City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The time is 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 25th, 2026. We are at the Twinsburg Government Center, and I'm going to call the caucus to session this evening. Shannon, please call the roll. Mr. Bellin. I'm here.

Mrs. Labbe. Here. Mr. Castillo.

Here.

Mr. Fury.

Here.

Mr. Bonacci.

Here.

Mrs. Walker. Present. Mr. Post.

Here. All right. Do we have any presentations this evening? There are none. All right, thank you. Do we have any items for discussion this evening, Mr. Post?

None right now, no.

Mr. Bonacci? Nothing. Mr. Fury?

Not this time. Mrs. Labby?

Nothing for me, thank you.

Ms. Walker? Nothing.

Mr. Castillo? No, thank you. Mayor? Nothing. All right. Mr. Vazana?

No, sir.

Mrs. Connolly? No. All right. All right. Do we have any audience participation this evening? There is none. Unlikely. All right. Moving on to pending legislation. Ordinance 202695. This ordinance is updating part 11 of the code regarding signs. This change creates a situation where yard signs that are in excess of six square feet surface area must receive a sign permit. And this sign permit can be issued administratively and does not require ARB review. This will be on its third and final reading this evening. Any discussion about ordinance 202695? Mr. President, if I may?

Yes, Mr. Fiery. Okay. When I brought this to the law director and to the economic development group, my goal was to revert back to what we did three years ago, which was if you had a large sign, and we've had people with large signs for 10 years. We've had people put wood post signs. We've had them all over the place. And we have enforced that you needed to have a permit to have a sign that was in excess of 16 square feet in the past. I bought those permits, and I know that the mayor has. I did not effectively communicate that to the law director. The only thing that I wanted a permit for was a 32-foot square sign, and those are the political signs. They're four by eight. You've had them. I've bought them. And those would only be in the industrial zone. So there's two changes to this that I had discussed before it went to the Planning Commission, but it didn't get changed. And I was sick that night. I was not able to go. All I would like to do is have us not have permits for 4x4 signs or for the 16 square foot signs. We have not had those in the past. I don't want them in the future. That became a concern for the Economic Development Group. as the amount of people that use those would create a lot of permits and a lot of work for that department. That was not my intention, nor did I expect that. So I misread this, did not see the little check for the permits for those. That being said, we also eliminated the 4x8s, which I've already had a couple calls for people, judges, that are looking for spots on those now. And I told them that we don't allow those at this time. I'd like to, but we couldn't do that. So I want to remove the requirement for a permit for a 4x4 sign, which is allowed in the commercial zone. And I'd like to add the 32 square foot sign into the industrial zone by permit. And that's what we did three years ago, four years ago, even further back than that. Because I want to do that, and we're on our third reading, and it's already gone to the Planning Commission, the law director said that he has to make a motion, and I hope we pass it. It says the motion to amend the ordinance 2695 to allow the maximum surface for a temporary yard sign in the industrial zone to be up to 32 square feet and require an administratively issued sign permit for those temporary yard signs in the industrial zones when the surface area of the same is over 16 square feet, but less than 32. And Mr. Vazana had written this briefly in the last half hour. And the reason that he wants to go, he said, what if somebody doesn't have a 32 foot sign? They want a 24 foot sign or a 28 foot sign. This covers us with the 16 feet and over. So I would like to make that motion so that we add the large sign in the industrial zone. And if that passes, if that passes, uh, Then I'd make a motion following that to send it back to the Planning Commission so that they could review those two things. And we think this would be a fairly brief conversation because we've already had them review it. And we'll tell them they can't discuss whether there's two yard signs in the yard, which was, if you watch the tape, there was more time spent on the number of signs because we're allowed to legislate the number. the size, and the time. Everything else is free speech. So that's what I'd like to do with 095-2026.

Are you making that motion right now? No. Or are you going to do that later?

No. I have to make it during the meeting. It's the first item on the agenda.

Okay.

I'm pretty sure that Mr. Bellin will make a motion and somebody will second it. And once we do that, we're taking action and I'd make a motion to amend. Okay. Is that correct, Mr. President?

Well, so it's on its third reading. So after the title is read, you can actually make the motion to amend. Because there's no need to go into a motion to adopt or anything like that. And if I could jump in a little bit. Go ahead. You know, kind of explain a little bit more about the residual pieces that are going away in a sense, which I think you've noted, but I want to affirmatively identify them. So you also said about communication. I think it was a misunderstanding, at least how I look at it, when you were talking about the previous – I didn't realize we were talking about the previous code before – our newly adopted whole code revision so our new code actually got rid of the 32 square feet signs that mr fury is talking about and that you know that was something that i didn't appreciate when he was telling me hey i want to make those the permitted signs the amendment or the legislation that's before you applied a permit requirement to all the temporary yard signs What Mr. Fury had originally requested was to have that be for the industrial zone. So this amendment, what it does is right now before you, if you look at Ordinance 2026-95, you'll see that it says that signs that are greater than six square feet, so that's really the 6.001 up to 16. Those are all subject to the permit requirements, notwithstanding. you know, where they're permitted. What this amendment does is, and a lot of this has to do with administrative burden as well, which I think you talked about.

We never were going to try to get a permit for six foot signs, never.

So what this does is the amendment does two things. One, now the permit, the administrative permit requirement is only for signs from 16 to 32 square feet in the industrial zones. And two, it allows up to 32 square feet for the industrial zone temporary yard signs, which is, as I understand it, and this is the part that I missed, was what our code previously allowed, the old code, before we went through the iterations and the changes. So just to recap, once you get to 2026-95, the motion can just be made after the title's read. If the motion does pass... It's my advice you send it back down to the Planning Commission for a recommendation. And at that, it'll come back to Council.

It comes back. It's on its third reading still.

Yeah, it's on its third reading. I'm going to check to see if we'd have to hold a public hearing as well. It's fine. But I didn't get that far.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's about it on it. I don't know if anybody has any follow-up questions for Mr. Fury or myself.

on the amendments as proposed can you run me through the process because i think at a previous meeting i had asked i guess the way that it was written and i was just given a blanket and we left it out we're putting it back in but now it seems like we're changing it slightly i was at the planning commission meeting the administrative thing came up and yeah there was some dialogue on that uh afterwards too with some staff but Run me through the process of why we're doing it or what we're going to be doing. Pulling a permit, which is a $0 fee to the city, right?

No, it's $25 to pull a permit. So if you want to have a, in the past, in the past, two years ago.

Well, I'm just, so in the planning commission meeting, they were told it was going to be $0.

There was a fee in the past. Again, the challenge that came up was we talked about the last version. We did another change to it, so they were looking at the wrong last version.

I just don't know that we need to associate a fee. I don't know if we have temporary yard sign fees.

We had temporary yard sign fees in the past. This, though, doesn't touch anything about the fee.

The process here is, as it's currently presented... If you were above six square feet on your yard sign, you're going to have to get a permit, an administrative permit. It has to be issued within 10 days. The amendment that Mr. Fury would like to see made to this, which is consistent with what his original idea was, and like I said, I didn't appreciate that. permitting process was supposed to apply to the industrial zone and not the other zones that would eliminate the administrative permit requirement outside of the industrial zones which are the i1 and the im within the city and only require permits for temporary yard signs in the industrial zones when those signs exceed 16 square feet but are capped at a maximum of 32 square feet

All right, so I just want to be clear, no fees will be associated with this?

