investigation and a vehicle is spotted connected to that investigation. Sheriff can download it to a local server. Once again, all of those actions are audited and into a permanent audit log. So they'll be able to tell who did what, when and why. Another component too, again, as we discussed, it takes images of publicly available information. You're talking about a government-issued license plate in a vehicle on a public right-of-way. And there is no facial recognition, as we discussed earlier. And each customer decides if they want to share with people and with whom they share with. So as we know, with any law enforcement work, a collaboration is critical. So I live in Cleveland. I know that Cleveland works with Shaker and Lakewood and Akron and probably Green on active investigations all of the time. It's the same concept here, where each agency can decide who they want to share with. And what that means is that let's say a missing person, a person goes missing. Frequently, they're not just going to stay in green. So if you are sharing with Akron, let's use that for an example, and that individual with dementia or another challenge drives through Akron past one of Akron's license plate readers, if you have agreed to be in a sharing relationship with Akron, the sheriff's office, it will pick up that plate and send a notice to Akron and to you to say, hey, there's an individual with dementia that went missing out of green that we are now pinging in Akron. Same thing with vehicles associated with crime as well. But again, those sharing preferences are controlled by the customer at all times. So data security is extremely important as well. And so I'm just going to walk through several of the components of data security. And I'm going to be just very upfront here. I have a business degree. I am not a cybersecurity expert. We have an entire team that does that. But I'll give you just a high level here. So FLOX systems are certified on multiple levels. So FBIC just certified NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act, that deals a lot with the components in our products. And we also go through processes, our SOC 2 ISO, those are independent stress tests, internationally recognized stress tests of our systems, of our servers, to ensure that they have not been penetrated and that if there are any vulnerabilities, they are identified and mitigated when they happen. I always tell people, if you ever have a tech vendor in front of you that says nothing bad could ever happen or they could never be breached, they are lying to you. Do not buy their product. But what you do is you are constantly obsessed with ensuring that your systems are up to date, that you are getting independent stress testing to your systems, and you have everything in place possible to protect that data. While there are some highly publicized videos on YouTube of people taking apart our cameras and getting all sorts of views on them, our data, our systems, our customer data have never been breached, and we want to keep it that way. So that's exactly why our chief information security officer is constantly looking for additional ways to stress test our system. So just a little bit on transparency. We've hit on a little bit of this already, but all of those search require an ID for that officer in the system, as well as a mandatory offense type. Why are you looking for this plate associated with a crime or missing person? We talked about those permanent audit trails. So while the photos delete after 30 days, the activity on the system is saved into perpetuity. One exception there is the state of Virginia, where they passed a law mandating that those logs are deleted after two years. I don't know why, but it's the Virginia legislature. Here in Ohio, those logs are saved into perpetuity. So the moment you sign up with Flock and the first search that you run, that is all logged into perpetuity. We encourage customers to audit those logs frequently. Take a look at how your system is being used as well. And then we also have launched, and this is no longer coming soon, this is active proactive auditing. And essentially what that is, is that says, hey, Officer Carey normally searches one or two plates a day. On Wednesday, he searched 30. And it's going to send a note to the administrator saying, check this out. Doesn't necessarily mean that Officer Care is doing anything wrong. Maybe there's a really big active investigation that I'm working on. But it's just a way to spot irregularities of use and to flag it with the administrator to ensure that all is well. So just a couple components on community values too. The system is built to reflect the community values in which it operates in. So I'll just highlight a few here. There are search filters in place that our customers can activate if they wish. Exception being in states that mandate it via state law, and those are automatically toggled on. California, Virginia, some other states. State of Ohio does not have those mandates for ALPR systems. Those would include prohibition of searches related to immigration and reproductive health care. We talked about the permanent audit logs, federal limitations. So these apply to sharing. So one-on-one sharing, you decide specifically with one agency who you're sharing with. Hey, Summit County, we want to share with Cuyahoga County, or we want to share with Akron. That's the one-on-one sharing. You can also opt in to two other buckets. One is a statewide lookup, which means anyone in the state of Ohio that says we want to enter into the statewide lookup is sharing with each other. The second one, same concept but nationally. Anybody in the country that wants to opt in and share with each other can do so. There are no federal agencies in the statewide or national lookup. The sharing relationships with federal agencies are opted into on a one-on-one basis on that component. And then the legal response there, that is just to say that our customers own their data. If Flock ever receives a public records request or a subpoena, we have a legal team that contacts your poor law director, I'm sure, to say, hey, we've received the subpoena, or maybe to the county in this case, not your law director, the county, sorry, to say, you know, we've received the subpoena, this is your data, your information to give, and they forward it on to you. Not to say we wouldn't be supportive. We have a legal team to support our customers, but contractually and legally, it's not our data. So we don't, we wouldn't give out data in response to that. So we can get into more of that if you'd like. This is a video of one of our engineers that reviews the system. It's about three minutes. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to give you a yes or no on it. That's okay. Go ahead. Watch it? Okay. Oh, no. Oh, you know what? Because I'm not connected to the internet.

I mean, if you want to just keep going, you can. All right. I'll send that video. Yeah, sure.

Okay.

Get this back up. All right, Ashley, we'll have to wait.

OK, here in Ohio, FLOC is in about 350 different law enforcement agencies, a few of them right in front of you here across the state. And I'm not gonna walk through these, but these are just examples of how Flock has been used across the state. Here is a seven-year-old bicyclist in Akron, hit and run. Hit and runs are a very common use of these cameras, especially because frequently a victim will not get the whole plate, or they'll say it was a blue Chevy ABC, I didn't catch the rest of it. Ontario PD robbery. Dayton, homicide solved. Mentor, Ohio, outside of Cleveland, missing teenagers found. So those are just a few examples of many across the state where the technology has been used. This is a real story out of Georgia back from 2020. It's just an easy snapshot to understand how this tool is used. So this is a real Amber Alert that was issued. A child was abducted. A mom called police, 1233. An Amber Alert was issued. 1 to 1 PM, local police ran a search on their flock system and the folks they shared with. 2.30 p.m., that vehicle, so that vehicle that was reported associated with the abduction, passed a camera, so it pinged police. Hey, that vehicle that abducted the child just passed a camera. 5.03 p.m., police officers physically locate the vehicle, make an arrest, and at 6 p.m., the child was reunited with mom. So while this was great police work, it was assisted by the tool to efficiently and accurately locate the vehicle. We are proud of our partners, so we are supported by folks like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for the disruption of child trafficking happening across the country. Mothers Against Drunk Driving, again, a lot of that's associated with hit and runs, unfortunately. And folks like the NAACP and the historic Oakland chapter that have recognized the technology as a way to reduce bias and to provide objective evidence in law enforcement. That's all I got. I'm happy to take questions. Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. McCormick. I really appreciate the very thorough presentation from both the sheriff's office as well as you. I have a plethora of questions and I'm sure some others on council do as well. Before we get into that, I would like to give time to the one person who signed up from our audience to speak tonight. Just in case they have other commitments going on tonight, give them the benefit of the doubt. So Mr. Lee, would you like to comment?

Good evening, council. My name is James Lee. I've been a member of Green for all 19 years of my life. I just wanted to express my concern actually over the flock hammer systems and their usage here in Green. The reason I bring this up is because recently on June 1st, a news story came out from News 5 in Cleveland about a misuse with their flock hammer systems. Multiple residents expressed concern over their cameras. For those unaware, Flock manages a website where for a monthly subscription, anyone nationwide can access the data that their cameras pick up. Obviously, this is mostly used for police departments and sheriffs and similar cases. But it begs the question of who can access it at any time, considering this is a nationwide company, not specifically one centered in Ohio or in Green. So obviously their cameras can pick up our license plates, but one thing that wasn't so much mentioned was how they can pick up their colors, the make of the car, their model. It just kind of begs the question of how much information are they getting? I know he said that the information can be deleted within 30 days, but it just begs the question of who can access that information in 30 days. Now, obviously, I am expressing this out of concern for our privacy. Obviously, I'm not trying to make our deputies' lives harder. I understand the importance these systems mean to detecting criminals. However, I think there's a pros and cons here. Just today, when driving here, I passed a camera on the intersection of Arlington and Cassin, and I just had to wonder who was keeping tabs on the camera at that time. Obviously, probably nobody, but it's just hypothetical. Furthermore, fog cameras have been proven to be unreliable. I mean, not to be contrarian, but one thing that was not really mentioned during the presentation was the mistakes that they could possibly make. I mean, no system is perfect, especially one ran on AI, since AI is notorious for making mistakes at times. So I just wonder what happens during that time. I mean, going back to the Cleveland story, their fire department noted how Earlier in the year, one of their fire department drones, or actually multiple of them, were used in a case to find people who have illegally immigrated to the country while the Cleveland Fire Department specifically gave the flock orders not to use their drones for that matter. Now obviously I'm not a well of information as some professionals here, but I'm mostly getting this off of news websites. But again, it just made me concerned when I first read them. It also doesn't help that LPR assures the users that they're always closely monitored. I mean, even today he mentioned how they're consistently audited. However, again, the fire department reported that during this time, they were being told that they were being consistently audited. However, upon further investigation, they found that it was rarely audited, sometimes not. Again, there are mistakes that could be made, and I'm not saying that specific incidents should be used against the brand as a whole, but personally, as a member of this community, I just find it a bit concerning that mistakes could be made, and especially with community resources. I don't have to tell you guys that we don't have the funding in Cleveland, so a mistake like that could possibly cost us a larger chunk of our budget than we could allow. Now, I understand that we're trying to solve crimes here. We're trying to help the city. I just think perhaps it would be better to go a more personal public route, perhaps through our own fire department, perhaps through even Akron or Northeast Ohio. I just don't think a national company based in Atlanta, Georgia, a couple of states away, should be determining how we solve crimes here. So I just ask that you reconsider and think over your funding for FLOC and find other alternatives. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Lee. Okay, so I guess I'll kind of lead this off. I have a few, I guess a number of questions and concerns. Just to kind of preface this, so in 2024, we had this contract started before us. I had concerns back then. I brought them to the table. We as a council decided that there were some concerns we wanted addressed, hopefully at the county level, because one of the challenges is that having contracted with the sheriff's office rather than having our own police department, we're kind of removed from actually being able to control the terms of this agreement, right? So I know we had concerns with the data retention period. I know some other cities have modified that. I know we had concerns with... There was certain language in the agreement that said that flock could share data with third parties if the company believes it is reasonable and good faith, I believe was the term. If you watch the meetings from two years ago, I've read the contract verbatim. I was assured that wasn't the case. I'm going to present some evidence that I think that FLOC has breached our trust in that regard. But the worst thing is that we were trying to be cooperative with the county. They didn't care to oblige to that. Second, we requested that if any changes did come to the system in the future, such as AI capabilities, We would have a say in it. The county didn't respond to that. And we are also, as a city, funding a project that is ultimately for the county sheriff's office. I understand that it's within our bounds, but again, we have no say over what happens within our bounds. And they're going to continue to ask us to pay for this. We asked if they could look for grant monies. They never acknowledged that. So just to preface this, the cooperation with the county was non-existent, which I was very disappointed in. That being said, I did ultimately support the project. I thought that there was potential for good from it, as you have clearly shown. But with that being said, I still had my concerns, and I'm going to continue, and I think that some of those concerns have been fulfilled to this day, which is unfortunate. I think we had valuable information brought to us that says these are invaluable tools for law enforcement, Agency which is which is great. I want you guys to have invaluable tools. I'm a firefighter paramedic myself I'm all for the safety of everybody in our city And I want you guys to be able to promote safety as much as possible but the inviolability of that tool I believe must also match with the values of American liberties and I see as mr. Lee said significant issues with Privacy and our Fourth Amendment rights I'm going to bring up a couple questions. One point was it was brought forward that we should be preventative rather than reactive, which I think that that's a great idea, but also that's the plot of Minority Report. Just on the side. Great movie. I want to say how are we certain that this data can't be shared with any other entity. Because I think as we've seen with the city of Cleveland lately, with the city of Dayton, they're obviously dealing with different problems than we have with immigration. And politics aside, I think that it begs the question of these cities weren't made aware of where this data was going. Dayton, for instance, found out that the data was investigated 70,000 times regarding immigration, despite their own acknowledgement of searching that. So I guess... I was told two years ago by, I don't believe it was you, it was a different representative, that this data wouldn't be shared, but then here we have pretty concrete evidence that it's being shared outside of the trust of the local governments and local law enforcement. And to the point that Dayton's now at least suspending, potentially canceling their flock system and is currently putting trash bags over their cameras. So I would just like to have some sort of reassurance that how do we know where this data's going? How can we protect it and keep it within our jurisdiction or at least the cities we share our data with.

