City Council - Regular Meeting

All in order, please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right, good evening everyone. Okay, we have no presentations or public hearings, so we can go right to our public comments. So the public are welcome to use this time to make comments about city matters or items on the agenda that are not part of a public hearing. If you wish to come forward, please leave your comments to five minutes or less. There is a time block on your left. That being said, come forward, state your name and address for the record, and the podium is now open.

My name's Eric Arnold, address 294 West Westhoff Place here in Gardner. Some of you might know me or remember me. Been here a while ago. I applied for the appointment a few years back. Since then I've kind of spent time watching how the city spends its money. Tonight I wanted to bring up one of the things that the city has spent money on that I'd like to question. Right now the Gardner Police Department is running a flock system. Those are fixed cameras that photograph every vehicle that passes, log where and when, and stored in a searchable database. The city has paid about $33,000 for the cameras and is now paying around $13,000 a year to keep the four of them running on a contract that will automatically renew on its own. A city could say that these cameras just read plates for the police work, but the department already does that in the patrol cars that carry the axon systems, and plate reading is a feature that that contract already pays for. So FLOC isn't really filling a gap. FLOC is a permanent, always on record of where ordinary people go. That is not plate reading. That is surveillance. set out to learn how it's governed through open records requests. What that's like tells you as much as the cameras will. I've asked who can search the database, whether anyone audits those searches. I pointed to the city in writing to the controlling Kansas case, which says an agency cannot defeat a records request by declining to run the report that produces that record. I've asked them to produce those records or state in writing when they cannot. They have at this point done neither. Their answer has been we are not in possession about their own system that they log into with their own credentials on a contract that includes an audit feature. I asked which outside entities can use this data or reach our data, not in possession. I've asked for governing policy. So our policy governing this, there is none specific to the system, only generic city policy that never mentions flock except in one case. The only spot license plate readers appear in any city policy is on the list of records that at this point the city has refused to release. And when I corrected the city on a law it was citing, it answered with a paywall, which is fully within its right to charge money. However, the timing is interesting. I asked for emails with flock. I have made that request before for emails and at that time had not been charged. This time it came back with $170 bill. Most of it demanded upfront before anyone even checks whether there are 10 emails or 10,000 emails. Here's why we can't wait. This contract will renew itself automatically. Meanwhile, Flock has rewritten its standard terms at least four times in the last seven months. It deleted its written promise to not sell consumer data. It now claims a perpetual license to keep using that data even after a city cancels. Gardner's signed terms hold for now, but a contract that auto-renews with a vendor rewriting the rules that fast is not something to re-up without ever looking at it. it's pretty wasteful on its face. Thousands of dollars in a year on autopilot for surveillance that duplicates the plate reading that we already pay for. Here's what I would ask you to hold on to, is that not one of you voted for this, not one of you signed it, so not one of you has to defend it. This was done without you, the same as it was done without me, and the difference is that you guys can do something about it. So I'm asking three things. Suspend the system now while it has no policy and no oversight behind it. Serve notice of non-renewal so it does not renew on its own before you've had your say. And if this body does vote to keep it, put a real policy behind it first with the documented reason for every search and audits that the public can actually see, not the wall that I've spent weeks running into. But I won't pretend that this is what I really want. What I want is much simpler. I want these cameras gone. The county and the state may run their own and I can't stop that. Gardner can. I'm asking you as my representatives to take us out of it. This contract renews on its own unless you guys act. The only question tonight is whether it keeps running because nobody was willing to ask that it stop. I'm asking. And if anything that I've said tonight proves inaccurate, it is only because the city would not give me the records to get it right. Thank you.