No, I don't know. I'm trying to pull up our fee schedule. I don't have those memorized. This doesn't address any fees at all. Yeah, I can tell you it doesn't.

But it doesn't take away what was already on the books. It doesn't do either way.

I'm just saying in our planning commission meeting, we were told that this would be, there would be no fee associated with this. So what I'm hearing is something's on the books, and maybe there is a fee.

There was always a fee before. It's up for discussion at this point. But it's not on this ordinance.

I've paid in the past, and I believe Mr. Fury did too. What's that? We've paid.

Everybody's paid. I mean, Mr. Turrell's paid.

I'd like just clarification on that before we...

I'm trying to check here to see if we have updated fees. But the fee wouldn't be on this. It would be on a separate...

Either way.

Bill, I know you said there was a lot of discussion, and most of the discussion was on the number of signs, but that was a big concern with the Planning Commission, that there was a limit that is set by us.

The limit's been two signs for maybe 20 years? That is correct.

I'm just saying it was.

Across all zoning districts.

I mean, I know you, but it was a concern of theirs.

I saw the tape.

I talked to people. I talked to board members. I talked to Ed. I talked to Lori. I know those people. Yeah. Yeah. But it'll all work out. That's not an adjustment I'm trying to make on this at this time.

Yeah, I realize that. But it was a concern. That's why there was a majority of time spent on that.

Tell you the truth, I don't think that in the past anybody that had three yard signs in or four yard signs in their yard for a purpose of election ever had anything challenged. Because they're only allowed to be out there for 40 days.

I don't think it was for purpose of election. They were questioning if you have three children and there are three signs out there, what does that make any sense?

i don't i i don't that's not a that's not an issue or concern of mine today if you know does anybody feel strongly about increasing the number of signs from two to more because if you wanted to do that we could make that motion or we could think about that we we'd have to do it again is is it specific to two of the same sign no it just says two signs two yards because i think that if you have two of the same yard sign i know that that generally only happens on a corner

When someone has it on this street and on this street in one yard, they're on a corner, or they have a giant lot with a massive frontage. They put it at one end and the other end. I think that is a different scenario than the people who put out eight different signs for eight different people. Whereas I think that maybe the consideration or a topic of conversation for future might be two of the same sign. So that way if someone had three kids, for example,

You know, they could put like one's graduating, one's on the soccer team, one's doing that.

I mean, that would eliminate that issue or the people.

And then there's a roofer.

Eight different signs versus six signs for vote for Karen Labby. You know, I'm you know, I'm saying that I think that that gets it.

You're right. But that gets into content of the assignment. Yes.

Right. Well. You can't read it. No, no, no. It's not saying the content. It is. It's two of the same sign. That's the content.

You don't know it's the same if you're not going to get the content.

You have to read it. Yeah, that's not, that would be a problem.

But I'm curious, too, about the political signs since our last election. When we were going through that process, you know, we came out pretty hot and heavy from a city perspective about we're going to take down signs if they're in whatever, not compliance. Somewhere along the way, there was a candidate, not me, who was running who brought this to the attention about a lawsuit and yada, yada, yada about not touching political science. So from the economic planning team basically said at some point, hey, we're not touching any political science. So if we're legislating this to limit political science, but we're not going to go ahead and enforce it, is my question. I'm just kind of trying to figure it out just from this last cycle that we did. We talked about enforcing, and then we kind of backed back and said, no, we're not going to do that.

But I do know we've taken out signs.

I'm unaware that there was any non-enforcement sign.

Well, we've taken out signs that they were in the right-of-way or in some other term.

But I do believe that if signs were not, were large, and they did not... Hey, maybe it's something different. Yeah, I don't know.

I can just say that we don't, the city doesn't go and take out signs. Regulate signs based on political content. And that's not the point of this legislation that has been pending, nor is that the point of the amendment.

Well, just to the correction that I want to make is it came up as political, and then at the planning commission meeting, it was brought up by our city staff that it was politically motivated. So while it might not be about it, elections, it was very much so forefront that this is about signs related to political action.

I didn't draft these amendments.

I'm just saying that if that's what is being talked about or said, you know, and we're not going to, you know, if there's no bite to our resolution, we're not going to take down a sign or we're not going to enforce it. I'm just curious why we're going through with it, if it's a political sign. But either way, I still would like to know. But this is written for all signs.

Yeah, what about political? What do you mean if it's a political sign? What would we do different about a political sign? We're not going to do anything different about a political sign because nothing here that's presented says, oh, if it's political and it's 20 square feet, then we do or don't do anything.

No, I'm just talking about the chatter at the planning commission meeting talked about the motivation behind this. Who?

It was asked specifically if this was it. I said this was not addressed specifically.

Who asked that?

I don't remember who asked that.

Well, the city planner herself addressed it, saying that, and then it kind of spurred a little bit of a conversation. Mrs. Labby stepped in at some point and said, hey, this wasn't.

They asked me specifically.

Who asked the question? I'd have to go back and watch the tape.

Yeah, I don't remember who asked it either.

Was it a member of the commission that asked that? I can't remember who the person was. It must have been. It must have been. Yeah, it must have been. Yeah, it must have been. Which seemed like there was chatter.

Or maybe, no, maybe it was Lynn who asked me the question. I think Lynn asked me the question. And I said it wasn't, it's not intended for political, but maybe the motivation was to limit the political sides.

Okay. But that was like more of an opinion than a... Yeah, but since that's not relevant specific to this, why don't we...

Correct. So we will, I'm going to suggest we move on. I appreciate, Mr. Costello, that you want to get clarification on this. Understood. Thank you. I will make the motion when we get to the council meeting and we can address it during the planning commission and then when it comes back to council as well. And we'll make sure that we get your clarification because I would like it as well. All right, next up this evening is Ordinance 2026-101. This ordinance is the annual legislation to accept the amount and rate of tax levies as certified by the Summit County Fiscal Office for tax year 2026, which is collected in 2027. Total millage is 3.0 mills, which is estimated to generate $2,344,810. The 3.0 mills includes 0.3 to the police pension fund, to the tune of 283 214.3 to the fire pension fund 283 214 and 2.4 to the police and fire levy fund one million seven hundred eighty four thousand two hundred twenty seven dollars this will be read three times with an emergency clause on its third and final reading any discussion about ordinance 2026 101 Ordinance 2026-102. This ordinance is the annual legislation authorizing the advancement of local taxes from Summit County. This allows the city to receive tax remittance in advance from Summit County. This will be read three times with an emergency clause on its third and final reading. Discussion on 2026-102. Ordinance 2026-103, this ordinance is to amend the appropriations to pay the principal payment for the pool pack. The current note matures on September 17th, 2026. This legislation amends the appropriations to pay the note and then Ordinance 2026-106 will be issuing new debt. Council is being asked to suspend the rules and place this on its third and final reading with an emergency to complete the note sale by the maturity date of September 17th, 2026. Any questions or comments about Ordinance 2026-103? No. Ordinance 2026-104. This ordinance is authorizing the execution of then and now certificates by the Director of Finance as required by the Ohio Revised Code. Council is being asked to waive the three reading rule and place this on an emergency this evening to authorize these transactions as required by law. Mrs. Conway, anything to add to that?