Yeah. Can I just say this before he answers? So the flat cameras can't really answer the question. I mean, your company can't answer that question. The sheriff's office is the one that has that data. They have to answer that question.

So as far as our sharing, our sharing is just with other law enforcement entities. Ultimately, there are six administrators to the flock system that we run. A while back there were some concerns that came up out of Washington State with information and some court rulings out there which came to our attention. So at that time I spoke with Chief Brown and me being the one who ultimately I mean, there's six of us, but I'm the one who essentially manages this the most for the Sheriff's Office. The settings within the system were set to, and this was done before me, were set to automatically approve anybody who requested access to our cameras. So when that happened, I went in and after my conversation with Chief Brown, went in and immediately changed that setting. So now anybody who requests access to our cameras has to be approved or denied through an administrator. Again, most usually me. I think we have six pending requests. I also went back through and deleted a lot of out of state agencies, especially from Washington State, or anywhere that we've known that they've had some sort of issues. I've deleted their access, so we ultimately control it. I don't know if that answers your question.

Well, it sounds like ultimately we have some sort of human at the end who's determining if this data is going to be shared with some other entity.

Correct. So that's good.

And is there any potential for any backdoor access to this data? So how did... Just for my own knowledge, how does the thing with ICE in Cleveland end up happening? It seems like that was news to them, like they didn't expect it.

So real quickly, if I can add before you answer that. We also only have certain parameters within our cameras, right? There's a lot of other cities that have different, they pay for a larger package or more features, if you will, to their cameras. And maybe that's what the gentleman was talking about with Cleveland. I don't know that story. We certainly don't have any drones that are tied to it or anything like that. I have no knowledge that even our fire department is tied to it. Our settings seem to be on the more lower end as far as what our cameras do and what we can share. Because I see agencies that come across in little bubbles of all the information they want from our cameras. And we only have six different things that they can go in and access. And really, it's just a picture. We have one pan-to-zoom camera, and that's at our .

Potentially that functionality could be expanded right if we paid for it if you did, but then we I don't think we would have any say in that It's just between the well unless we would have to appropriate the money when it comes back to us Okay, so we would at least be made aware of any changes like that Okay, could I ask for clarification?

Just as part of your discussion so the customer in the city of green For the flock camera is the sheriff Nobody in the city of green whether it's the fire division, administration, any division, service, nobody has access to any of that data. It's strictly a function of the Summit County Sheriff's Department. Is that correct? Correct. So the customer is the sheriff. It's not the city. So we don't have data. None of our employees can get to the data. Strictly law enforcement. I just wanted that clarification.

Thank you, Mr. DeVitas. You certainly can get the data. No, no, no. The mayor has asked. You can ask us, and we can give you the information. But you to go on your own, no, you cannot get it.

Thank you.

To answer your question, yes.

Could you use the microphone if you're not at the... To answer your question, yes, there is. It's the law enforcement. It's your deputy sheriffs working in the city. They utilize it. Go ahead.

Thank you. Chairman, just to answer your question, too. So a lot of times what we've seen is agencies across the country that have maybe not have had their settings the way that they initially wanted to. And that has allowed for searches that they didn't want to happen. So that was not flock giving out information. That was not a backdoor. The settings were not calibrated to exactly how they wanted them. We work really hard to talk to our customers to say, hey, check your settings. How do you want your settings? Do you want anything prevented? Do you want any filters on? But sometimes that is not the case, unfortunately.

Okay. So another question, I guess this might be hard to prove, but do you have any sort of quantitative data or trends that, and maybe you can provide it by our next meeting or via email or whatever, but obviously we see that the flock cameras are a tool used. Do we have any evidence that they're causative in the actual solving of these crimes and that the crimes wouldn't have been solved without? Or even if there's a trend, I feel like that would be some sort of justification.

So there's a couple variables there. To answer your question, I honestly don't know that we'd ever be able to prove that it wouldn't have happened if we didn't use Flock. I mean, who knows, right? One of the downsides... And we've spoken to FLAC about it. They've told us that it's an issue that's sort of across the board with all agencies that use FLAC. And we've tried to impress this upon our deputies. FLAC system is a separate system that we use. So if they run a vehicle and they find a warrant or a missing person or whatever the case may be, They need to go into flock and enter a disposition, if you will, into flock, which will show the use. And that's where the numbers come from out of flock. That's a that's a difficult task with 50 some deputy sometimes trying to get them all to do that. And. It's not that they're refusing to do it. It's just there's a lot going on. They've just found this car. They've made an arrest. They've done whatever. They have all their other stuff that they have to do to finish that up and then remember to go back into FLAC. So one of the things that we're doing as the Sheriff's Office is Captain McCutcheon is in conversations with our people and the people at the Tyler and the SEC, the Summit Emergency Communications Center. We're trying to work out a solution to where When the deputies clear a call and they've used flock, that in our CAD, they can mark that with a flock use to help us give better numbers so that we have more of a better way to track it rather than just relying on them to go back into flock and put their disposition in there.

So we're able to pull that. You can use the other mic, too.

It should work if you want to.

Thank you. So that way, if we do that on Tyler and indicate whether Flock was utilized for this incident, then we can pull that data whenever needed and see the success rate.

You just said Tyler. You want to tell them what that is? Oh, yeah. You want to tell them? They don't know what you're talking about.

Oh, Tyler. Tyler's our incident report management system. You know, to do an incident report, we use Tyler's system. So we're trying to get that in the Tyler system so it'll indicate whether flock was utilized.

That's essentially what the deputies have on their computer in the car. Their calls, all of that come through, all the information for the calls, that all comes through that computer. That's the Tyler system.

I can just...

Deputies hit it square on Mr. Chairman. So, and this is something on the external affairs team. We are also hounding our engineers on is to make it easier for police officers or law enforcement to log in when they've used it, hit it straight on. So, you know, Crime rates, crime information is kept locally or with national databases as well. That's not in our database. So we rely on officers to enter in. Yep, for this issue, we utilized FLOC. Totally reasonable that police officers are busy and they are stretched thin. So a lot of times it may not happen. So that challenges that. That question, what we know is when we talk to our law enforcement partners across the country, they'll say, oh, absolutely. We use it all the time and we use it for hit and run and this and this. The challenge is getting folks to document that. And as we were talking about earlier, part of that, and we're trying to emphasize with our engineering team, is, hey, make it easier for them in the system to take notes on when they used it or not. But that's an ongoing conversation about ensuring that the actual usage of FLOC is recorded when it's used.

Yeah, I think that that would be a good thing to have. I mean, whether you can have it before the next meeting, probably not, but just going forward with your company, with you guys, if you could have some sort of way to actually delineate how effective it's been in the actual solving of the crime versus just if it's been used. Another question I had, so we were brought to the attention that there's a 30-day retention period of the data. So The flock system, correct me if I'm wrong, is pinging different databases like the Amber Alerts and whatever. I don't know how it works with you guys. The stolen vehicle database or whatever.

Anything that's tied to a license plate. Okay.

Like NCIC and all of that. So I can understand with the purpose of an investigation you want to keep this data for X amount of time. What is the benefit of keeping every other person's comings and goings for 30 days versus just, you know, quick scan, it pings it, if there's nothing, boom, erase?

Yeah, I think, again, for crimes or leads that may happen a week, two, three weeks later, you're not going to know that plate right away. So let's say you only did a 24-hour retention period. If you come up with a lead for a homicide or missing person a week later, it's gone. So you're not going to be able to utilize that information as a part of an investigation. So the 30 days, again, is a best practice of enough time to where the officers can utilize that data, but still having a hard boundary of permanent deletion after those 30 days. So it's really about retroactive. If it's already a hot list, it's going to ping within 60 seconds. but for all of the other instances where there's a retroactive search done because of new information on a crime or missing person, that's why you would maintain it for the 30 days versus let's say 24 hours.

So, so yeah, I see the benefit of it. But again, that is like, you know, every person is submitting to 30 days of some sort of surveillance, however you want to define it. Um, which, which I think has its own problems, but I get that it's a very useful tool. Um, I guess some of the other stories I've seen out just online, and I know that they're one-off cases or whatever, and obviously you're going to hear about the bad things. I get it. But I think that these things show that maybe this technology is pretty new and there are risks. The state of Ohio is one of 25 states that doesn't have comprehensive regulation from the state level pertaining to how these are used, how data is kept, all that. And obviously, I think all the guys that are sheriff's officers are awesome. But nationwide, I've seen that there's 18 cases of law enforcement personally using this tool to track certain people, X's, romantic interests, someone they don't like, and use that to their own benefit or demise, whatever you want to call it. But luckily, those people have been apprehended and fired in investigations. But I think it shows there's a potential for abuse. How do we, I guess, obviously it comes down to an individual and it is a crime of itself, but how do we prevent that from happening? Yeah.

Chairman, it's a really good question. And so I would say that, as you noted, we have law enforcement across the country that put a badge on every day and serve our community and do the right thing. Out of our 6,000 customers, those cases are few and far between, but obviously very serious. And so I would say just a couple things. First and foremost, those agencies identified those individuals because of our auditing system that's in place. So essentially, the auditing system did its job. But as a way to enhance that, that's why we have introduced that proactive auditing. So that's going to flag for an administrator any time that there's a, essentially when there is something that's off about a user. So are they searching the same plate every day? Or is there something of that nature? There may be a good reason for that, and the officer can justify it and say, here's why we were doing that, and it's connected to this case and all that kind of stuff. but our proactive auditing tool is going to flag any time it senses that there's some sort of odd behavior going on. And for our agencies that have started to use that, they love it. And so again, The reason that we know about that misuse is because the system caught it. In each of those cases, those agencies, just as they would in any other misconduct, whether it's with or without our technology, those departments, everything from prosecution to discipline, have dealt with those individual officers. But again, holistically, the vast, vast majority of officers that utilize the technology do the right thing every day. There are safeguards in place to catch when something happens, and we encourage those agencies, as they would in any other misconduct case, to deal with those officers. Again, each city and state and county has different rules and laws, but what we've seen is when there is misconduct, those departments hold those officers accountable.