Mr. Arnold.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Steve Shute, 18401 Sycamore Court, Gardner, Kansas. Even though the council president might have wanted to get rid of me before the meeting, I promise I'm not disruptive. I will echo what was just said by Mr. Arnold about the flock cameras. I am going to speak more on the Fourth Amendment implications of such cameras. One of the issues that I've had, and I don't have a lot of notes, so I'm kind of speaking out of, you know, basically on, you know, out of turn, I was actually, I had a laptop with some information and I didn't bring my charger, so that's all right. But basically what it comes down to is that these cameras, because they're stationary and they are always recording 24-7-365 and passing that data along, through electronic means to other jurisdictions, specifically through fusion centers primarily. That information can be networked and basically used to create a digital dossier on an individual's movements without their knowledge or consent. And so basically, we're talking about a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment right to unreasonable and intrusive searches and seizures without a warrant that's signed by a judge. And one could say, well, we can get that information through geolocation. It's like, yes, absolutely. But you still need to have a warrant signed by a judge in order to be able to access geolocation data. Even with the Kelsey Smith Act, which allows law enforcement to compel cell phone companies within a very short period of time of getting that information. They still have to do a retroactive administrative warrant in order to be able to justify that request. Here, there is no oversight. There is no safeguards. There is no procedure to prevent that from happening. And that means it's ripe for abuse. And I can just bring up a couple of cases here in Kansas where this has happened. In Keshia, Kansas, Lieutenant Victor Halar actually used the flock system to track his estranged wife between September 23rd and October 23rd in 2022. He was arrested on October 26th, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor computer crime and stalking. It's also happened in other states. In Pennsylvania, Officer Michael McSherry in 2021 pleaded guilty to stalking. In Niceville, Florida, Florida former Officer Cody Hall in 2026 pleaded no contest after using the department's block system to track another officer's movements. As you can see, this canon has been abused in the past by other jurisdictions and even in Kansas where we live. There's a most recent case that actually took place just up the road in Bonner Springs. Detective Kyle Rector, and I believe this was actually in the local news, allegedly used readers to track his estranged wife and two men he suspected were partners This has been charged, it's an alleged violation, but it has not been a conviction in that yet, but it's still in the system and will be going to trial. So as you can see, this is something we have to get a rein on. These AI enabled cameras can actually create because of the fact that they're being networked and integrated with other cameras across other jurisdictions can be used to create a digital dossier on an individual's movements, which could ultimately be used to curtail an individual's movements in the future. This is absolutely wrong. It is absolutely a violation of the Fourth Amendment and absolutely needs to be stopped. And if we can do it here at the local level, we can't necessarily control what the state and the county are doing it's just as eric said but we can absolutely control what happens within our borders i hope and pray that this body which i was a part of for 12 years will make that decision and get these things offline thank you thank you

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. My name is Alan Flesper. My residence is in the northeast area of Gardner, Kansas, 520 Farmer Way, 66030. A comment was a little different tone than the previous two for this evening. It has to do with the report I made last year having to do with our city fireworks policy. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the mayor and the council members for taking note in my report last July during a meeting that fireworks are being discharged on Gardner Municipal Airport property. I mentioned my concern at the time because I am a member of the Glider Club. Can you speak up a little bit, sir, please? I'm a member of the Glider Club that rents hangars and operates out of Gardner Municipal Airport. My report indicated that there was fireworks activity not in agreement with the city ordinance regarding discharge on public property as well as presenting a possible hazard to the aircraft hangars nearby aircraft and aviation fuel pump. It also generated an hour-long task for a city employee to clean up after it last year. I'd suggest to the report it would be helpful for the city to generate signs that indicated that it was against the ordinance and perhaps some additional patrollage in the area. I'm pleased to report at this time that the signs and other city efforts last month seem to have had a positive effect at the municipal airport. Jim Holtgraver has told me that there was no debris cleanup on property this year. He attends the airport facility daily and mentioned to me he thought the signs had a positive effect. Maybe the July 4th weather and the rain showers in the late afternoon affected people's eagerness to light them, but it's a welcome change from an hour's worth of cleanup duty to none at all. So it helped us protect the aviation property and the hangars we use out there. As a side note, there were signs along Moonlight and Parma over here near my residence, but there was a fair amount of debris along my street in the house. I still had to clean up things from my driveway and yard. The casual approach to the ordinance is still a trend in some parts of the city. But again, thank you for your attention to the city's airport. Mayor, council members, thank you for your time and attention this evening. I'll provide a copy of my remarks to Mr. Headley, who's the airport manager, and available for comments or questions if desired. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, sir.