No.

Thank you. Council, any other questions? No, thank you. Ordinance 2026-105. This is an ordinance providing for the issuance and sales of notes not to exceed $3,800,000 in anticipation of the issuance of bonds for the purpose of paying costs of constructing, reconstructing, and equipping the roof of and acquiring, installing, and equipping improvements to the HVA system here at City Hall. Council is being asked to suspend the rules and place this on its third and final reading with an emergency so this can proceed as soon as possible. Any conversation about Ordinance 2026-105?

Just have a question. Are we on target for that full amount?

Yes.

Not to go over or just come under?

So when the note is issued, it is issued in that exact amount. Just so council has the information, 2026-105 and 2026-106, the first time that those are presented, they must be separate because they're separate issues because we will be doing the note issuance as one. coming forward, they will be one combined amount. But the first time they're presented, they have to be done as two separate pieces of legislation. Gotcha.

So effectively 105 is city hall, 106 is the pool pack. Okay. Thank you. All right. Ordinance 2026-106. This ordinance is providing for the issuance and sale of notes not to exceed $2,075,000 in anticipation of the issuance of bonds for the purpose of paying costs of construction, reconstructing and equipping the roof, Acquiring, installing, and equipping improvements to the HVA systems relating to the indoor swimming pool at the fitness center. Council is being asked to suspend the rules and place this on its third and final reading with an emergency so this can be proceeded to as soon as possible. Conversation about Ordinance 2026-106. Resolution 2026-107. This resolution is to award the bid for the East Idlewood Shelter replacement to Country View Construction in the amount of $151,477. The current structure is at the end of its useful life. After researching the cost of repairs, it was determined that replacement is the best long-term solution. Council is being asked to suspend the rules and place this on its third and final reading with an emergency to allow contracts to be signed as soon as possible and supplies to be ordered for the October 6, 2026 start date. Any conversation about resolution 2026-107? I have one. Mr. Castillo.

Yep. I just wanted to, well, one, I'm thankful that we were able to get about 50% under what was estimated. But with that in mind, I want to make sure that the contractor has the full scope that we have in play for this, because the engineer's number was about $300,000, and we're coming in, I think, at $151,000 or some change. So I'm sure it's all good. I saw that number. It's a big difference of the 50%. So I just wanted to kind of highlight that and see if there was anything that we took out. All good? Thank you. All right.

Thank you. no thank you thank you all right um resolution 2026 108 this resolution is to award the bid for the 2027 waterford pond dredging phase 2 project to ams landscaping llc in the amount of 624 260 the work is to include dewatering the ponds replacing the intake pipe and screen box for the pump intake house, performing concrete modifications to the pond outlet structure, and removing accumulated sediment in areas as indicated on the plant. After draining of the Waterford Pond, the outlet structure modifications and dredging near the intake structure shall be the first items completed. Once these are completed, additional dredging should be completed in the eastern half of Waterford Pond, then at the Awling Pond last. This will be read three times with an emergency clause on its third and final reading. ANY DISCUSSION ABOUT RESOLUTION 2026-108? ALL RIGHT. RESOLUTION 2026-109, THIS RESOLUTION IS TO APPROVE THE REASSIGNMENT OF THE CRA AGREEMENT FOR THE PROPERTY LOCATED AT 8181 DARROW ROAD. FIRST INDUSTRIAL INVESTMENTS TO LLC SOLD TO EXTER 8181 DARROW LP PER THE CRA AGREEMENT, CITY COUNCIL MUST APPROVE THE REASSIGNMENT TO AUTHORIZE THE CHANGE. The existing terms and consistence of the agreement will be transferred to the new owner. Council is being asked to suspend the rules and place this on its third and final reading with an emergency so the agreement can be entered into as soon as possible with the new owners. Any discussion about Resolution 2026-109? Resolution 2026-110. This resolution is to apply for Ohio Public Works Commission applications for SCIP funding for the replacement of the water line on Glenwood Drive Bridge, which is fully at the city's expense. The city will be applying for a 50% funding of the water line replacement costs. The estimated total water line cost is $164,471.52 with the hopes of grant funding of $82,235.76. Council is being asked to suspend the rules and place this on its third and final reading with an emergency so the grant can be submitted by the September 11, 2026 deadline. Any conversation about Resolution 2026-110? Mr. Castillo.

If we don't receive the grant, are we going to still move forward with the project?

That's my understanding. Mayor?

When it's fully funded.

The question was, if we do not receive the grant for this particular project, would we continue to move forward with the city fully funding it?

Where are we at?

2026-110. The water line on Glenwood Drive Bridge.

Yes, we're still going forward. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Anything else? All right, and last up this evening is Resolution 2026-111. This resolution is to affirm the city's action to enter into an agreement with Flock Safety. In 2025, the city entered a five-year agreement with Flock at an annual cost of $30,000. This will be on its first reading this evening. Any discussion about Resolution 2026-111? Mr. Belichick.

I have a number of questions I sent to the law director, and I believe the indication was our lieutenants who use our flock system and manage the flock system that the city's had for a number of years will be here to answer some questions. Is that right?

Correct.

Perfect.

Gentlemen, the floor is yours.

He's the chief, not a lieutenant. Well, the chief told me the lieutenants were going to be here. Sorry, chief, if I misspoke about you speaking versus the lieutenants.

No, no, trust me, they'll be speaking. Okay. As Mr. Bonacci said, he had a... number of questions that he had submitted to the law director who then forwarded them to us to review. I have asked the lieutenants to attend tonight with me because they are very, very fluent in flock. I can tell you as we address some of these concerns, my focus is going to be on our responsible use of flock. Obviously, there is a lot of hype in the media regarding flock. I don't know who the groups are, I don't know ultimately what their concerns are, I don't know how it extends outside of us or with them as a corporation. All we can talk about is the responsible way in which we use it, how we control it, how we govern it, the system checks and balances that we have. I'll speak a little more, but I want to add it's a tremendous tool. When you hear about what it's allowed us to do, I don't see how anyone can dispute that. So, Mr. Bonacci, what I'll do is, if it's okay with you, I'll just read your questions verbatim. Fair enough. What I've asked these guys to do is jump in, because flock can be used several ways. Not only does it alert us to when someone is entering the city, it may be a bad guy or a person that has something attached to them, sexual offender, things like that. We can also use it as an investigative tool, and we do quite often, and it has paid off in spades. So I'm going to ask these guys to jump in when they have some thoughts because they may see it from a different perspective or realize something that I failed to mention. So I just want to get that out. Okay, the first question is, has the city compared FLOC to alternatives and what contributed to the decision to go with FLOC? I'll start that. Initially when we went to FLOC several years ago when I inherited our budget, it was already an approved budget and in that budget was an allocation for cameras. At the time, flock was coming on scene. They were gaining national ground. My understanding of it sounded very appealing. We researched it, talked with these guys. That's the way we decided to go, rather than just a static camera somewhere in the city. We liked the features it had. The network was rapidly expanding. We felt it fit our needs. Since then, there's been a couple other players in the license plate reader or ALP market. None of them, to my knowledge, have the footprint FLOC has. And a big part of this is FLOC's presence nationwide. You know, how it allows agencies to work with each other, expand your capabilities, and what you can do with it. So while there has been a couple other players in that field, no, we haven't researched anything else. You guys have anything you want to add to that?