I mean, I think that makes sense to me, obviously. I think kind of my point is just that to me may be waiting for the state to get involved with this, especially because we don't have any control from our level. It's only the county. And the last time we tried to work with the county, they didn't want to work with us. So I don't know if they'd be interested in reopening this and giving us some sort of flexibility, but that is one of my qualms.

Chair, if I may.

Yeah.

And I would also just say as a company, as long as it is balanced, we actually appreciate regulation. We testified in favor of the Virginia law. We testified in favor of the Connecticut law. We testified in favor of the New Mexico law. Because what we find is, again, as long as the tool allows law enforcement to utilize it, not essentially a de facto ban, It puts rules of the road out there. It creates one standard across the state. So our government affairs team actually testifies in support of legislation when it has reasonable safeguards and also allows officers to utilize the system.

I don't know, Clark, did you want to hear from the Sheriff's Office on your question about that? Like what safeguards they have in place within their department?

If that's beneficial, you know, within your own administration versus, you know, their own tools, right?

Well, with the new alerts, I mean, if we were, if, I'll just give you a scenario. If I was to get an alert that that was an issue, then obviously I would have to investigate that and look into it. We have a whole process to go through as far as rules and regulations and disciplinary process requirements. they would obviously launch an investigation into the deputy's actions and why they're conducting the searches that they are. Based on what comes from that initial interview, then it would be up to me to determine if it needs to go and be presented to the disciplinary board, and then we have a disciplinary board that would determine the level of offense within our rules and regulations and what the penalties are for that.

And you think with the system that FLOC has in place and your own internal investigation, you'd be able to catch these things early. Yeah.

I think, I mean, if we got, if I got, I've never gotten an alert like that so far, but if I get an alert like that, I mean, if I get an alert like that, we're, we're definitely going to be on it. Um, I would almost compare this a little bit to just like our, our, our, um, like the CAD system that we use and like leads and Oleg and all of that. I mean, anytime that we've had anybody who has ever, um, committed any type of violation. As far as those go, I don't even know if there's any left here, actually, that have ever done that. They generally are terminated. So that's not something that we would take lightly at all.

Thank you. Mr. Beas, before you move on, I have a question on this topic for you. Does some kind of share have a written policy with respect to their own audits? Is there something you do internally? I know you have the proactive, but just on the general audit, do you have like a procedure that says you guys do audits so often or anything like that within your own department?

Specifically to FLAC, I don't believe we do.

Okay. The second question I have is, do you have any written policies with respect to the proactive audit? If you get a notification, how that is handled? Like documentation of, hey, we got the notice on this date. I interviewed Officer X on this date or Deputy X on this date. Do you guys have any kind of policy for doing the proactive audits?

that would all fall under a disciplinary investigation.

So it's discretionary, right? So if you've got a proactive, I'm not trying to impute your character, I admit, Sergeant, but it comes to you, you make the determination whether or not you're going to ask a question on deputy. I can assume you're going to do that, but there's nothing written requiring you as pretty much the head of the flock department to do that investigation.

The other thing to remember is with the new alerts, I'm not the only admin. There's six of us total. So if I'm getting them, everybody's going to get that. Okay.

All six of them can do their own investigations or they come to you and you make the ultimate decision whether they're going to investigate?

If we all got the alert, there's going to be some sort of conversation because the only people that are the admins are the department heads. I'm the lowest ranking. Okay. So everybody else above me is the chief, the captain.

So it's up to each department, the six departments decide if they're going to investigate it, right? It's not automatic in your policy saying, hey, we got this proactive audit alert that we're going to do A, B, C, and D. It's ultimately false. I'm just trying to understand. I'm not trying to say it's false.

It would launch an investigation. Okay. Out of the six of us, somebody's going to launch an investigation into that, and that would just fall in line with our disciplinary process. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Avias. Thank you, Mr. Rager. I have, I guess, probably two more points before I open this up. I could probably talk for hours about it. So with regards to the data and the encryption and security of all that, we've been obviously assured that there's end-to-end encryption. You've been given all these awards or certifications, whatever it means, because you, like I, am not an IT guy. I did find some stories online that, you know, make me question, um, you know, the fullness, the efficacy, uh, of to which this is achieved. Um, so as Sergeant, uh, as that were said, we can control who this data set sent to. Um, I, I saw that maybe that's with regards to the actual, um, concrete data we have and the images and investigations, but there is evidence out there that with the AI back end that runs this whole program, right, that compiles all this stuff and is learning, that this AI has been AI is a continually learning thing, right? And so these companies who create AI, whether it's Google, X, Amazon, Flock, they have to coach that model, I guess, right? Help it learn. They were... there was like internal memos or whatever from Flock that was showing that this data, which includes footage and photos of people like you and me, cars like us, that was reviewed to further better their AI system through a company called Upwork with freelance contractors in the Philippines. So I know that sounds insane, but it does show that Whether it's the actual data that the law enforcement agency owns or the data on the back end that the AI is using to learn, I think that there's a serious security issue there because maybe that's harmless, but who knows where else it could go. There was also a story where And this is a different product, I know that, because you have the license plate readers and then you have the condor cameras, which are the tilt and pan and zoom. That there was approximately 60 cameras across the nation that were left open. There's a thing called an Internet of Things network, which is like a local network. And people were able to tap into that without any password, any security, and access footage of themselves walking across the street, watching. Kids at a playground watch a guy rollerblading down a sidewalk in a park. I mean, these are things that may seem harmless, but it's also, if this data got into the wrong hands, what can someone do with footage of your child at the playground? And when they come to and from there, where they live, these things are really important if the data gets in the wrong hands. While we're given some sort of security about the actual data that Flock retains, I think that there is some loopholes and some potential for serious infringement of that. Basically, to sum up my points, I guess not all tools are always gonna be the right tools. So like having cameras in everyone's house or like with the famous Edward Snowden thing, tapping into anyone's phone, obviously those are infringement of privacy rights and I know you guys don't go to that length, I get it. these things could benefit us right but they also have a lot of potential for for harm to our own liberties as american civilians um and then with regards to a lot of times there's like the emotional appeal with like if this is saving one life it's probably beneficial and i i totally get it that's that's part of my job but you know i'm sure plenty of people up here as well as I can almost guarantee all of you law enforcement officers, we've heard this argument with Second Amendment rights. If everyone didn't have a weapon, would we have anything to worry about? If we at least saved one life, it'd be fine. So I just think we have to really look at the balance between the pros and cons of this, our civil liberties as Americans, and what the trade-off is. My hope would be that We could see the state do something comprehensive that would help us have some sort of controls. I wish that we could work with the county to have some sort of controls, but I haven't seen that yet, and I would be really interested to know if the county would be willing to do that for us, especially since the taxpayers of Green are the ones running this bill. That's all I have. I know it's a lot, but I'm passionate about this. So I will open this up to committee. I want to hear, give me a response. Do you mind?

Go ahead, sure. I'm sorry.

No, no, it's okay. Chairman, I'm not going to speak for the county. I'll tell you that. But what I will say, though, so two things referred to there. Happy to talk about them. The first case was actually in a town outside of Atlanta, Georgia, with the live cameras. We actually have a whole blog post on this. Put out that information when it came to our awareness. So what happened was... As the town was installing our live cameras, the cell provider, I won't name the company, instead of putting them on a closed private network, put them on a public network by accident. Therefore, it did allow for that live video feed to be accessed. SO ESSENTIALLY IT WAS YOU BEING ABLE TO SEE IN THE PUBLIC SPACES, RIGHT? SO IT WAS LIKE A PARK AND A ROAD, THINGS LIKE THAT. COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE THAT IT HAPPENED. WHEN IT CAME TO OUR ATTENTION, WE NOT ONLY PUT A FIX IN THE LOCAL SYSTEM, BUT WE ALSO PUT A SYSTEMIC FIX IN TO PROVIDE A FIREWALL FOR THAT NEVER TO HAPPEN, EVEN IF A TECHNICIAN WOULD MAKE A MISTAKE DOWN THE ROAD, SOMETHING THAT, AGAIN, uh... something that is not acceptable uh... we identified still on our public website describing what happened uh... and not only did we do a local fix but we did a system fix there as well uh... and then uh... other component uh... you know uh... on the uh... utilization of data so And I'll give you two concrete examples. In Tennessee, when they came out with their blue plate, you can picture maybe not the dark blue Tennessee plate, the cameras were having a challenge reading them. So what they can do is they take anonymized data. So essentially, it is a picture of a plate that is removed, any information on where, when, what community, any of that information to improve the system so it stops making whatever mistake it was making. So that is in response to when there's an issue. The same thing happened when the Cybertruck came out. Again, the cameras were having an issue picking them up. The same thing. But again, importantly, when those system improvements go in place, and a lot of times they're flagged by our customers. So our customers will call, like in Tennessee, for example. But when those photos are used to improve the system, again, what agency, when, where, all of that information is removed. It is securely stored and cannot be searched or put back into that customer data. And that's just a necessity of ensuring that the system remains accurate, which is critical for ALPRs.

And so it's really good to see you guys are adapting to these things. But I guess my point is just that there is potential and it's a new technology, right? And there's limited regulation. So these things might pop up and there's a potential for risk.

Yeah. And again, that process is critical to keeping the cameras very accurate. Okay.

Thank you. Okay.

Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Humphrey.

I just have a couple of points. I'll try to go through them very quickly. First of all, just, Mr. Lee, thank you for coming and sharing your thoughts tonight. That took a lot of courage and a lot of preparation to do that, and maybe we'll celebrate with you when you graduate from law school. I don't know if that's in your future, but you're very well spoken, and I appreciate it. I wish more people would show up and share their thoughts on that, and so well done. Thank you. A couple things that I had that flowed from Mr. Lee's statement, and maybe it's kind of what our chairman was already talking about. Can private individuals pay to have a plan to tap into these flock cameras, or are we just talking about the exceptions like the thing that happened in Atlanta that happened?

Yeah, so we do have private customers, but they are completely segregated from any government or law enforcement data or information. So they would not be able to access hot list, sieges, any of the tools that law enforcement have. They would not be able to access those. They could, if a crime happened in their parking lot, they could provide evidence to a local police department, but they have no access to law enforcement databases or information.

Okay, so when you talked about Lowe's, somebody takes something from a Lowe's, they're driving away, they would use it for...

They're calling the police department, who then they can provide information to to investigate that.

What percentage is private user versus public?

I haven't gotten that question before.

I feel really good about that then.