How y'all doing? Mr. Mayor, Council, thank you very much for having us. My name is Andy Akright. This is my son, Robbie. And we are now proud residents of Gardner. Finally, we just moved in May. So 30200 West 185th Street. So yeah, that's good. Oh, real quick on the fireworks thing. Y'all are crazy. I'm just going to say, like, there's a lot of fireworks here. But it was amazing that they just stopped, like, at that night. Just, like, everybody knew they had a good thing and it could get taken away if they broke the rules, so they just stopped. So an intense amount of fireworks, but everybody seemed to follow the rules, so that's cool. So I appreciate that. Yeah. So we're here at Parks and Rec. And I apologize that it's so late, but moving was crazy and all that stuff. So just want to thank you all for another great season of soccer in the spring. Fall season's about to start up. So it's been a really good time. The last time I was here, I asked about holes in Gardner Elementary's soccer field and was told to go to the school board or to the schools. And I'll let you know that like two emails and boom, they fixed it. It was awesome. So that was all fixed. So thank you guys for that. And thank you to the schools for partnering so well with us. We also do basketball, and they do a great job with the gyms. It's just a matter of telling them, you know, if something needs improving. So it's very cool. What I'd like to highlight today is the cost. So thank you again for your funding. The cost in these times, I'm sure you know people are budgeting and seeing what they're going to spend money on, what they're going to try and use. It's only $80 to play soccer. That's seven games and a jersey and two months of practice. So if you compare that to going to the movies or going to a Royals game, like, whew, $80 is nothing. And what that does is already the Parks and Rec gives an opportunity for people of all abilities to come and to play, which is a big thing that you don't get in other leagues where you can be on a team, but you might not actually play. You get to play all ability levels, but also economic levels, too. When you're thinking about, you know, what are we going to spend our money on? And can we do it? And it gives an opportunity to those people who maybe couldn't afford a premier team or whatnot to play a sport. And I really appreciate you funding that so that we can keep those costs low to keep giving the opportunity to kids. So thank you very much. It's from four years old through eighth grade. When you get to fifth grade, we don't have enough teams to make a whole league. So we play within the Tri-County League. So I appreciate that they figured out a way to still have a way for kids to play in Parks and Rec that might not otherwise. But I know you want to hear from Robbie. So Robbie's got three things for you.

Some of the things I like about playing soccer is being able to play with my friends after school. The fun stuff we do at practice and just playing games too. Then some things that it's helped me learn is being a good leader. being able to work as a team better and good sportsmanship.

All right. So cameras right there. All right. So signups officially kind of ended yesterday, but You have a late fee. It's only $95, so it's a $15 late fee, and that's still seven games, two months of practice, and a jersey. You can still sign up. So sign up. It's a good time. Volunteer coaches and great things. And with the Blue Jays, with our team, this will be the 11th season, and we have always followed three rules, and they are we play hard, we play fair, and we have fun. All right. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, everyone. We will move on to consent agenda. Is there an item on the consent agenda council would like to remove? Number five. Do I hear a motion for consent agenda items number one through four? So moved. Second. Motion, Baldwin. Second, Deaton. We approve items one through four. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Stanton, I'm sorry. Councilperson Johnson is joining us by Zoom, I believe, correct? yes i'm here yes thank you for joining us i apologize to say that oh no worries if you're wondering what the voice is um okay so consent agenda items will do for pass uh consent agenda item number five consider approving a budget amendment to include mandatory overseas import tariffs for the substation or transformer purchase

So my question is the amount is approximately 12.8% of the purchase and the tariff is 15%, used to be 25. So I just wanted to make sure that whatever number we're multiplying to get to that number is actually the 15% and not 25% now that it's changed back.

