City Council - Regular Meeting

It's really hard to gauge how big everything is because there's nothing handmade. all right y'all we got to do some uh we have to do like a short workshop this won't be where we have a meeting this is where we have to go through a few things and then we'll stop and adjourn from that we'll make sure everybody

that wants to speak has put their blue cards in you have plenty of time to fill those out i will give you way fair warning before we pick them all up so um we will call the workshop to order it's 601 and um for the guys up here uh at the top we have uh two things tonight three things tonight we're adopting the tax rate We're adopting the budget, and we're ratifying the property tax increase. So you want to discuss the, first of all, we've already had meetings about the rate and the budget. Does anybody have any questions that they've come up with from now then? Everybody's good? Okay. I want Craig to explain the ratification, and then we'll be done.

Okay. I mean, the budget. So we do have a final public hearing on the budget. We'll go through that. That's a separate agenda item. Once that's done, then the budget will come up. Then the tax rate. You have to adopt the budget before you adopt the tax rate. And then because the... The budget will raise more money from the new construction, but it is more money from property tax. You do have to do the ratification. And that's required by state law that basically is just saying that yes, you did intend to adopt a budget that will raise more taxes in the previous year. So. As we discussed in the budget workshop and everything, that is all from new construction, but it is more revenue, so the replication is required. I think that's the main part. The other thing is, after the meeting, there is a letter that has to be signed by each council member as to how you voted on the tax rate. That has to go to the tax assessor, and he has to have that. So if you can hang around for a few minutes after the meeting and sit with the city secretary to get that.

sign all right anybody have any questions on that everybody understand good craig doesn't know i'm going to do this but since we have a room full of people and they're all social media drivers would you give them a small update on the greg drive and what you see where we're at kind of what's going on so they know we're spending their uh straight money

OK, so Greg Drive project is actually out for bid right now. We had a pre-bid meeting yesterday, I guess it was, where we had three different contractors come in. The bids are due September 1. They'll go to the city council September 15 for approval. And construction usually will start within 30 days or so of that. There is some part of that project will start first, the total project time. The road work will be divided into four different phases. So we're not working on the whole great drive at one time. Total project time is estimated at 310 days, about 280 days of substantial completion. So we should start seeing construction on that, I would think, within the next 60 days from today.

council have any questions about that okay all right so that's all we're going to discuss here i'm going to uh adjourn this part and then we will i'll try to wait closer to 6 30 we really don't have to wait too long but i want to give everybody the opportunity to get here and then when we start i'll talk about the rules because there will be a few rules tonight so um with that we'll just adjourn for about 10 or 15 minutes, and then we'll start back up again with the meeting, okay?

Thank you.

And everybody make sure if you want to speak, I've got to have one of these. So if you haven't filled one out, back left corner.

All right, it is 623 and we will call this special meeting to order we do have a call

here here all right um the city council invites citizens to address the council on any matter including items on the agenda except public hearings that are included on the agenda comments related to the public hearings will be heard when the public hearing starts please limit your comment to three minutes the council is not permitted to take action or discuss any item that is not listed on the agenda When you're called to speak, please give us your name and address and the item that you're speaking on, which won't be that difficult tonight. It's going to be fine. I promise. It's not going to be bad. You can't come in here with me and not have a little fun. Okay, first, we're going to start. I'm going to go in kind of a reverse order. You're going to have to sit here and listen to a few things before we get to the flock camera. We have one person tonight that would like to speak on an open item. The council won't be able to address it, but I'm going to let him speak first. Then we're going to go into approving our tax rate and budget. We have one person that wants to speak on that. And when we get through, I'm going to have Chief come up, and he's going to give about a five-minute, SPILL ABOUT SOME THINGS THAT I'VE HAD HIM PUT TOGETHER THAT I WANT YOU TO HEAR BEFORE WE START THE COMMENTS. AND THEN AFTER THAT, I'LL GIVE YOU THE GROUND RULES OF HOW WE'RE ALL GOING TO GET ALONG TONIGHT. SO WITH THAT, I WOULD LIKE TO INVITE MR. BRENNAN TO COME FORWARD AND HAVE HIS THREE

I think I'm going to be seeing you guys again. Three minutes is not enough time, but I'll try to keep it in three minutes for those who know me. I am open speaking because something's coming up through the Board of Adjustments that you guys may know about, may not know about. We got another cell tower trying to come into our city.

Before you sit, can I have your name and address? Oh, I'm sorry.

David Brennan, 623 Christina.

Thank you. Is the address.