Yeah, no, that is, I've been to a lot of counseling meetings. I haven't gotten to them before. I don't want to give you the wrong information. Allow me to get back to you on that. Okay. I'll take a note so I can remember that.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

It's the minority for sure. The vast majority of our customers are law enforcement. Okay. But I'll give you a specific number.

All right. And Sergeant, you said during your presentation in one of the PowerPoints that Summit County shares the flock system with four federal agencies. I just want to understand what you meant when you said that. In what sense are they sharing the flock system? Are they sharing the information?

No, they have shared access to our cameras. So they can get into our... If they have a vehicle they're looking for... and it hits on one of our cameras, they're going to get that information. So then they can contact us and say, hey, we have such and such vehicle at this location for whatever reason. We're trying to get it, or we have a warrant for this person, or this is a suspect in a homicide case or something like that. Then we can be proactive and try to find that vehicle for them.

And who's paying for that? In that circumstance, they're essentially getting the benefit of the technology that, you're paying for, is there any reimbursement from these federal agencies that are the beneficiary of that?

They have to have Flock access themselves to get it. So they're already buying into Flock and have their own system and cameras. It's never shared with anybody that doesn't already have access to Flock. So whatever their cameras are, whatever their contract is, is what enables them to join into the sharing between agencies.

And did those sharing arrangements go both ways? Yes. Okay, so you could tap them for their cameras. Do they have any independent cameras or are they just operating with the system that other jurisdictions are using? I mean, does the federal government maintain their own flock cameras?

Yeah, so the short answer is, so the agencies that we're in front of, I don't have how many cameras or whatever it might be. But yeah, so for example, the Postal Service, I know they have an account with us. Some of the Air Force bases, the Air Force bases would have cameras around them. So generally, yes. Generally, yes.

OK, thank you. You indicated that the system keeps the information for 30 days unless something's flagged by law enforcement. Unless it's downloaded, I think. Oh, it's downloaded, okay. So like in what percentage with Summit County, in what percentage of the time out of all the times that somebody's information is taken, what percentage of time is the information downloaded from the system?

To give you a specific number, I couldn't do that. I could tell you that I would say that it's probably pretty minimal, unless it's some sort of significant case, maybe like the shooting on 77, where that would play an integral part in search warrants and where they were. I mean, that would go, we had wiretaps and everything with that. So that would all play as a part of that. But on an average, just... random type case, maybe for like a theft from Lowe's, there's no reason to download it.

Okay. Could you just see if there are numbers on that, like how many downloads occur during the last two years, for example? Sure. I'd just be interested to understand that.

Absolutely.

Okay. And I guess this is the question for Kerry. So could a law enforcement agency, just like basically override the 30-day protection of the system and download something from, I mean, I guess you wouldn't have enough storage, I'M JUST TRYING TO THINK OF WAYS THAT THE SYSTEM COULD BE MISUSED. YEAH, ABSOLUTELY.

THE SHORT ANSWER IS NO. FOR CONTEXT, CERTAIN STATES VIA POLICY AND LAW REQUIRE DIFFERENT RETENTION PERIODS. SOME A LITTLE BIT MORE THAN 30, SOME LESS. VIRGINIA'S 21, FOR EXAMPLE. SO JUST FOR THAT CONTEXT. BUT IF YOU ARE AT A 30-DAY RETENTION PERIOD THAT IS IN YOUR CONTRACT WITH FLOC, YOU CANNOT GO BEYOND THAT. So at day 30 plus one minute, the photo is gone and unrecoverable. So we've had agencies that have called us and said, hey, we want to look back 31 days. It's impossible. It's hard deleted from the servers. The other reality of that, to be truthful, is that because some people said, well, do you have them for years? That is extremely expensive to store that type of data for that long. So it's not practical either. But whatever the agreed upon date is, which is generally 30 days, that is the retention period. If Summit County wanted to say, you know, we want to do it longer or shorter, that is possible, again, because Ohio doesn't have a law that regulates the specific amount of days. But again, generally, unless that's negotiated during a contract, it's 30 days.

And what's the longest that FLOC has negotiated for?

We have, I think, in New... Jersey law requires a year the state law. That's not our choice, so It usually it's 30 days. That's like the kind of happy medium between privacy and Usefulness for public safety purposes, but again if the state law requires it of course we have to follow the state law, okay?

as to

All right, and then this is my last question for the Sheriff's Department. So if Green did not approve this as an addition to the contract, would you still use flock cameras in the City of Green?

Go ahead. That was a question that I asked the chief, actually. The short answer was probably not one that I want to hear, but I think it would be conversation that we would have to have. There's potentials that we could talk about. Some entities have inquired about getting flock into their townships and working the cost of that into their contract type of thing. So there's different avenues that people with much more decision-making power than I have could have some input on that, but likely no at this point until we have those conversations.

Okay. Are you saying if we didn't, if the city did not have flock, if we'd still be able to utilize it?

No, I guess I was asking if we didn't approve the contract for another two years, is it such a compelling resource for the Summit County Sheriff's Department that you would still want to have flock cameras in the City of Green that was somehow subsidized by another source?

Well, to answer your question that way, yes, but I'm not the one that writes the check, so those would have to be the people we convince, but yes, I'm 100% for it no matter what. I understand the civil rights and the concerns, and I'm not making little of that at all, but the benefit to it is... astounding sometimes. And I'm pretty confident in all of our guys.

Yeah, I was going to say, I can tell you, I can safely say, we utilize it as an investigative tool.

We're not watching anybody. We're not looking. We're simply using it for work to solve crimes and to help find someone. That's all we utilize it for.

And to go a little further with your question that you asked, for us and my experience with it, flock is essentially a here and now type of thing. You know, if there was going to be anybody who was going to download it, I would think that it would mostly come from our detective bureau. Um, and you know, They would obviously have their legitimate investigatory reasons to do that. But from a patrol's perspective, I don't see anybody doing that. I don't know of anybody who's done that.

That's all the questions I have. Thank you for what you do for the City of Green. I'd be remiss in not thanking you for protecting our community.

Thank you for the opportunity. We appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Humphrey. I believe Mr. Neugebauer had a follow-up. I do. If we didn't pay for flock hammers, I can't believe we'd be ambivalent to your use as your As you're our safety service provider, I would think that you would be lockstep with our community values. That would be my perspective. I'd be interested to see how that would transpire otherwise. Do you understand what I'm saying, Mr. Humphrey? The question I did want to ask, though, is a follow-up to Mr. Humphrey's question. He said if a federal agency requested, you said they could get access to the cameras. And I want to clarify, because I think what you meant was the data. So they could get access to the data that was collected by your cameras. Could they actually get access to the cameras that are owned by the system that's operating in green?

They can get access to the cameras to view.

Well, the data, so the cameras take pictures, as you're telling us, the camera takes pictures, and that's the data. Right, so the question I'm asking is, can they take control of the cameras, or can they just get access to the data that the cameras accumulated?

I think, I'm going to answer this right, they can't take control of the cameras, but they could do the same search that we can do. So they could go back to 30 days and do the search.

But that's the data. They can't change the pan, tilt, zoom of the camera. They can't force it to do recordings. They can't do anything but access the data by the parameters that we set by our contract.

Exactly. So, Councilman, just a couple points of context. The cameras are fixed, so there is no ability to tilt, zoom them or anything of that nature. Anyhow. Correct. No one can do that. Not us, not the sheriff. No one can do it. If a camera were off something, a branch hit or something, you'd have to physically go out there and refocus it. If you share, what that means is for that 30-day window, they can type in a specific plate.

We're looking for a... The clarification I wanted is they don't have access to our cameras. They have access to the data that was collected by our cameras. That's all the clarification I was looking for. Yep.

But it is a 24-7, 30-day period where you could, I mean, yeah, it's the data, but it's essentially the same thing. It's not a live stream.

No, no, but the point is they can't take control of our camera. They can't do anything with the camera itself. They can just access the data if we give them the right to, and that's all the control we have, really. I didn't know we couldn't control the cameras. I mean, typically with a pan, tilt, zoom camera, you do it for a reason, so you can change...

Yeah.

Those parameters, but if they're fixed by our contract and all they can do is get the data, then they can't really change what it's doing.

Correct. So the license plate readers, they're fixed cameras that take a photo, so they don't record live video. They're not pan, tilt, zoom. Got it. Yeah.

Got it. Thank you. Can I add? I just wanted to follow up on Mr. Humphreys. Yes, I mean, if he allows you, you may, but I just wanted to follow up on Mr. Humphreys because I thought those two distinctions are pretty important. The one about being what our community values were would be reflected by our police service, I'm sure, and the other being that the federal government, whatever agency that was given access to look at our data, doesn't take control of our cameras. That's an important distinction.

Yes, okay, please. Okay. So just going back to the conversation about terms are, I guess, termination dates and that kind of thing. So, what is in front of the council is a 2nd amendment to our policing contract for the use of flat cameras and our payment for 2 years. our contract with the sheriff's office terminates at the end of the year. So it is something that, I know I see the confused look. So it's something that we are starting to negotiate now. So just kind of throw that out there as I heard some kind of conversation about maybe adding it in as part of the policing contract. What's in front of you is a two-year contract. We can decide that. I mean, I don't know. We have a new contract coming up at the end of this year that has not yet been negotiated. So it's just something to throw out there, make sure you guys were noticing that.

So what was the rationale for making it two years, given the fact that we only have a year left on the... We have like six months left on that contract.

The county. The county, we said, hey, aren't we running out of contract? And the county drafted what you see. Okay. So, yeah.

Hmm.

Just throwing that out there. I mean, I'm not making it harder. I'm just making sure you understood that.

One more thing? Yeah, in that regard, you know, so we have a good conversation about flock, right? Because we're considering it separately. If you throw it into the sheriff's contract, maybe you don't even think about it anymore. So there's good and bad. I don't mind doing it this way so it becomes more of a focus than just something part of the contract.

Thank you, Mr. Neugebauer.

I'll open this up to the council. Mr. Rager. Thank you, Mr. DeVitas. I appreciate all the dialogue and discussion on this. I know we had a deep dive when this first came before us. And I still have the same issue. Flock is probably held, correct?

Yes.

And one of my big issues, and I appreciate Mr. DeVias bringing up some of the contract amendments we wanted. One of them was an out for the City of Green if you guys are ever required private equity, Amazon, whoever, right? My fear is giving some company that this is very valuable data. I know it's just license plates, but it is movements, it is cars, it is tracking. And now something that the county rejected is giving us an out if you guys are ever no longer have control of the company, somebody else buys it. Is there any update? I know last time it was stated we're not in interest, we're not selling, but everything's for sale eventually. And it all comes down to price. So is there any discussions on potential sales, anything like that?

Yeah, I'm going to echo my friend behind me. That is a question way above my pay grade. However, from everything I understand, every internal conversation, there are no conversations about selling. We are still owned by the same gentleman who started us 10 years ago. So I'm not aware of any conversation of selling.

And I guess, I don't know, again, I'm happy. I'm of the opinion there's some amendments I want to bring back to the contract to give the county. You know, if the deputies who serve the City of Green can kind of stress that we would like something specific to be applicable to City of Green, to give the City of Green out if you guys ever were sold, in addition to a couple other comments we had in the contract, I'd appreciate that to go back before the county. And I'd appreciate the Sheriff's Department to kind of help carry that torch because our voice only goes so far.