Okay. Chief, if I could jump in there, I think related to that point, there was a question about the initial flock contract, which is at that time. So the initial flock contract was a 12-month contract that had the option to seek additional 12-month terms. Okay. And that's the contract we operated under, I think, for the first two or three years. Correct. The contract that's pending tonight is a different contract or a different set of contracts before. This contract is a five-year initial term. So it's a different term, which we'll get to that later when I pick that up. But I know you had a question about this original moment, you know, when we started. And I thought that would be a good time to talk about that contract because it is entirely different than the thing we're talking about tonight with the legislation.

Right, right. To Mr. Vedanta's point, and Mr. Vedanta, that pretty much addresses your second question here regarding the initial contracts. You know, like everything else in the world, prices go up, and one of the ways to save ourselves money is a multi-year contract. Next ask, nationally, flock contracts, the data collected and practices have gotten quite a bit of attention. What is the plan to address this wider concern related to tracking and dystopian overreach?

So, Chief, may I clarify, some of these questions were not from me. These were from residents. Sure.

Sure, that's fine. And I understand the question, but it kind of goes back to what I said. All I can speak of is, again, what I perceive as our responsible use of FLOC. You know, what it does, what it does not do, what its capabilities are, how we use it. Anything beyond that, any theories anybody has as far as what the data is being used for by anybody else, I can't address. I can't address. If council affirms this and service continues, what information will the city provide with respect to the usage? Does the administration plan to launch a flock transparency page? If not, why won't the transparency page be launched? Yes, our intention is to launch a transparency page. And let me be clear, that's not any type of reaction to what is going on nationally with flock. It's not. We were just made aware last week of a transparency portal that flock has created. that the end user, the individual agencies can adopt, tailor for their community, and put the information out. They literally called it the transparency portal. So conversation has started, I believe it was last Thursday or last Friday, with Lieutenant Waltz. We've had continuing conversation about it this week. So yes, it is something. Mr. Bonacci had included a couple examples from various departments. I think it was the Sheriff's Department. One as close as Shaker Heights. and Greenville County in South Carolina, their sheriff's office. If you look at them, they're very similar but different, okay, and it's because it's based off that flock template. So I think it's a good thing. It's something we fully intend to do, and I don't think it's going to take that long before that's out there, honestly. What are the city of Twinsburg's prohibited uses of the cameras, database, and the flock system? Will the flock use policy be published to the city's website? I'm going to ask these guys to jump in, but I'll just give a very broad answer. As far as prohibited use, it's anything that's not law enforcement related. I'll let these guys speak to it, but there are parameters put in place to verify that it is for law enforcement use. It has to be documented as law enforcement use, case number, things like that. As far as our policy, yes, we have a policy. It's through Lexapol, which is recognized as one of the national leaders in police policy, and it does address ALPR use. Lieutenant Walts, please.

Yes, so... The transparency page? No, no, no, no.

Yeah, so the...

We were going to discuss this with the law director and make sure we are following the correct parameters within the ORC on what we release on this portal. But our intention is to also put the policy out there for everybody. As for the proper uses and the misuses and things like that, that basically falls in line with everything we have, everything we use. Oleg, there's a whole slew of sensitive material software and portals that we use as law enforcement agencies that are restricted. And we have We have parameters in place, we have policies in place to govern that and to audit that. One of the things that we do is audit all those. We make sure people are using it properly. They're using it for law enforcement purposes. We do that in-house here. I myself do it quarterly. Sometimes even sooner because FLOC actually only holds their data for 30 days. So if I do it quarterly, I'm missing 60 days. So I try to do it a little bit more than the quarterly. So there are many safeguards put in place, and our officers do know that, and they use it properly.

And it mirrors nearly every existing program. personal identifiable information that you guys would have in the other system? For us it does, yes.

FLOC has also recently announced checks and balances safeguards, procedural things that they're putting in place, which pretty much mirror what we do, but they're going to be checking as well. Looking at that maybe somebody's information that's run multiple times, they want to make sure it's for legitimate law enforcement reasons. So in addition to what we already do, they've announced a series of new safeguards they're putting in place as well.

I read as well that they were going to require a case number.

Correct, which we do.

It already does.

Yeah. Yes. Anybody to add anything to that one?

Mr. Bernard, you just said, I just wanted to clarify real quick, you said something about personal information. Right. Nothing on FLOC, FLOC does not track anybody's personal information. All it does is capture images of license plates. It doesn't track people. It doesn't track the vehicles. All it does is capture images of license plates. So you just said something about personal information. It doesn't track anybody's personal information.

Okay.

Yeah, I want to hit these questions you had, and I know we're limited, but I want to hit these, and then we'll kind of give you a little overview of how it works exactly, you know, the fact on it, and then, you know, these gentlemen have a couple things prepared, examples of how we've used it and how it's benefited the city.

Chief, before you move on to the next point, can I also note a related point, because you mentioned the portal and working with me? Under Ohio law, within our Public Records Act, the images and the data that is captured by the automated license plate readers are not a public record. So when Lieutenant Waltz mentioned the portal, one of the things that I immediately said and we began to discuss was while I appreciate the portal, I want to work with them to make sure we're not inadvertently Releasing information that would release things that aren't public records. So essentially as they're talking about Just a way for us to audit this flock portal to make sure it doesn't give out any more information than it has to So just to restate, you know license plate reader data and images are not public records in Ohio

Okay.

Sorry for interrupting.

No, no, no, no. It's a great point.

And that's that part of the right.

That's exactly what Lieutenant Waltz, you know, before we roll anything out, we want to make sure we're not violating your laws effectively. Uh, what type of cameras are part of this contract and what are the cameras capabilities? There's multiple parts of this. So let's address that first. So our cameras are ALPR, automatic license plate readers. We do have two cameras. However, as far as Mr. Berdanchi, whose question that was, I can't give you the make model of that camera. Like everything else, technology evolves. I'm sure they have several, but ours is just a license plate reader. We do have two cameras that are not ALPRs. That was part of the negotiation we did with Flock. It's two cameras that are put at Ninety-one in the area of the post office and eighty-two in the area of sheets. It's on a utility pole. It's just a fixed camera. It can be panned. It does not capture any data, any information. But what that allows us to do is say there's an accident, a hit-skip that's somewhere in that vicinity, we can now look. Any officer can jump on that camera and look at it from anywhere as we're dispatching vehicles there. Anything you may need to look into that area for. criminal action, accidents, traffic backup, anything. Those are just two high traffic areas, very congested areas, and that's where we chose to put those cameras. But those do not capture any data like the ALPRs do. So we do have two of those cameras in addition to those. Can the city turn the cameras on, off, or adjust the settings? I'm unaware of our ability to adjust any of the settings. Are there other cameras in the community that are capable of being connected to the flock system? That's a great question because there are. A big part of this, and I hadn't actually heard about it until Lieutenant Waltz told me about it, a big part of the flock pushback started coming when it was being publicized that some private retailers like Lowe's and Home Depot were putting in flock cameras. They were putting it in. Those are high-target areas, a lot of theft, criminal activity, things like that. So they started incorporating flock cameras. Flock is not for law enforcement only. HOAs can buy them. I think the schools should have them, in my honest opinion. Anyone can get them. To that person's point, to their question, yes. We had an incident the other day we'll talk about where we had a pursuit of a stolen car, and the camera that actually picked it up was a FedEx. FedEx has a couple cameras on their property. They've granted us permission for those cameras, so we got the alert from a FedEx camera. FedEx has them. The, what, Metro Parks? I believe the Metro Parks have them. Now, yes, there's a law enforcement component to the Metro Parks, but they have them as well. So it's a lot of, I think a lot of the publicity around them stems from these retailers and other places getting these cameras as well.