The amount is the amount that's provided by the supplier of the tariff.

They said that will be the maximum amount of the tariff that we should see.

I object. Yeah, I'm surprised by that too.

So that's the maximum amount?

That is the maximum amount. We don't have We will not know that until the 18th of September and the timing that we need to pay this or have this approval and pay that tariff amount is going to not flow, I guess is the best way to phrase it. So the amount that I propose to you is the maximum amount that we should see for the tariff.

it's not to exceed and we're comfortable we're pretty positive with this okay all right then i'm good all right any other comments on uh consent agenda item five do i hear a motion uh motion baldwin uh second mcnear We approve a budget amendment to include mandatory overseas import tariffs for the substation for transformer purchase. All in favor?

Aye.

Sorry. All opposed? Consent agenda item number five passes. Planning and zoning consent. Council would like to discuss that. I hear a motion to approve. So moved. Second. Motion, Baldwin. Second Deaton. We approve Planning and Zoning Consent. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Same Planning and Zoning Consent passes. that does it for new business we do have um we're going to schedule an executive session of about 10 minutes right after this meeting for attorney client privilege but we'll move into council yeah it's it's still part of the meeting it's not we're not going to adjourn oh yeah you said after the meeting oh sorry after uh new business Okay, so let's move to council updates. Start, Chief Heron, are you ready? Sure. Okay, I don't know if you want to speak a little bit about the flock cameras for now.

Sure. Right now we have one stationary flock camera deployed. That's it for flock in the city. But, and we are also going through accreditation, so we're looking at policy. And we're looking at every single policy as we go through. So I'm interested in updating policy. We just are in the current process of doing that now. General IT covers most of our software service. But I completely agree that in some technologies, having a more robust policy would be a better thing. So that's one of the things that we're going to look to do. When you ask for your core requests, that's what we have right now for policy. Tomorrow night is hideout at the pool from 6 to 8. It's a national thing. It's community policing driven, forward-facing. Basically, we're going to cook hot dogs. Every member of the public is invited. The pool is open from 6 to 8. Please come join us, cook hot dogs, meet our officers, get a chance to talk to them, and hang out for a couple hours and utilize the pool.

Thank you. Can I ask, on the flock, do you know offhand when the renewal will be for that?

Not off the top of my head, I do not. Next year is the renewal on it.

Renee.

I just want to mention that we have an opening hour planning commission. We've had our position posted for two weeks. So far, we don't have any new applications. So we're hoping that we'll find a few new people.

OK. Matt, go ahead.

Yes, we heard comments from council last year during the budget process, and it goes to heart. We got a draft of the budget book online already, so we're earlier than usual. It's got all the core elements, and if we have another version come out with some more sections of it, we'll add it up later on, but you can go out and see basically all the core information of the budget.

Nothing tonight.

Administrator. I mean, sorry. Sorry.

Nothing for me. Dave.

Nothing. Jason. Nothing for me. Nothing for me. Ellen. Nothing for me. Administrator.

So we had a request for a supplemental budget report that list expenses over $50,000. And Matt and I are putting that together, and it'll be out. I'll send it up to council sometime this week.

Council President Johnson.

Just a couple things. One, thank you to Renee for getting me set up on Zoom. I appreciate it. Thank you also to everybody who came and spoke tonight. As always, we appreciate. I know I appreciate hearing from you and what's important to you and what's on your mind. So thank you for coming. And then to everybody, just a reminder that tomorrow is the primary day. So please go vote if you haven't already. It's important. So just go get it done. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. McNair? Yes.