Well, I wanted to reiterate too that the news of the county not wanting to communicate or work with you or responding to you is news to both of us. I know it's not you guys. And maybe it's above our pay grade, but if anybody can make noise, I can make noise.

I can understand why Flock doesn't want a bunch of different variations of contracts. I completely understand that. But there are different variations with respect to timeframes and stuff like that. I think we have something specific to a change of control that if you guys ever get acquired by somebody who would utilize the data outside the parameters of law enforcement, that we would have the ability to get out of the contract and delete all our data.

Yeah, and I would just notice that the customer ownership of data is in our terms and conditions. So if that is in your contract, it's in your contract.

Yeah, but I was more concerned about the change of control and how that can change once somebody in that position can change. And we don't see the contract ever again. We only appropriate the money on amendments. So we asked for this. If there's ever a change in the contract, it comes back before us, the county rejected that or did not respond to that. so there could be a situation where there are changes to contract that are not in our contract right now that could be changed by the county without consulting us and that was something we asked about and i at least i apologize i don't know if they didn't respond or just said we received a letter so i would like that to come back forefront did they come from like we received a letter from the county from the from the county yeah so because their county is your right right they're your negotiator your And I can see a situation where a contract could get changed. And all we do is appropriate money. And by that time, it's too late. Our contract was changed without our consenting to it, right? Because it's not our contract. It's the county's with this, some kind of share with FLOC. So again, I'd like that to come back to the forefront as part of this appropriation. Again, we ask for those. Those are my two that I would like to see. But I know we have a list from last time, Mr. DeVitas.

Mr. Maker, that's kind of why I asked that question. Would you use it even if we didn't appropriate the money because the system is so valuable? Because, I mean, if I'm thinking clearly, as long as they have somewhere to place the camera... That's not city property. Let's say we didn't agree to it. You could still have flock cameras all over the city of green ring. Does that right now ring? Well, absolutely. So I guess that's why I was asking that question whether or not our approval. is somehow secondary anyway because of the other ways around that.

There's a reason why I think this is a little bit different is because these cameras are still in the city right away. So it's giving access to companies that otherwise would not have access to our right of way, which is the prime locations of intersections. It all comes down to tracking at that point. So I see what you're saying. I'm just saying it's a little bit different. By us having this contract, what we have no say now, except for appropriating funds every couple years, we have no say if there's any change in these contracts. And that was my biggest concern. I know there's others, and I know we had a long conversation last time. I would like that to be part of this amendment. I don't know if it's too late, but that's my thoughts.

It's not too late until you vote on it.

I mean, beginning that, yeah, but I think it has to go through their process or whatever.

We've already passed it, but that doesn't mean you have to.

And when do we run out of our term of our contract, assuming there's no amendment?

So there was a little bit of, and Shelly maybe wants to weigh in on this. So there was a little bit of confusion between us and the county. So Shelly marked that she thought we should have, we stopped paying in the end of the year, December. And that means that for like the last six months, we should have been paying and we haven't. The county said, oh no, you're current. So there's a little discrepancy on that too. But I think that our finance director knows what we owe, so.

I'm not asking for anything for free either. I just want to know, I wouldn't have say if there's any amendments to this contract in the future. And we don't have that say right now.

Sorry. And to what I was, my point is we were stressing because we thought, oh, we're not following the contract, but they think we are. So I think you have time.

Okay. So I don't know. I can work with Mr. DeVitas. Again, putting again, our requests and those are my two big ones, right?

Yeah.

And I believe I had a few of the retention period, who they could share with some language like that. I have it still from two years ago. So.

Can that be shared with me individually, certainly not group, because you're going to vote on this, but you've talked about it here too, but individually, can you email me any changes you'd like me to request?

Yeah, here's the issue. I have some that are more strong than the others, and I don't want to be a yes or no in all. I'd like to see if they can answer to each specific line item what they're willing to put in their contract, and I'll give you my two. Mr. DeVias can give you, and everyone can just present what they want, but those are my big issues. Obviously, I vote in favor because I see it as a valuable tool. And I know you guys have utilized it, and it worked very well. But I think there's a balancing act, and I think those two might.

Could I suggest, if you're concerned about the system, at some point you say, we're done, right? Do we have the ability in our contract to say, as of today, you're done, shut it down, no access? Is that part of our contract?

So I don't know the short answer. It's the county contract.

Well, okay.

I can answer in a general way. So if one of our customers were to say, turn our cameras off today, the cameras would go off. Whether that means that there would still be money on a contract, that's different. And that I'm not going to predict on a contract.

And that's what I'm asking Councilman Mager is, If you're concerned about the program and we have the ability to stop it at any time, it just becomes a dollar issue.

No, it's not our contract.

We can't tell the county to shut our cameras down. I'm talking as if the county is us. It's our police force, right? We control what happens within our jurisdiction. We hire the sheriff as our police force. It's under our control. Maybe not as much as we like to think. But I guess the point is, if it's 80,000 for two years and after a year we say shut it down, the important part is shutting it down, not necessarily The terms of... I don't think we can bifurcate our cameras from the rest of the county cameras.

And I think what you're asking is, what is the termination? What is in front of you is for two years, you're going to pay $84,000 for these cameras. That's what it says. There's no early out. If we want that, we have to negotiate for the whole time.

Yeah, I'm sure you could, but we could always make an amendment to this.

What I'm saying is the service, that we can stop the service at any time.

You can bag the cameras. That's not what's in front of you, but if you want to ask for that, we should.

That's what Dayton did. I'm asking Mr. Mager because Mager says we want to be able to stop our contract and perhaps not pay anymore. Only upon certain things changing.

If ownership has changed, I want that bill. I don't want to say we can turn it off any time we want. I'm saying if there's changing circumstances that we don't agree with, we have the ability to terminate without paying a termination fee of $84,000, right?

So can I add, play it forward for a second. Let's say turn off the cameras. I guess my point is it's kind of an irrelevant statement because if you can hang a flock camera basically anywhere, if it's not owned by the City of Green, they can put a camera anyway. You've got this device that can be tracked. You've got your... With a warrant. With a warrant, right. That's the difference. You have cars taking videos and recording that, and it's going to a database. I'm sure you use the ring doorbells and all of those. ask all the time, the public provide us your data, which is basically household flock cameras, provide that information to us. It's almost like you said, the water has left the bounds of the ocean, put it back in. I mean, at some point in time, it doesn't matter if you put it back in because it's never going back in.

I think it's different, though. I think we got something on somebody's property that they're giving access, it's not stored and not given to the agencies. It's something they give up. We're putting cameras in the right-of-way that's owned by the city, giving access to FLOC for long. I don't have a problem with the program. I'm just saying I don't have any control if it goes outside the parameters that we agreed to. And that's my issue. So I don't want to debate legalities or privacy, security, anything like that. I'm saying these are city right-of-ways. We allow them to be there as part of this program. They wouldn't otherwise be there. FLOC can't unilaterally come and put this in our right-of-way. They can put it in some other maybe land that's owned by somebody else. And that's what Lowe's does. But that's up to Lowe's then to turn that information over to the police. It's not something that the police can access without Lowe's permission. So that's the difference between the ring cameras, the private flock, and then the city county's flock cameras.

Traditionally, it's either a warrant or someone's providing the data, right? This is a continual monitoring of whereabouts. And even though the data deletes in 30 days, it's still, if you're at Arlington and 77 every single day, there's a Endless map of you at Arlington 77.

And clarification. With no warrant. Not all the right-of-way is cities. It's the state. owns the intersections and the state routes. So that's, it's not as simple as just the city.

I don't want this to come off like I'm tagging flock. I'm just, my fear is it might not be you and staying in front of me and your boss who started the company with good intentions. This happens all the time. Someone without good intentions comes in and buys you out and you guys have no control at that point. And in those circumstances, I want the city to have the ability to turn off the cameras and not to pay $80,000 is basically my point.

Yeah, and I would just answer in a very general sense. You know, contracts are legally binding. So when we have a contract with a customer, if I own it, if Jim Smith owns it, I mean, they're legally binding contracts.

But they can't be changed without our permission. The way it's set up now, the city of Green does not have a say in our contract with the county. Understood. So the county can say, oh, Jeff Bezos, that's fine. He's going to donate a building to the county, pay a bunch of money off, we're going to amend our contract, right? And then we have no say. We have to wait until our contract ends and not appropriate the money. So that window is where I'm concerned, which is why I want that amendment.

So I think that Mr. Mager's comments are extremely important. At least for me, I don't know about others, but I see some value. I have my issues, but if the county doesn't want to work with us and we're paying for it, I just, they should be respecting the people of this city and, you know, what our values are, as Mr. Neuserbauer said, or at least what the council can bring together as a whole.

That being said, Council, Mr. Spate. Thank you, Mr. DeVitas. Gentlemen, thank you guys for coming in. I'm going to say the same thing I said two years ago when we had the same conversation. I feel like this is something that the county should be dealing with, something that the county should be paying for. This has a way bigger picture than just the City of Green. The data that is used is used countywide, it's used statewide, it's used federally. I feel like somebody... at a higher level should be paying this bill. Um, and considering that the contract is with the county, I feel like this is something that should be in front of county council to actually look at funding for the entire county, even if it's subsidized something to where, um, we're not rehashing this all the time and it is an added service to the sheriff's department throughout the county. Um, it's that it's a significant amount of money to add to our annual budget every year. And this is the second time we've been talking about this. And I just would, I guess, ask the Sheriff's Department to consider going to the county council and seeing if there's a way that they can help cover this bill for more communities. If it's as valuable as we hear it is, then I feel like other communities in our area should benefit from that and utilize the county funds for it. But otherwise, thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Spate. Any other comments from counsel? Mr. DeVitas.

Mr. Noble. A lot of stuff that was talked about today. I do want to make a note to the sheriff's office of some of the questions that were early on just about protocols. So I kind of wrote the note here, use protocols for you guys. So I don't know how strong or stringent the use protocols are, but in light of some of the things that have happened with misuse, you know, I think... I'm not gonna tell you how to run your business as it relates to But you have other tools that you use, right? You have protocols for the other tools that you use. And it seems like it's pretty easy to create a hot list for any license plate for any individual officer to do that. And that seems to be, to me, is where some of this people asking, getting things that they shouldn't be getting, right, come from. And so I don't know what the protocols are internally right now, but it seems like there should be, it should be, if you make a request... it shouldn't just be each individual officer making a request. It should be an officer making a request to have a plate scanned and then supervisor approving, right? It's not just any officer doing it. It's like step one, step two, right? And I think a two-step process that's just part of a policy and procedure would help cut out, even though we strongly think that they're outliers, right? There's not that many cases, but there are cases, right? And a two-step process for doing that could help, I think, just put another layer of difficulty for somebody who would want to be doing, you know, chasing the ex-girlfriend or whatever it is. I mean, we use that as an example. So I guess I would just ask that you look at your protocols on... on how you determine and make sure that you have a strong policy and procedure on that. And if anything that you can give us as it relates to the real details of how you're doing about it, you guys talked about in sort of more broad terms, that would be nice for next meeting. And then I'm really curious to know how many cameras are actually in place today. Like right now, how many flock cameras are collecting data? Do we know what the total number is across the country?