Yes, sir. I think we have a block camera for Aurora, right, in our city limits.

Well, it's technically their camera, but, yes, we have access to it as well.

Do we have, like Solon or Hudson, do we have any cameras that are helping monitor traffic?

Almost everyone around us does. Immediately adjacent to us, Solon has them, Reminderville has them, Aurora has them. Hudson does not. Hudson does not. Hudson does not. Oakwood has them.

But do we have... So, for example, because the Aurora one is in our city limits, right? So, for example, Hudson doesn't have it, but does Solon have one of ours that is out that we're actively... No. So do we have any outside of our... All of ours are in our jurisdiction.

Okay. Thank you. And Solon should be inside their jurisdiction, right? Are they in Twinsburg?

I'd have to look at, yeah, I'd have to look at, are you aware of that particular camera? Solon?

Yeah. Their cameras should be in Solon and Aurora's are in Aurora. They're not in Twinsburg. There's an Aurora camera in Twinsburg.

In Twinsburg.

Facing into Aurora, though.

Yeah. But in our property. I mean, in our city limits. Yeah. Interesting.

Where are the 12 cameras located? I'll give you a quick summary. So we have a total of 14, 12 ALPRs, the two fixed cameras I already mentioned where those are. As far as the ALPRs, we have one at State Route 82 eastbound at Chamberlain, State Route 91 southbound at I-480, State Route 91 northbound at Old Mill, State Route 91 northbound at State Route 82, State Route 82 eastbound at I-480, Ravenna northbound at State Route 82, Ravenna southbound at Shepherd, Chamberlain northbound at State Route 82, Glenwood westbound at Liberty, State Route 91 southbound at Meadowood, State Route 91 northbound at I-480, and State Route 82 westbound on I-480. You're basically covering your entrances to your city. So that's the location of the cameras. Mr. Bonacci, forgive me, I talked with these guys. We have no idea what number 39 is.

It was in the contract.

The question is what are 39s that I don't know.

It's right after FBI and 39 semicolon S is what it said. Maybe it was a scanning error from when the contract was scanned.

Yeah, we researched it the best we could, and we're not familiar with what 39s are.

Oh, yeah, here it is.

Suspects. Yeah, that was Adobe. Ability to add suspects license plate. Not suspect ampersand pound three nine.

Okay. All right.

Microphone. Okay.

Next, what are the sharing options with the data and who owns the data captured by the cameras? Each individual agency owns the data. As far as sharing options go, basically you ask other agencies and other agencies ask you to share the data. Does anyone want to pick up on that?

I'll give you some of the points that we share. So we share searchability, our alerts, and then VMS, which is the live camera. just that the live feed some of the historical feed because you can go back and look at it it records where it sits it doesn't record everything but it records where it sits and we keep it sitting on the main intersections download information and then analytics very few do any of that the majority of everything that we share with other agencies is search and alerts

Before we get into the specifics, you're talking case?

Yeah, it's about the network, basically.

Yeah, we'll talk about that here in just a minute. I just want to get through these last couple questions. What are the settings that Twinsburg can activate and would address concerns related to tracking people and vehicles? Let's stop right there. First of all, it does not track people. It cannot track people. It only tracks, it captures the rear plate of a vehicle. It doesn't track it. It documents a vehicle's entry into our city. The camera cannot see into the car. It cannot see people. It just documents that plate entered our city. And in all honesty, for 99.999% of the vehicles that enter our city, the only time we're ever aware is if there's an alert attached to that plate for some reason, and we'll talk more about that in a minute. But it cannot track people. Can the city choose to shorten the number of days data is retained? Yes, FLOC has also come out recently and said they're going to make a change to the data retention. Instead of the 30 days, it's going to be seven. From an investigative purpose, that may be a concern, but it's not end all be all. But that is something they have said, and I believe we can change that as well.

We can extend it to 30 for investigative purposes.

Yeah, for investigative purposes, we can extend it. And can Twinsburg's contracted flock cameras be set to only record license plates and not the other capabilities like the bumper stickers and the other vehicle identifiers? So, no. Unless I'm wrong, no. It captures that image of that car. And to be honest with you, I would not want to have a box that I can check to eliminate those distinguishing features of a vehicle. And here's the reason why. We've had examples of locating a suspect vehicle with the physical description because how many times have you been following a car that has a temp tag that's behind a tinted window, especially an SUV, and you can't see that temp tag. So if it's a suspect vehicle and I only know a possible make, maybe a model, the fact that it had this bumper sticker here, this different color, whatever, a roof rack. It's something that I want to use to narrow down that vehicle because not every vehicle has a rear plate that's visible for an ALPR, let alone an officer. So, no, we cannot do that, and I would not want to, in all honesty. And finally, what happens if council doesn't affirm this contract? In my opinion, you're doing a tremendous disservice to the residents of Twinsburg. It's a... Tool, like any other tool, as long as it's used responsibly, used within policy, there's no issue. The stories you hear are officers or agencies that have used it inappropriately, haven't followed a policy, don't have a policy. Those are the bad apples. It's like everything else. You only hear about the bad apples. For every one of those, there's probably 1,000 agencies that conform to policy and use it properly. We've got countless examples where we've used flock to solve cases. And I'm not just talking a little hit and run. I'm talking major cases. I don't see a downside to using it. So in my opinion, it would not, you'd be taking away something that benefits the safety of our community.

Yes, Mr. Post. When you said that you guys use it properly versus improperly, I'm trying to think of an example of how you would use it improperly. What is an example of how you would use it improperly?

Well, I can only tell you what I've read. And because of some of this hype, you see it on some of the updates we get, things like that. Somebody running plates or searching for a plate without a law enforcement purpose. So say somebody wants to see if their ex or somebody has been entering the city or maybe their ex's new spouse, boyfriend, whatever, and starts searching that plate repeatedly and doesn't have a legitimate law enforcement purpose, wouldn't have a case number attached to it, things like that.