I have three items. Renee, could you put some photos up over here, please? This was Friday during the afternoon. And our granddaughters, pictured in the right, had a lemonade stand. And Gardner Police Department heard about it. And our officers responded in force. And it was awesome. These guys... came out. They helped our grandkids.

They were very good as far as showing how community policing is at its best.

And I just want to say thank you for making our granddaughter's day. It was an awesome thing. Next one is, I want to go, I don't know if everybody made it to the county fair this last week or not, but it was a phenomenal fair this year. And kudos to Mike Brock and his new fair board. Mike is the new president of the fair board, and there was significant work put into the fair this year. I noticed a massive difference. Again, Gardner Police Department, Johnson County Sheriff, give a big shout out. They did a phenomenal job at the fair. Coverage was excellent. And I just generally appreciate it. I was gonna comment on flock, but I'll not do that tonight. And the only thing else I have is a little bit on spending. Thank you for getting the $50,000 and above. I think that... As we go forward, since we don't have a lot of commercial and industrial, we're going to need to be watching the budgets fairly close. And I'd like to see if we can get to the point where we don't spend as much and can maybe put some of that back into C&P and not have to go out of $10 million in a meeting on bonds and maybe cut it back a little bit.

and have some cash so that's all i have thanks thanks again absolutely uh i i'll speak to um mr flussberg's uh comments on the fireworks i did hear back from uh the school board as well um or from the school district they appreciated the signs they said they uh um seem to have the desired effect so the ones out of the airport also had the desired effect and maybe it was the weather too but we'll take it whatever we get and we'll uh try and take another step forward next year i know we've been talking with uh the chief and you the mayor and with some ideas for next year so we'll get those out there i'll send out my notes eventually and uh i can't say it enough go vote that's it

yeah so I have some questions about the flock stuff and I'm not super familiar with all of that but so we have one camera that's ours I know there's several that are the states and the counties What is the difference in the stationary flat camera and the LPRs? And why do we feel like having the in the cars? And why do we feel like having the one camera is beneficial to us as opposed to the cars only?

Sure. So generally with the fleet, we call them fleet ALPRs. that are in the vehicles, as the officers are going to calls for service or patrolling, that's going to alert them on a tag, car stolen, tag stolen, there's an Amber Alert, Silver Alert, missing person, warrants are associated with the vehicles. So generally that's the purpose of what we call fleet ALPR. The one was installed, and that was before I got here, And I won't disclose at this point in time the intersection, but generally it is to look at if you have a suspect potentially leaving an area so that you're able to track the general direction of movement of where the suspect went in relation to a crime. If they're stationary, obviously, then you're going to be able to see the general area of movement. If they're in the cars, the cars are moving. you're going to get locations, but it's not going to show you the exact location they were at at that time, saying they were at that intersection at this point in time, or at the next intersection at this point in time, maybe after some type of crimes reported. Does that answer your question? Yeah.

And then, so then my next question is, it's been in before you got here, so several years. Have we ever audited that to make sure that nobody internally has abused that system?

I asked for, when I got here, to go ahead and give me an updated audit. I don't know what was done prior to that, I'll be honest with you. I think most of the time it's complaint driven, meaning someone complains about the situations that you brought up earlier, and then that's what causes the audit. Those are things that I want to look at as we update policy.

Yeah, if we decide to keep the camera, I would like a policy of auditing because I might not know if somebody is watching me. So if it's only complaint-driven, that's a little bit concerning. I'd like to see something in the policy of auditing. of auditing and do you know right now who is able to access that and the rules they have to follow to be able to access that data for the flock specific to the audit or just using the system using the system if I want to look at a license plate Can any of our officers do that?

All sworn officers have the ability to, yes, to access it. It follows the same rules under NCIC and KCGIS. If I were to run a tag manually, then I have to have a reason to do it, and it's the same with the system. You have to have a reason, a specific purpose to run a query.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Yes, ma'am.

Mr. President.