I don't have that offhand, but I can ask our team. Yeah, I know we've got 6,000 agencies across the country, but I can see if I can get more specific data on the total number of physical unique cameras.

Yeah, because I think the reason I want to do it for perspective is I want to make no mistake about it. You're just one company that's doing this. There's tons of other cameras that are out there, and anybody that goes to our Lowe's, you can see, you drive by that flock camera every day at Lowe's, you see it there, and so I'll So they said there's a partnership. So that Lowe's camera sits there, and it's collecting data, too. So there's plenty of places outside of the Sheriff's Department and the City of Green that are collecting data and using it in a variety of ways. And so I'd like to know those numbers. So that's the only two questions I had. Everything else that everybody else has said has been fruitful conversation, and I appreciate the dialogue as well.

Thank you, Mr. Noble. Any other comments from counsel? Okay. I think this has been a very healthy discussion, very lengthy, so I apologize for taking up everybody's night. That being said, I hope I didn't shape myself in a way that makes it seem like I don't appreciate what you do. I work with law enforcement every day. You guys are vastly... You have a lot to go up against, and I feel for you guys, and I think you guys do an excellent job. Keep doing what you're doing. I just have my reservations. That being said, just one follow-up to Mr. Humphrey's water metaphor, just because there might be a leak in the tank doesn't mean we just let the floodgates open, right? We should be very systematic with our liberties and our own agency and privacy. So I just ask that the people on this council really consider the values of the trade-offs we are having with this. If it's the right tool, if we have the right tools, ways to control it if the county's willing to work with us and take that all into account when we are bringing this to a vote. Potentially at our next meeting, maybe not, depending on how things go. So I appreciate you guys being willing to talk to the county for us. And that's about it. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair, Mayor, and Council. Appreciate your time today. Thank you.

Okay. So we'll kind of move things along here, hopefully quickly. We have an item on first reading. It's 2026 R29, a resolution authorizing the mayor to apply for a grant under the fiscal year 2025 assistance to firefighters grant in the category of vehicle acquisition from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the purchase of a fire engine and declaring an emergency. This has a first reading passage request. So, Chief, without further ado. Yes, sir.

Thank you very much. Yes, this is

Some sort of assistance to firefighters grant request. So this is a FEMA grant. THE GRANT IS FUNDED BASED ON YOUR POPULATION, AND AT THE CITY OF GREEN'S POPULATION, THIS REQUEST IS A 90-10 SPLIT. HOWEVER, IT IS CAPPED AT A MILLION DOLLARS. SO WE ARE REQUESTING TO REPLACE AN ENGINE. THAT PRICE TAG WILL BE OVER THE MILLION DOLLARS. SO ON THE FIRST MILLION DOLLARS, THE REQUEST WOULD BE 900,000 FROM FEMA AND 100,000 FROM THE CITY, PLUS The amount over the million dollars that that fire truck would be the price that we have at the moment for if you're just getting general scope is 1,148,876. So that puts the city portion at being about 252,376 and we intend for that to be taken from the unencumbered balance of the ambulance billing fund. So this is actually the fiscal year 2025 assistance to firefighters grant. The due date, yes, we are that far behind in our interactions with the federal government, but the due date for this is June 22nd, the date to apply. And that's why we come to you tonight with the first reading request is so that we can meet that deadline because the next meeting isn't until the 23rd. So we are just seeking at this point, even though I gave you some numbers there about price, we're just seeking the authority to submit for the grant. And when I say it's that 900,000 city, 100,000, or I'm sorry, flip that, 900,000 FEMA, 100,000 city, that's if they fully fund it. They also could end up making a grant offer that is less than that. So if we are awarded the grant, we would come back to you with legislation seeking to accept the grant, at which time we would be able to nail down for sure what the finances would be. But still wanted you to have an idea of the scope of the request. We're seeking to replace an engine. We currently have two engines, one at station two, one at station three, and they were both purchased in the year 2009. So they are both 17 years old. We have often used ambulance billing money to make these larger capital purchases of the fire trucks in the fleet. We have been working on accruing or saving a balance in that ambulance billing fund, but with two of them having essentially the timeline, we are taking a swipe at this one slightly early. How many years should you get out of a fire truck? We would hope to get, We are virtually certain we can get 20 years out of a fire truck. I told you this one's 17 years old. Remember that the lead time on getting a fire truck built these days is three years. So that's why it feels like we are here artificially early. That timeline, when FEMA considers the grants, they award points in a number of different categories as you competitively go up against all the other fire departments that have requests. That is on the young side for a fire truck to get awarded a grant. But their cutoff is 15 years, and we are at 17. So yes, we are starting early. I don't know how to gauge for you our likelihood of getting this. It's a fire engine, so it rates higher than when we just competed for these grants for the rescue truck. And the rescue truck, I probably came before you five times. SEEKING PERMISSION TO GO AFTER THAT GRANT BEFORE WE WERE AWARDED THAT GRANT AND WE GOT THAT TRUCK REPLACED. SO ALL OF THOSE UNKNOWNS IN THAT TIMELINE IS JUST KIND OF HOW YOU FIND ME HERE BEFORE YOU TODAY. JUST TRY TO BE PROACTIVE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THAT 90-10 SPLIT TO GET THAT FIRST TRUCK REPLACED. I told you that the two are both 2009s. One has been loved a little harder than the other. And so that is the one that we'll be seeking to replace. It's currently the one that's over at Station 2. So I tried to run through that quick. But do you have questions? Is there something I didn't talk about that we should? Thank you, Chief.

I guess I would just say... Do we typically do a 20-year rotation on the engines? Is that our goal? Is that why you're applying three years early? I guess if this doesn't go through with the rescue, that's a little bit less of a common truck that we're using, right? Because it's more technical. Maybe we could afford to push that off a couple of years, but with the frontline fire engines...

how long would we continue to apply for this if it doesn't you know when do we actually just cough up our own money so this was also the first year that i requested it in the capital budget uh to go ahead and make that purchase now it did not score to the point that that was a project that got funded this year but that will go forward and we would likely be able to afford this a hundred percent with ambulance billing money in another two years okay That's not for sure. We've had to do some administrative things with that ambulance billing money to help fully fund the fire and paramedic fund, but it is likely that we would be able to accumulate enough money in the ambulance billing fund to make that purchase in another two years if we don't get to supplement it with the grant now.

That's the only question I had. I think it's a great thing. I always appreciate how proactive you are and that you're always out there looking for grants. That was a huge offset with the rescue truck, and so it would be awesome if we could see this happen as well. So I appreciate that. Yes, sir. Committee, any questions?

To me, this is the easy one. You're just asking to apply. I think we should always apply, see what we can get. We can ask the hard questions later. I guess I would like to be reminded, how does the ambulance billing fund work? How do monies come into it? Under what circumstances do we recoup funds into that fund?

So that is after the transport of a patient to the hospital. We have a contract with an ambulance billing company that does the billing for us, but we bill for that service. And there's a few different levels of cost there, and it depends on the amount of service that we provided on how big that ambulance bill is. But that's what it comes from, is from ambulance transports to the hospital.

Okay, and does it cover all ambulance transports to the hospital, or is everyone billed? So going out to a private home, going to an assisted living facility, are they all billed?

They are. Yes. Now there's different levels of reimbursement depending on level of insurance coverage and resident versus non-resident. So residents we soft bill, which means we take what the insurance company will pay, but we write off the balance. Not true for non-residents. And then Medicaid patients, there's a significantly lower amount that's reimbursed for that transport.

Okay, thank you. That's all I had.

Thank you, Mr. Humphrey.

Mr. Ujabar. In one case, we had fully funded a vehicle, and it was a ladder truck, and then the FEMA grant came after we had already allocated the money. So even if in your third year we move forward, there's still a chance that we may get that grant and just kind of reshuffle the deck. So I encourage you just to start getting into that cycle of requesting and see what happens.

Thank you. Okay. Any comments from counsel? Okay, committee, we have concurrence to bring us to a vote tonight, first reading?

Yes. Okay. Absolutely.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chief. All right. Let's see. Okay, Chair.

I think you're done.

Yeah. Okay. That concludes business for public safety tonight. We are adjourned at 739.

Thank you, Mr. DeVitas. Our next committee to meet is Planning, Community, and Economic Development, chaired by Mr. Noble. Thank you, Mr. President.

Myself, Mr. DeVitas, and Mr. Humphrey are all present tonight. We have a number of items of legislation, so we will meet. The first item of legislation is item 2026-08, an ordinance changing the zoning classification of approximately 31 acres of land located at the northeast corner of Greensburg Road and Winning Way from R1, single-family residential, to PD, planned development. and accepting the amended conceptual site plan for the proposed Greensburg Meadow plan development. At our last council meeting on May 26, there was a public hearing held on this topic. The developer's development, again, is Greensburg Meadow. Some of the NOTABLES WITH THIS. IT IS 31 ACRES. THE DEVELOPER IS PROPOSING 101 SINGLE FAMILY LOTS WHICH EQUATES TO ABOUT A 3.3 UNITS PER ACRE DENSITY. IT IS A PUBLIC STREET LOTS WITHIN RELATIVELY WITHIN OUR STANDARDS OF ROADWAY WIDTHS AND SIDE BOX AND THINGS OF THAT NATURE. As with any plan development, the developer will submit a plan, which was approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission, and now it's before us. So before I speak, I'm going to go ahead and open it up to committee for anybody that wants to talk on this topic. Okay, council. Go ahead, Mr. Nugent. Mr. Nugent, go first.