Gotcha. And that's why you said Flock is... internally checking when a license plate is being hit that many times they recognize that that's something that's a red flag because it shouldn't be that many times and they're going to be internally right they're setting parameters and they're going to ensure that there is a legitimate law enforcement to eliminate that yes which is probably something after having it for a while they said oh this is a problem we need to address it which they wouldn't know right away probably could be i don't know the internal workings but i know it's something that are we've done gotcha i was just trying to figure out what would be no it's great it's a great question yeah okay thank you

So with that being said, again, a big part of the, if you guys have anything that I haven't hit on, please speak up when you step up. But, again, my last statement was we've used this in countless incidents, and I've asked these guys to just talk about some of the ways we've used it, some of the reasons we've used it, especially Detective Lieutenant Ternowski, because he uses it from a little different angle. He uses it more as an investigative tool at times rather than we do. And just let me say this real quick so you guys know. When a plate alerts us, when a flock alerts us of a plate for, we'll just call it a suspect vehicle, okay, that has entered our city, it sends an alert and it tells us why. Protection order, sexual offender, stolen vehicle, warrants, you know, it could be any number of reasons. It tells us why. And then our dispatch then verifies it. You don't take the word of Flock. You verify it through leads. You make sure that, in fact, that information is correct before it's dispatched to an officer. Now, to my point that Flock does not track people, a suspect or bad guy enters Twinsburg, we're going to get an alert that it entered, say, that end of Ravenna coming out of Oakwood. We'll get an alert that it hit that camera so we know it's in our city now. That's it. That's the capability. It's not going to tell me if it went to the high school, the library, to Giant Eagle. It has no capability to do that. Unless they exit the city at one of the other locations that we have. Well, no, no. We don't have cameras on the exit. What we do is if they exited it anywhere basically but Hudson. Then we have the capability of knowing it now entered Solon.

So this only has the lane that it's looking at. It doesn't do both lanes? Correct. Correct.

No, no, no, no.

I assumed that you were taking both lanes. No. You're saying you have it at Shepard and Ravenna. Right.

Right, right, and that's why I wanted to talk about this with you guys to clear up any misconceptions. No, it's only when the vehicles enter the city. Now, what we will know is if that vehicle exits and goes into Reminderville, goes into Aurora, then we'll get a hit that it's gone that way if we're sharing cameras with them.

So once you ask the question, so you have somebody that you want to find, and you ask this question. Does it send that information out to everybody? So you want that information. Does it give you the Macedonia, Aurora, Reminderville, say the guy was driving in circles? Does it give you multiple cities' jurisdiction or presence? Or do you have to know the call Twinsburg to see if their flock machine got this done?

No, I'll let any one of you guys talk about it. That makes sense. I'll let him give you a more accurate description. So, you know, it lets us know when that vehicle has entered. It cannot track it beyond that. We won't know unless it leaves and enters another facility. Now, in the FedEx case, which I'll talk about a little more, they have two cameras in their property. It hit both their cameras, which let us know that vehicle was up there driving around. Why? You don't know at first, right? Is it casing the place, looking for another vehicle to steal? Because it's a stolen vehicle, wasn't entered by us, it was stolen out of Cleveland Heights. That's the only data we get. The vehicle description, and that it's stolen out of Cleveland Heights. But because it was up there driving around, it allowed our officers time to get up into the area, locate the vehicle, and again, I'll let them talk about that. But I just want to clarify how FLOC works.

So if we were in the dispatch right now, back area, me if i'm wrong but we have a ton of monitors showing from the rec center all the way around the city correct but our flock cameras they would be as dark as as that camera is that the screen up there until a license plate hits and then it alerts us that way it it's not like an active feed that we're sitting there watching no it'll alert through their their right it'll send an alert you want to pick up on that or somebody will

You've got to log in. It's an online service, so you've got to log in in order to get a hit. So whenever a vehicle, say the vehicle would enter the city with a warrant. Dispatch would let us know that it hit. It's on the MDTs and the cruisers, so it'll send an alert to the MDTs. They'll verify if it's a good hit. They'll tell us, say, for an example, if the person has a warrant and it's a white female that has a warrant. Well, if the officer finds the car and it's driven by a male, we're not going to stop the car. because the warrant on the hit is for a female.

My thought doesn't give you that information. It tells you there's a warrant, there's a hit on that car.

A warrant's attached to the vehicle. Yeah, that's how we get additional information. So it's on the MDT. It's not a live feed where it's on a TV in the dispatch center, no.

Lieutenant Walts, you want to speak about the different levels for when we enter plate and who has the rights, who doesn't. It's very strictly controlled.

Sure. So part of our safeguards is who can access what, and that's everything we have. There's a couple sections to FLOC. We get the alerts, which is the leads information, the missing people, the warrants, the stolen cars. Those come through. We've already talked about that. Dispatch clarifies it and then dispatches it out. We have searches that the detective bureau uses a lot. Some officers do for some of their cases. Those, you put in what parameters you have to be able to look for a vehicle. And then there are hot lists. So hot lists is what, we use internally, and I'll let him explain, they use them a lot. We use them for protection orders, like if we have a domestic violence victim. One of my examples is an individual who kept stalking, kept coming back, kept coming back, We entered him into our hot list. We know when he comes in the city. That's primarily what it's used for so that we have information of what vehicle they're driving. We have either warrants or a reason to inquire why they're in our town, whether it's a probation violation, it's a protection order, whatever it is, and then we can take action from that. That's mainly all of our dispatchers and our patrol officers don't have access to do the hot lists. They receive them. They can't enter them. Only supervisors and higher, sergeants, lieutenants, and the chief, the administration side can add those, and there's got to be a reason behind it. We just can't enter any plate into the flock. So, again, we put the safeguards in place for those. Thank you.

I was going to have a tension asked to talk about a couple, you know, these guys talk about a couple notable incidents with it. Unless you guys have any questions right now.

So chief asked me to look at our recent cases and talk a little bit about a couple of different examples. And we actually just closed out one at the federal level within the past month. There was a, this is just to set this up back in, this was in March, March 10th of 2025 at about four o'clock in the morning. at our Sheetz gas station. There's a 29-year-old male. He's a full-time employee at Amazon right down the road. He stops on his lunch break to get some gas and some breakfast. He pulls up to a pump, walks inside, starts to get a sandwich, comes back out to the pump, and right as the second he hits his car door, A black Chrysler 200 four-door vehicle boxes him in. A male jumps out from the side, sticks a gun literally to this kid's back, and the exact quote was, give me the keys or you're going to die. He obviously gave up his keys right away, and then the two vehicles went two completely separate ways. The vehicle that they arrived in and then the vehicle, obviously, they just stole. And the reason this is an interesting case is because it touches on the different identifiers, as well as the network that we use to identify these vehicles. So as far as investigations go, obviously it starts at the crime scene for the detectives. There's surveillance videos everywhere, right? There's cameras and sheets. At Gecko, pretty much anywhere you go, there's cameras. So, like I said, we got there. We identified that it's a black four-door Chrysler 200. It had a temp tag on it. It had a black license plate rim holder, and it also had a white sticker on the left-hand side. That's all we knew about this suspect vehicle, other than the fact that it had three males that obviously had guns and were covered with ski masks.

Just to be clear, it had a temp tag on it, but you couldn't read it. Yeah. We knew it had a temp tag from the descriptor, but we didn't have the tag on it.