How many flock cameras are in the city limits that aren't the city's?

To my knowledge, we just have just one. Okay. To the best of my knowledge, there is one flock camera, to the best of my knowledge, in this city. We own that one, but I don't believe there's any other flock ones in the city limits.

Okay. And then, as my 8-year-old would figure out the wiggle room here, any other brand cameras?

Yes, that belong to the county. And they are not flock.

OK. And what are our rights, if you will, not the right word, but prerogative if we don't want the county's cameras in the city?

That's probably above my pay grade, sir.

Ryan?

I'd have to look at it. I mean, if it's on our equipment, This is probably on one of our polls, right? Right. I mean, we should have the right to control that, but it may fall into right-of-way use. I mean, we can't. just simply tell people who want to use our right-of-way no in many instances. I've never had that question before on a governmental use of our right-of-way. So I'd probably want to look into it a little bit more.

Okay. Well, then I don't guess I have any more on that tonight because it sounds like we have a few things to look into. So, okay. That's what I had on that. I'm glad to see that the signs made a difference with fireworks. You know, maybe it was the weather, maybe it wasn't, but like you said, whatever benefit we got. It's nice that it saved us an hour of cleanup out there. That's great. And Andy, keep that positive attitude. I mean, you're always eager and excited to come up here, so glad to have you and keep coaching. That's all I got.

And I would just say, you know, it sounds like there's a lot of questions about the cameras and the clock. So maybe the next week or so, if you want to email to Jim and we can compile if you think of more questions or things you're curious about.

We can, before it's renewed, come and do a presentation and get, you know, council approval for the renewal. So we can do that with plenty of time to be able to cancel. We'll have to look at cancellation period stuff. We can do an actual council approval on that renewal.

Can we look into before that when it does renew? Like because if that's in 11 months, that's a really long time. Obviously we can't, you know, whatever. But then can you send out the current policy? I know it's just the generic policy and then maybe like a timeline of when we're going to write a new policy or look at that?

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

I think that's kind of the item that we're aiming towards. We'd like to see a better policy.

One other question I have is do we know what, if any, other agencies or entities that our data goes to or could be used for? you may not know that we could i mean like i think flock is is like a national this is over a hundred thousand cameras so there's a hundred and twenty they're tied into universities they're tied into yeah school systems uh attorney general offices right insurance companies anybody can basically buy this information yeah i'd like to kind of have an idea of what our exposure is

If I may, just one clarification. I know there's third-party private businesses that purchase it. They don't get our information. They can't get our information because it's protected by NCIC and case agents. Now, to that point, if there's 10 other law enforcement agencies willing to share that information, then yes. But they can't go to a private entity. Like you'll see them at a Walmart or... Other businesses, they don't get anything that's law enforcement. How can law enforcement access those if they grant them access? Yes.

Chief, I guess what I was asking is, for example, I'm just being hypothetical here.

So let's say you made weekly trips to maybe Nebraska or Iowa or something like that, and cameras started picking you up there, and your insurance company buys information.

And now they know that you're driving maybe 20,000 miles a year, and maybe your policy was rated at 10,000 miles a year. They're getting information and feed about where your car is and has been. This stuff is so detailed, they create a fingerprint of every car. It's scratches, upper stickers, you name it. That's how this flags an individual car. So they can track movement just about any vehicle for across the country.

Yeah, we can gather information on what the information is used for and what the policy is and bring that before council.

That would be great.

Thank you. Okay, I have nothing further, but we do have an executive session. Do we hear a motion to go into executive session? I move. Second. Motion Baldwin, second McNeer. We go into session at 7.38, returning at 7.48. All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed? Abstain? We're in executive session. I will get you my card, ma'am. All right. It is 7.48. I'll entertain a motion. So moved.

Second.

Motion. Baldwin, seconded. We're going to resume regular session. All in favor? Aye. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion to make a motion to adjourn. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Abstain?