Well, yeah, we had an extensive conversation on this last week, and I made some notes and looked at our recently completed comprehensive plan for guidance, as I think we should, and perhaps Planning and Zoning Commission did also. But the note, there wasn't a lot of direction from our comprehensive plan on housing. I thought they were pretty muted. There was... There was a few items, and one of the things that it encouraged was cluster housing, which this project is, I would consider kind of a cluster housing, and the reason being it can preserve some land features and provide open spaces, which this does. I noted in the comprehensive plan that the community preference was for multifamily housing, and I think currently we're at 76%. single-family, I'm sorry, the preference for single-family housing instead of multifamily. Right now we're 76% single-family, and I think in that comprehensive plan they noted that we had just brought on a couple multifamily big developments and that they felt that that had kind of prompted the comments that we didn't need more multi-family so this this um greensburg meadows is providing single-family residents which is desired by our community um are the The plan also, the comp plan also talked about better connectivity through use of sidewalks and trails. This checks that box. It talked about housing continuation. And I would say what that means is, you know, places for young families or young professionals, young families, senior living to assisted living, that kind of... continuity of living options. And this certainly would check a box. And I would say based on the development, perhaps this would lean a little bit more to perhaps a little more senior type of living as opposed to a younger family. And there's a couple other things. They talked about sustainability as being an important feature. And I And I think that's the balance for wide open development with large lots. It requires a lot more infrastructure, a lot more utilities, a lot more roads. Our comp plan talks about sustainability, which I would assume lower maintenance costs. that this type of living would provide. And they talked about the affordability spectrum that not every house can be on a half acre lot and 650,000, right? So this fits a spectrum of housing and all those items are clearly listed in our comp plan. It strikes me that when this came up a couple of years ago, the developer considered a private road and they were given some guidance that Private roads weren't necessarily the best option. I think one of the council people pointed out that it's essentially being taxed twice because the homeowners have to pay for the maintenance of the roads and infrastructure in their community in addition to paying taxes for the community. I don't share that view. And it was interesting last meeting when we talked about this road and talked about how it would be a burden on the city to maintain more infrastructure. So it's kind of funny that we talk about, well, we're not sure private development is good or, or the burden that it places on our services as a public street. But we are where we are, and I understand why the developer has made the choices that they've made. Also at the meeting, they talked about it was brought up by one of the council people that perhaps we needed to turn lane eastbound into the development because of traffic concerns and the developer before this board said that they would provide that turn lane into the development. And from an earlier comment, there was question about one-way access for emergency services and so the developer then went out and purchased property so they could provide access from Byron Drive into the development. So they've tried to meet all our concerns and they probably haven't met all of them. And I still would like to know, ultimately, you know, maybe it would have been better to have traffic come from Byron Drive as opposed to just emergency traffic, but I think they were trying to comply with what we were asking, which was to have emergency access from Byron Drive. I don't know the answer to that, but all things considered, I think they've tried to meet our community standards. They've complied with, they've really kind of followed what we asked for in our comp plan, most recent version so I'm gonna support this this change in use I think it's I think everybody can say that's not what I would want but ultimately I believe that they're going to be very desirable Lots I think back to our discussions about what we call the barracks what is it redwoods development on And most of us said, well, I would never live there. But the reality is there's a lot of people, a lot of good people living there who don't really want to own a home. They're not in a position to own a home. Maybe they've been through a divorce or whatever the circumstance of their life. And they've lived in Green a long time, and that provided a place for them to be. And many of us would say, I'd never live there. And many people might say, I can't live there. in in greensburg meadows because i can't put a a big patio on the back or whatever the case but i think there's a place for everybody and and certainly this fits into the spectrum of of affordability sustainability all the things that we we like to talk about as a community

Mr. Chairman, a lot of good points were brought up at our last meeting. It caused me to do a little more research than I really wanted to do, but it was good to kind of spark that. So Green is one of the few cities in Summit County that had an increase in population since 2010. A couple other cities had positive, but Green was one of the fastest ones. During that same time period, our enrollment in schools went down. So even though we had an increase in population, actual school enrollment actually went down, had a slight uptick in 2023, but consistently since 2010, enrollment in Green's school district has gone down. I also looked at the number of homes in Green that are for sale. There's about 114 homes for sale in the city of Green right now. About 42 of those are what we call new homes, first owner homes that are up right now. I struggle with this one because this is my ward and I do see a need for additional new housing stock to come online. I kind of wish it wasn't at this density, but I understand that a developer coming to the city has certain metrics by which they would invest in the city. I think we go from 40 to 60 homes to I think 110 are proposed here. What I see in the surrounding communities, especially in my work, is communities that don't continue to grow strategically and invest in housing stock, you stop getting that transfer of ownership to the younger generation. I don't think that these $450,000 homes that could go in this property are what new homeowners or new families are going to buy, but it does free up stock of older homes from older generations looking to downsize, which do become more affordable. If you don't have that continued reinvestment in turning of homes in a community, people stop moving here, people stop having families here, and then you see a decline in the schools because people who are retirees aren't going to necessarily vote for school levies. I don't have any kids in this community. I'm not going to vote for a levy. We see that in the fall, shutting down schools and some of the surrounding communities. So although I'm not a big fan of the density that's in this particular area, I do see a need of the 114,000 homes, I'm sorry, 114 homes that are for sale in green. There is a block that kind of fits in that 450 range that aren't really well represented for a city. And I think with this particular housing stock and this particular range, it does target retirees, people looking to downsize and young professionals. And my fear is if we don't continue to reinvest, we see right now with city losing payroll taxes, some big employers have left. We see now with our inability to maintain, I think a $3 million road repair budget, we're at one point something. You know, if we don't continue to reinvest with these types of communities that our roads are continuing to deteriorate. And I applaud the developer here. I know I've been to at least a couple meetings with you guys. You took almost every feedback I saw from those meetings you guys incorporated into your plan. Everything besides, I don't want this in my backyard. But every other comment that I saw, you guys made a way. And that's how I want to partner with developers in this city. I think this is something that with using the left, I'm sorry, the turn lane on going eastbound on, excuse me, Greensburg Road, and also the city looking at RIDs or TIFs, we can reinvest in my corner of the city that has not really seen much investment in infrastructure. And I sympathize with the folks on Byron Drive. I understand. But I drive by that every single day. And that corner is blighted with some houses with trash. I think with the screen that's been proposed and the mounding and retention ponds and green spaces, I think having the fences and I think through the... Ferentz process having those high enough to block privacy. And I know the developer has worked with you on that. I think this is just like Spring Hill. It's not perfect, but it's something our corner of the city really does need. And I'm hoping with the city's help with the RIDs and TIFs, we can see some infrastructure improvements that won't otherwise come to our corner of the city for a very long time. And even worse yet, I think if we don't continue to bring people into this community, the school levies are gonna not be passed. Enrollments continue to decline like we see in other communities. So with that, I will be supporting this piece of legislation tonight, and I just want to give my reasons why.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mager. Anybody else? Mr. Spade.

Thank you, Mr. Noble. Although I agree with a lot of what Mr. Neugebauer and Mr. Nager said, I do feel that we have a need for this type of housing stock in the community, and I feel like we are currently meeting that need with what is planned to be developed, what has been developed, and I feel like this is... is possibly just doing too much. And I hate to see us keep doing these plan developments, keep doing these cluster homes, and getting to a point where we sit back one day and say, wow, why didn't we stop when we had the opportunity? Although I do appreciate the developers coming in, making all those concessions, putting together a plan that they feel is a good thing, I just don't feel it is right for our community at this time. So I will not be supporting this.

Mr. Humphrey. You know, after the last meeting, I just sat down and wrote down the concerns that people had voiced. I think you always have to listen very carefully. Took a drive down Byron Road. to kind of see maybe the potential impact to that neighborhood. But when you think about it just from a 50,000 foot view, if you could put 46 to 50 houses on there, I don't know that putting these kind of units, even though the number is larger, is going to really change the character of the neighborhood. And I don't think that it's going to have any more impact on the surrounding neighbors, given the way I think this property will probably develop. Some of the concerns that we heard, and I understand them because it's obvious there by the highway and by the airport is noise, but people can decide whether or not they want to live there, and I'm sure that these units are going to be built in such a way to do some mitigation with noise. but that's gonna be, the market's gonna speak on that, whether or not those are what they're looking for, and if they wanna live next to a highway, they're gonna make that determination. But as I drove the highway since our last meeting, the developer pointed out, look, as you're driving down the highways, there's lots of houses built near highways. This is not something that's uncommon. The next concern that we heard was danger from the airport. And I guess you could pick out any particular danger that you want to, but if we were really concerned that this neighborhood shouldn't be located there because of danger from the airport, then I think we'd have a responsibility to shut down the neighborhoods around that neighborhood because they're at the similar risk, if not the exact same, or maybe even greater risk. And I don't think that that's really an option. You know, it's pointed out many times, I think, in our city that there is kind of a yearning for, boy, I remember when it was farmland. I remember when the character of the city was different. And I sympathize with that, but if you're moving to the City of Green today, you're not moving for the rural character of the neighborhood. You're really voting with your feet because you see what you consider to be positive progress, amenities that you want to locate by, a school system that you want to live in, a community that's safe that you want to be here. And so I think that although I appreciate the argument of the rural character, you can't look around and say that that's currently where the City of Green is. And so that's more of a wish for the past than a reality of where we are in the present. And so I think we have to balance that. I think what was said about the schools with the declining population, and the declining numbers in our schools, I don't think that that's a trend that's going to be turned around anytime soon unless we see huge changes with the trends in our population. And so I don't think that this development and the developments that are out there are going to overwhelm the schools. In fact, I would think that the schools, based upon the way funding currently works, would welcome as many students and accommodate as many students as would locate in the city of Greene to go to our schools. And I think that if you look at this as a whole, I think that although maybe I would wish that the density weren't as great, when I think about probably who's going to locate in this neighborhood, I look at similar neighborhoods and I look at the traffic patterns going in and going out, I don't think this is gonna overwhelm the local area, I think that it's doable. I think the turn lane will help. If there's additional traffic concerns in the future, those can be alleviated. And I do think that we have to encourage sensible development, not all development, but anybody who looks at the history of this project, council did not rush into this project. The city administration did not rush into this project. This has been around for a long time. This has gone through many iterations. This is the very definition of a deliberative process. And so I think on balance, as a result of all of those things, when I weigh it, even though I'm sensitive to the concerns of those who presented, I'm going to be voting in favor of this.

Mr. Noble? Mr. Levitas? Just a quick comment. I'd like to say that Mr. Spate pretty much summarized my sentiments well. I feel like I do really greatly appreciate you guys and all the efforts you've done to amend your plan to fit the needs that's been brought before you by the community, by the council, the administration. I think it's been a great cooperative effort. I do see a similar issue as Mr. Spate. I think that while we are a growing community, I live in a pretty high-dense area. I mean, I'm technically an R1, but we have Jacobs Ridge right next to me with It's a planned development. The tabs drive. There's an apartment right there. While I think that's an option, right? Like we have people that want to live in a corner of town that's like that, that don't mind having smaller lawns that like the close contact with other neighbors and maybe minimal maintenance and stuff if they're seniors. That being said, I think that we should continue to try to offer meet different needs of different people in other corners of town. I don't think we should just, because we could crop up these kind of developments anywhere. But that being said, I think with the idea of keeping certain areas with certain flavors within our community, at this time I just don't feel like this is the right fit for that. that quadrant of our town. And I do think Mr. Mager's points are very important. And hopefully, should this pass, we do see a lot of infrastructure improvement down in that corner because it does need it. So I just want to say at this time, I cannot support.

Mr. Brandenburg, do you want to say anything?