Right. Our cameras didn't pick it up. So like the chief said, it's an unreadable temp tag, but it's an identifier. It's something we're working off of. It's something that we can search flock. And when we combine that, those four things, we located one vehicle, and it was in the city of Euclid. So that car... There was exactly what we were looking for had been in the city of Euclid and hit one of their cameras the day prior to our robbery. So for us as detectives, that means it's nothing more than like the chief said. It's a tool. It's an investigative tool. It's a direction that we have to look so. We got a good plate. It came back to a female. She lived on the Grovewood Avenue in the city of Cleveland. By the way, this was all within 24 hours of this robbery and would not have occurred without Flock. We immediately, by about 9, 10 in the morning, me and my detectives were up in Cleveland on Grovewood Avenue, actively looking for this stolen vehicle. We happened to locate it. It was parked in the back of a house, and it was fenced in, so we couldn't legally go back there. Probably too much information, but we're watching. We're now locked into this residence. I'm talking with Cleveland PD. This is a very dangerous situation. These are very dangerous individuals. I'm talking to these guys, trying to get a SWAT team, search warrants. All that is happening as these three males jump into the vehicle and take off. So we start following it. They know we're behind them. A pursuit takes place up on MLK in Bratton Hall. The vehicle actually, ironically, overheats and starts to blow up. The vehicle had to pull off the side of the road, two guys get out. There's another guy in the vehicle still. Lieutenant Donato and Detective Hendershot were able to successfully take two of them into custody. Both had stolen handguns on them at the time of their arrest. And then due to the positioning of how this played out, myself and Detective Swope were on 90, and now this vehicle is moving again. The actual driver kept going. Two guys are in custody and the chase is back on with a blown up vehicle. Obviously, this vehicle is not going to go very long. It eventually does quit and the male bails out, runs up a hill and onto some railroad tracks. In the process of that, he dropped a book bag that had a fully loaded AK-47 assault rifle in it. With that, within 24 hours, based on FLOC, based on the network that it uses and the identifiers that we put into it, we had these people identified and in custody basically within eight hours. And just last month, within the last month, the main suspect, the one who actually uttered the phrase, give me your keys or you're going to die, was sentenced to eight years in federal prison just a couple weeks ago. So that's one. you know, real good example that I'm proud of. Um, and then I would just add to that, you know, as far as as far as the detectives are concerned, um, as I mentioned, we started the scene of the crime, which entails we're looking for specific vehicles in specific time frames. We're not fishing. It's not a fishing expedition. And then, as I said, it's only a tool. It's only a direction for us to go. And there's obviously a ton of more work that's involved. And then I'll close up with saying that, as you guys mentioned, there are cities that do not have flock that we border. And those detectives are at a disadvantage. And they call us frequently to run flock images for them on active criminal cases that they're doing.

How do they know to call you?

Well, we are not being notified. So they're working a criminal investigation. They've got a suspect vehicle, once again, based off of either witness statements or surveillance video at the scene. So they're looking for, you know, a red Ford Focus. And they ask us, the request is, you know, can you search for a red Ford Focus at this date and time in your city? And then that will give them an investigative lead. And to answer your question, how do they know, we communicate with area detectives. It's a major part of our job is to talk with everybody. Networking is huge as far as solving crimes, because as you know, It comes from everywhere. So we share our resources. People share resources with us. But with this particular example, we do take calls where these detectives are at a disadvantage.

Mr. Fury, that particular agency wouldn't know that vehicle hit on our camera. They just know we're an ordering agency that has the tool. So they call and say, hey, this is what we have.

So they probably call Stowe and other people as well.

Yes, anyone else around the room may have it.

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

Yeah, I mean, and that's just one major example. There's countless. I just want these guys to, I know we're running long, but this is important. I just want them to tell you about a couple more of the uses because there's a variety of ways to sell them.

I'll be really quick, but on a patrol standpoint, that's how I look at it. We get alerts all the time. Mayor got to see firsthand the other day. We had a stolen vehicle that we pursued and took two people into custody for a stolen vehicle. All those stolen vehicles are a lot of them. The big ones for us are the personal crimes, the missing persons, the suicidal subjects, those. I've got countless examples of us being able to locate individuals with dementia that just got lost going to visit a friend that had been gone for 5, 6, 7, 10 hours. that we are able to locate, get them assistance, and get them home safely to their loved ones. Drug dealer, I mean, you name it, if it comes across and we're using it, they're there. I mean, I've got about 20 of them.

The most recent you had with the opening of all this, the gentleman who did it?

So the most recent one I have is a gentleman that lives over on Edgebrook. Went to visit some friends at an old job downtown in the Collinwood area. He went left approximately 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Finally, about 4 o'clock, he hadn't arrived where he was going, and his wife could not find him. She called us. We stepped in. We started working multiple angles, pinging cell phones. And again, that's another thing that we have that we can use that we have safeguards against, and we have to have reasons to do those things. We were able to locate him, and luckily he actually answered the phone, but... would not pull over. But through FLOC, through the phones, through communications with other agencies and us being able to say where he's at, and using the two to pinpoint both Pings and FLOC, being able to pinpoint exactly where the gentleman was, Ohio State Highway Patrol was able to locate him for us. I took him back to the station. I went and picked him up, and I brought him home to his wife. So that's just one, and that's a direct help to our residents here in the city. That's not just a property crime.

That's us bringing somebody home. Again, I know we're running along. We've got countless examples of how we've utilized it, varying from overdue motorists to... staff suspects, carjackings, things like that. You know, the one we spoke of that the mayor got to see a couple days ago, that was the flock hammers at FedEx that hit. It was, I think, a young man out of Cleveland picking up his friend who worked at FedEx, and they were both out of Cleveland, and the car was stolen out of Cleveland Heights. But because it was entered, it's up here with him, so... I'd be happy to talk more with you guys about it. I apologize for running late, but I want to make sure you understood how it works, how we use it, the parameters we have in place, the benefit I think it has to the community. And if you guys don't have any more questions now, please reach out whenever.

I do have a couple questions because I've been conducting my own survey. with residents of my ward and friends and two former police officers just to get a differing opinion. And our own Scott Barr had to use it to locate a family member who was missing last Christmas, and it located that family member for him. So he had an example for me, right? Something that hit closer to home than just, you know, not that you guys stuff isn't closer to home this is an actual you know person and um some of the questions that i had well one was on speeding tickets and you answered that there's no speeding tickets involved but another individual asked me about ice any correlation with ice working with you guys um it's one of the uh uh we don't use it for that okay okay that's what i i assumed but i didn't want to say that and she's like well what about ice and i'm like

No, we don't use it for anything with ice.

Okay, and now this is my question. For example, Hudson calls us to use it. We're being charged $30,000 a year. Do we charge them?

Let me answer that with this. So again, this is a tool. It's a tool we use. I'm going to get on a tangent real quick here. Sure. But just like when Lieutenant Konoski was talking about the guys out of Cleveland that carjacked somebody.

Sure.

When we identified it was a female owner, there's tools they have available to them, which he already had some suspects identified because of known affiliates, prior reports in other places. So there's all these tools we use combined in addition to Flock and whatever else. Right. One example I'll give you is your cell phone. Your cell phone is way more invasive than Flock. Every time you drive down the road, whether you're on your phone or not, it's hitting off every tower. It's showing where you are going. Your Giant Eagle card, your Target Rewards card, all those things capture this data and show where you're at, when you're at. They even take pictures of you. Flock doesn't do that. But the reason I bring this up is when you talk about an agency that asks us for help, A, it's not every day, so it's not super frequent. But speaking of cell phones, if we have a suspect whose phone we need to get into, we get a warrant to get into that phone, we want to search that phone, there's equipment available out there to do that. If they're not going to comply with us, they're not going to cooperate, there's equipment out there, there's Cellbrite technology. That agency that we're talking about has that. So they've reciprocated in turn. The other day, the pursuit that we talked about, that it ended safely. We ended up getting some stop sticks out, deflating the tires. Nobody got hurt. We got them into custody. They wouldn't ID themselves. We call Macedonia. Macedonia has a mobile fingerprint scanner. So they came out to do that for us. So they don't charge us. Portage County has done it in the past. So it's reciprocal. So no, we don't charge them. It's nothing I would ever think of because it's infrequent enough and we all help each other. So it's just a couple examples of how they do reciprocate in other ways.

No, and it's interesting that you said about the cell phone because some of the young girls that I asked, they're like, we have cell phones. They're tracking us anyway, so we don't care about the vlog cameras. They're going to help us.

Your car tells where you're going, how fast you're going, when you need to brake. Yeah.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

I know this is, it took some time. This is a big concern, but please, if you do, reach out to me, any one of us. If I can't get you the answer, these guys can't.

I really appreciate the effort that you all have put into this to explain things that we don't understand in ways that we have a better understanding so thank you yeah absolutely and I hope the residents that ask me these questions when I point them to this video will appreciate it just the same I hope so my survey had not one person against them so

Yeah, Council, I just want to say one thing. As you can see, you know, I talked with the chief. I knew there was some controversy surrounding these cameras, whether it be on council or with, you know, out in the community. But I asked the chief, you know, to come up if he could explain it. And he immediately got a hold of these three lieutenants. And you can see they're all here. They didn't have to be here tonight. They're, you know, they're off shift. You might be on Waltz, but you're off now. But everybody else, this is not their ship. They're not working right now. But they felt it strong enough that this system, and you could see how serious they are about it. They're not kidding. They're not messing around. They gave you actual examples of what this thing does for us. and how the way our police department sticks out from a lot of the others. I've said it a million times, I'll repeat myself forever, but we have the best safety services here in this city. And this is just an example of how we do that and what it is. And I'm thankful that so far, as a former councilman and now the mayor, that we've always supported our police and fire departments. I know, Bill, you've been around as long as I have, and I don't remember a time that we haven't supported you guys. And as long as I'm here, I will continue to support everything that you do because I think that we can all rest easier at night. We sleep much better knowing that we've got a department and people that really care and are passionate about what they do and what they use. And when they come and ask us for these things, I don't think it's too much to ask. I think it's a great tool that, as they mentioned, and I just thank you. Thanks, all of you, for being here tonight. I really appreciate it. I appreciate everything that you do for the city of Twinsburg very much. Thank you so much.

You guys and your residents have always been supporters, so thank you.

Thanks, Chief. Mr. Stiller.

Thank you. Not for you guys. Thank you very much. I appreciate the presentation. It was very informative. And as Mr. Bernatchi said, I plan on sharing this with people as well.

Absolutely.

Ask a few questions.

Yeah, if you get more questions, let us know.

This was very detailed, so I appreciate that. I did have a question, though, regarding the legislation, if I can. It sounded like this was not the first block agreement that we had in the conversation. Correct. So my question is, we signed this about 15 or so months ago, and today it's being presented before Council. It wasn't presented to Council before. It wasn't presented to Council on May 28, 2025 or before that to consider. Why is Council now being asked to review this if we've gone through multiple contract iterations?

So that's a great question. So council's being asked to authorize to stay in the contract. So we will exceed the spending authority May 28, 2027. And at that point, we won't be able to stay in the contract. And we will have to seek to cancel it. So I think that kind of ties into, you know, Chief Mason gave Mr. Bonacci, which, by the way, great questions. Very good questions that you were able to curate there. But that, to me, answers a lot of what Mr. Bonacci's last question was, which was what essentially are we doing here and what happens if we don't authorize it? Well, if we don't authorize it, then we won't be able to stay in it anymore. And we'll have to reach out to Flock and say we can't. Move into the 3rd year within this 5 year term, because we won't have the funding for it.

I understand that. I guess my question is, we've gone through 2 contact or 2 contract iterations of it. Without having counsel approve it. Right so.

now we're being asked to fund it so the funding was going through before in theory yes i thought we were doing 30 i thought we were doing one year 30 000 contracts yeah in the past they were done as annual contracts so they were just so we've renewed it then four times and now we're doing well this is no i i think it was two i don't know i think it was two cycles i don't know if they did they not build us for there's like an overlap here it was only two years though right uh Well, it was one year, and then it was extended.

There was 23, and then there was some issues with the billing.

But it was never over the bid limit. It was never over the spending limit, the first one. Okay. This one will run over.

So when I saw this one, this is what I would consider, you know, this is a different contract. Not what I would consider. It's an entirely different contract. It's a five-year term. And when that was identified, I said, okay, well, we're going to pass over the threshold, which is, I think, $79,000 and some change as you enter into the third year. Because it's paid annually. It's $30,000 paid up front. So we've paid $60,000 under this contract. And if council doesn't affirm entering into it, then we're going to have to exit the contract with FLOC.

No, I understand that. But we signed a five-year contract 15 months ago. So you reviewed this 15 months ago. So you knew the funding potentially wouldn't come through. I'm just saying it just seems like 15 months later where this is becoming before us, but we already knew 15 months ago that we would run out of funding if council didn't approve it. Either way, I think that FLOC is a good program to have. I'm not fighting against the FLOC system. I'm more so looking at this as, you know, 15 months later we're finding out about it that we need to approve it. But also, is it possible to get a copy of the full contract or is that not possible?

What do you mean? The full FLOC contract review. I mean, or is this a... Don't you have a copy of the contract? Yeah. Do we have a copy? Do you want me to print out the link in there? It links to the terms and conditions.

I mean, typically when we get other contracts, it's multiple pages, not just an invoice and a couple of ancillary pages. So that's the contract.

Just to be clear, counsel, what was included in the legislation is the contract. I think what Mr. Castillo was talking about is the terms and conditions that are in the contract that's attached there that are incorporated through reference. So I'd be happy to print out a copy of that for everyone. Or if you want to send it away. I can email it out. I'll PDF it and email it out. Awesome. Let it go. Thank you.

Because we're not even in a meeting yet. We're in our hourly. Thank you.

gentlemen thank you very much sincerely i really appreciate it i don't mind that it took time tonight because it's um if my colleagues are anything like me and it sounds like they are they've gotten these questions uh several times they've gotten questions they've gotten information from wherever social media or what have you and they've gotten incorrect information and so i appreciate you guys taking the time to come up here give us something that we can point people to when they ask us these questions and also your willingness to continue to answer questions. Thank you very much. Thank you.

All right. Thanks so much. Thanks.

Counsel, is there anything miscellaneous this evening? I'm not going to ask anybody individually. Okay. That being said, I will adjourn the caucus meeting at 8.19 p.m.