I'll just say that I've listened to this project a few different times through the different iterations, and I really feel like the developer has done what they needed to do and what we asked them to do. I won't express an opinion at this time, but just to say I think they have worked with us to do what they needed to do, and we should just vote on the project.

okay um okay thanks everybody okay so i i really did say my piece i think last time i'm not going to be supporting the project um i i will echo some things here though i do appreciate um when this thing was pulled last time um i sent a bunch of notes to planning about sort of criteria that I thought that the project needed to get to to make it palatable in my mind. And I do want to say that the developer did go a long way to trying to meet many of those concerns. Okay, so they very much did listen to my laundry list of things, but the two things that were not listened to that really is dictating my opinion on this has to do with just mobility and access issues, which was partially listened to, but in density, right? you know, if we could get this thing down to a density level that was, you know, sort of in between, I think I'd be more apt to support it. But the density level and sort of the housing makeup that we're talking about and what we've been doing across the City of Green, I think this area of town is more consistent with a less dense development. The developer has the right to develop this under R1. I mean, that exists today and there should be no expectation for anybody that it couldn't move forward with an R1 development of some sort. I went to a public meeting this past week for Arlington Road. The city held an Arlington Road public meeting and And so we're trying to bring the residents, you know, in and give them them sort of like that. You know, what's going on on Arlington Road coming forward and and the conversations that we heard from everybody on the west side, Arlington Road, the Knollwood and the Southwood, that whole area. Right. Those people have been clamoring for years that they can't get out of their development. They can't get out of there, right? They're trapped, right? And we've had that conversation over time. And the city went in and finally put a signal in. And so that has helped the situation. But then we heard again at this public meeting, it's like, oh, because there's some other way we can get you know, this temporary road over to 619 Indian term and sort of this whatever. And so the reason I bring this up is it's been critical to my beef with this development and other developments that we continue to do within the city. And it's like, when we create developments, you have to give people options, right? You have to give people options of access because those options of access create flexibility long-term for a whole variety of things that that we can and cannot anticipate right and and so as this thing evolved there were two things that happened right the first was the emergency access thing that was that was connected to Byron Drive and mr. mr. Neuter Bauer brought that up right so that goes a long way to to providing you know to help to help squash that issue that I have. But it's still gated and locked, and it can't be used on a daily basis. And if something does happen, it's whatever. And so that level of access, it helps, but it's not a substitute. It's not a substitute for just moving around the city on a daily basis. Mr. Nijabar indicated, we don't know why it was emergency access only. I would have preferred that it would just be an open street. We heard what the people of Byron Drive said about this. So they're trying to balance, I think the developer is trying to balance the issue of people who live on a cul-de-sac. and their concerns versus what is happening here. But if you put that in as a street, they may not like it, but it provides like more mobility. It provides more mobility and more options for people to move around the city. And so we've still have a development that's one way in, one way out. And there was a whole conversation about boulevarding it, and that's in the plan right now. And that actually is a worse situation, right? So now we have a boulevard and we have a bunch of houses that now they don't have access to get to turn left or whatever out of their property and move forward unless you break the boulevard at every driveway and everything. It's like we've been trying to find ways to solve an access problem by doing it halfway, right? Doing it halfway. We're not really solving an access problem. We're only half solving it. And so we end up with the people on Southwood and Knollwood who just can't get out and go one direction. The people of Charleston Place who only have one way in and one way out. The April Drive had a connection that was supposed to be built and it never got built because the schools bought the property. And so there's like no... And so when we had construction there, there was a whole host of issues. And so there's all these things that are good planning that create where you're trying to make multiple ways to get to multiple places and not box people in so that police and fire can get there. So when there's construction, so when there's a tornado and trees are down, for when there's whatever it is, when the gas line or the water line erupts in the road and it blocks things off, you're not inconveniencing, and Turkey Foot Heights where I live, when the tree falls across the road and nobody can get in and out for eight hours, and when the garbage truck hooks the wires and now we've got an issue there. It's like all of these things. And so for me, combining the access issues with the density and the density of this development that we've been doing density all over. This section of the city is not a density area. Just look around. That's not what is here. What's around is, in fact, R1. And I don't know why we would do anything else than just let it develop as R1 and then also let the planning process take care of of all the other ancillary issues that need to happen. So if we went to 40 houses, we probably could have better screening to the freeway than we have, right? So it just makes it a little bit better of a development than 100 houses pushed right up against the freeway. So the more we cram in, the harder it is to deal with every one of sort of the ancillary issues that this creates. And so So to me, we just haven't got to the point to where we've done enough to sort of answer every one of those questions. I think no doubt someday this will be developed if it's not approved tonight as R1 and that expectation should continue to be there. We'll have houses here and within the codes, I would support that. So those are my thoughts. Okay. pending any other conversations about this. We'll bring this to a vote at a regularly scheduled council meeting.

Oh, I guess just one question. So Mr. Withy, and I guess this administration does the assuming this goes forward, we're voting on it now. Does that turn lane have to be in some type of proposal to I, I, I, I trust them when they say that we're going to do that. And I do appreciate that. I hope you don't take this the wrong way.

So you'll see this project again as a final plat. And with that, you'll see the widening of Greensburg road.

Okay. Because I wouldn't support this but for that and then us looking into RIDs and TIFs.

So the take on that would be you would vote against the final plot if you didn't see the widening of Greensburg Road. Gotcha.

Perfect. And then when we know if this thing qualifies for a RID or a TIF or it makes it viable, same?

We'll need to start that process and you will have to approve that. Okay.

I just want to make sure I'm not doing something out of order here. So thank you for that.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Medgar. Okay, the next item of legislation is on second reading. It is 2026-R25. It's a resolution approving the final plat and performance bond for Stony Creek Estates Phase 5 and declaring an emergency. Okay, so this is, again... You skipped, Duncan. Did I skip something?

Duncan.

Oh, I skipped down too far too fast. Yeah, thank you. All right, so we'll strike that. 2026-09, an ordinance declaring a portion of improvements to a certain parcel of real property owned by SLW Development LLC doing business as Dunkin' Donuts be a public purpose exempting 100% of the value of improvements from real property taxation for 30 years. Okay, again, so this is the Dunkin' Donuts on Arlington Road. and this is a TIF agreement for that Dunkin' Donuts parcel, Dunkin' Donuts investment, and this parcel is about a $1.5 million investment. Mr. Wiese, anything else? We've been through a number of these TIF agreements.

Pretty standard TIF. It'll go into our Orange Road corridor pot of money, and once it's complete, I'll put on the tax rolls.

Okay, thank you. Anybody else on council? Okay, this is on third reading. I'll make a motion to adopt during a regular scheduled council meeting. Okay, next is on second reading, is 2025-R25, a resolution approving the final plat and performance bond for Stony Creek Estates Phase 5 and declaring an emergency. Mr. Wheathey's going to bring up the plat here, but this is Stony Creek. This is an R1 single-family development of 27 new lots. So it's 27 new lots. varying in size from about a third of an acre, around 14,000 square feet, to around a half of an acre, 22,000 square feet. The performance bond associated with this plaid is for $844,590.53. I believe, Mr. Wiese, this is, is this in fact the last phase of this development? Is there still adjacent available?

This is the last phase. The closest connection goes into the Fox Ridge or Gray Fox subdivision to the south. I can show you that connection here if you want, but this is the very last phase. It is a cul-de-sac. This is an open space conservation subdivision. Minimum lot sizes on this one, 13.6. It came through from original. It got hung up. Phase one was built before 2008. took a long pause and went back on schedule. Basically, developer, this will be it. We looked at this to try to make a connection. This grade here is super high. I'll be real honest with you, one of the conversations with them was, there's an old strip pit behind Greensburg Cemetery, and the idea was, quite honestly, push this hill back into the strip bed. And that a lot of money, a lot of people would have kind of thought someone's crazy by just moving dirt. The point is, is there's a lot of area right here that's just gonna be preserved. It's a hillside that just needs to be preserved, leave the trees grow. And that's, again, part of the conservation open space development. Okay, thank you, Mr. Reti.

Anything? anybody have any questions okay all right this item is on second reading so during our regular scheduled council meeting i will ask for time our next item also on second reading is 2026-10 in ordinance to amend section 157. one three four five c design and layout of design and layout of chapter 157 planning and development code of the codified ordinances of the city of green so we have a public hearing scheduled for this on tuesday july 28th 2026 at 7 pm in council chambers and in light of the time i think we will just all defer all conversation on this one until our next council meeting That concludes our business, or that concludes our legislation. Does anybody have any old or new business for this committee? Okay, hearing none, we'll adjourn at 8.13.

All right, thank you, Mr. Noble. Next committee to meet is Rules and Personnel, which I chair. Myself, Mr. McGray, and Mr. Brandenburg are all here. We have no legislation. Is there any reason to meet? Hearing none, we will not meet. And we will move on to Transportation, Connectivity, and Stormwater, chaired by Mr. Maker.

Thank you, Mr. President. All members of the Transportation, Connectivity, and Stormwater Committee are present, Mr. Brandenburg and Mr. Noble. We have no committee business. However, anything from the administration regarding any upcoming construction project? I know Arlington Road is the big one. Mr. Pickett, anything?

Pretty much the same as last time. They'll probably be started by July. Okay.

And I got the community newsletter in the mail. I know Valerie's in attendance here. Love seeing that, you know, the best thing to battle misinformation is information. So I like seeing that the continued updates of what that's going to look like, the schedule, potential detours, I know is going to come down the pipeline. So I do appreciate the administration, keep everyone in the community informed as to that major project in that corridor. Any other older new business come before us committee? Hearing none, we'll adjourn at 8.14.

Thank you, Mr. Mager. Our final committee to meet this evening is Intergovernmental and Utilities, chaired by Mr. Brandenburg.

Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Noble, Mr. Mager, and I are all present. We have no items of legislation. Are there any items of old or new business?

Just, Mr. Brandenburg, if you don't mind, I know that Steese Road's kind of a mess this week because Summit Connect's fiber is going up and going in on... On Steese Rd, I think they're just finishing up Maslin coming up to Town Park Blvd and they're just finishing up Arlington down by the Toth and I believe those are the three areas remaining. So I guess the point is it might be a little tough around the city center right now, but within a week, maybe in a little bit of next week they should have all that. Completed for the entire city.

Thank you, Mr. Nusbach.

Thank you, Mr. Bramberg. I don't know if this applies to what Mr. Nusbach just talked about, but I had a resident call me in regards to his back property of Butts Town Park Crossings, and I think they did some major utility installation there, and they kind of just threw some rocks and rough dirt and some straw. He had a concern, and Val, I'll connect with you. I don't know if he reached out to you, but there's a concern about is there any going to grow there, and then he's stuck with an un-mobile pasture because of I have some pictures I'll share with you, Valerie. It's pretty significant.

I'll probably pass them on to Paul.

He's on the east side of the new Raymond James building. It's right across the street. I don't know if it was in utilities to service that, but it's much larger of an area than what we've seen for the fiber installation. It seems like it might be something much more significant.

It was a bore pit for the sanitary sewer. The developer said he rough graded it back. He's got to finish the sidewalk as well as put a better finish coat.

So that is going to happen?

I've talked to Mr. Crosman as well.

Okay, so this is related to the construction of the new building. I don't know. It is. It's not telling you it's not the fiber. Okay. Yeah, but it's it's related. What's what's the building? What's the business running a financial group? Yeah.

Yeah. So I drove by. I took some pictures, but it's a large area. So that was my concern. I never saw a utility. recently say that'd be that large i wasn't sure about what was going on and the thing is either did the homeowner so i think that's part of the communication he had no idea this was going on we've been in communication with mr crossman okay thank you very much thank you mr ramberg any other items of old and new business right hearing none we're adjourned at 8 17.

Thank you, Mr. Brandenburg. All right, that concludes our committee meetings. Are we good for a short break? Be back at 825? Not by me. Okay, and we are adjourned.

If I could stand.