Um, so, uh, you can't speak to it. You haven't addressed it. It's not in front of you, but unfortunately, the way, uh, the lower courts work and again, they like you guys to make the tough decisions apparently. Uh, but, uh, I want you guys to be looking into it. I want you guys to see what's happening. I want you guys to understand. I've been communicating with the city. I don't seem to get a lot of great answers out of that, and that's what's disappointing me, and that's why I'm here. I want to know why this tower is 1,400 feet from another tower. I want to know what the city's plan is. This is an infrastructure thing. We need cell towers. I understand that. I want cell towers. I want my phone to work just like everybody else does. But they need to be in smart places that aren't close to homes, that aren't going to hurt people, and are going to do the job as best as they can, and we don't litter our skylights. We're going to have 1,400 feet from where there's an existing cell tower. A cell tower that's completely out of compliance and didn't meet our ordinance at all. It's right up against single family dwellings and based on the 504 feet it should be away from and it's not. There is no screening on it. Our beautiful three page ordinance on cell towers requires there to be screening, not just a fence. blocking everything that's inside the fence. Three years later, there's none. There's no landscaping. I've done a commercial development. I have to do all that stuff. Why aren't shell towers cleaning up their areas like I'm doing when they're already existing? So many of you look into that. But I want to know what the city's plan is. I want to understand where these things need to be. I think we need to be smart about where we put them. I think they could be dangerous. 5G, 6G, 7G is coming. The bandwidth is huge. The damage can be impactful. Long-term, close proximity. It's a fact. We don't want it to be, but it is a fact. So you don't put these things close to people. This is a fight for you for another day because this will get here. Tomorrow I'm going to be at the Board of Adjustments fighting it. You guys need to be available to the people. The people are already calling you. I'm already hearing that they're calling you. I've talked to about 50 people, and there's a World War III that's about to start over another stupid cell tower. four years ago. It's going to happen again. It's not a smart place for it. It doesn't make any sense. It's violating all our ordinances. Why do we have them if all we're going to do is violate them? I'm sure my three minutes is up, but I can go on for hours. That's all I wanted to say. I wanted to put you guys on notice, and I want to understand what this city's game plan is. Ignorance doesn't work for me. Three pages doesn't solve the problem.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can comment on Mr. Brennan. So the city doesn't decide where cell towers go. The city does not select the cell tower sites. The cell tower companies do. I understand that. And they come in, and they come in, and we give them their ordinance. And if it doesn't fit, they do, just like every other person who wants to develop a property, they have the right to the due process. Craig, I get that. I'm just going to explain the process. I'm not going to argue. They have a right to apply for variance, and they have a right to apply for this. That does not mean either one will be granted, but city staff cannot deny those. We have to allow. So the process starts tomorrow and I suggest you.

I know the process and I appreciate the process and I appreciate what you guys have to go through. You have to entertain it. I'm here to say, what's the plan? This is an infrastructure need like water. Like, like trash, like fire, like police, their health safety issues here. And I think the city ought to take up this task.

I understand.

I think these cell towers need to be monitored when they go from 4 G to 5 G. We don't even have any ability to look at what the bandwidth is and see if it's any day if there's any danger with it. It's 10 full. 5G is going to be for where it is today, for where it was with 4G. I understand.

And if they get the variance and they bring the SUP forward, we can address all those questions. But tonight, unfortunately, we can't.

Oh, I get it. I get it. I'm not here to argue that the building, that's coming. But I'm not sure if you guys are aware what comes from the lower courts. And that starts tomorrow. I've been communicating with people in the community today, and they said, hey, go to council and tell them what's going on. Absolutely. I'm going to go to council and tell them what's going on. And I'm going to ask you to be available to the people. Don't be sketchy. Answer their questions. Tell them what you know. You are our representatives. The city has a book of ordinance. They like to go around them. And it makes sense to go around them when it makes sense to do so. I don't think this is a case that needs to. But you represent us. And we're going to have to go to the mat with this. We always seem to do it. I don't know why we want to put ourselves through it. But that's just the way it has to go. And I do understand the process and appreciate that. I just think the city needs to have a strategy with it. These things are complicated. annoying, ugly, dangerous, and we need to put them in the right places. And leaving it to yahoos out here who are profit-motivated isn't really the answer either.

I understand. Like I said, but we do have to work within the confines of the Constitution.

Oh, I get it. I get it. We have laws. Um, I am disappointed that P and Z when it's when it's a tower notifies people 500 feet from the, uh, from the tower line board of adjustments. It's only 200. I know the law says it's 200. But we make exceptions for P and Z to read cell tower issues at 500 and those are issues to bring up another time.

Like I said, I just want to make sure you understood that.

Oh, I get it.

It's not the city's choice for this process.

Not my first rodeo. But I'm here to just let you know what's coming. I'm here to tell you it's going to go hard. And that's just the way it is. They usually do. Usually does. I get it. And it's never any fun for anybody. But thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Brown. All right.

Everybody support me. All right. It's 631. I will open a public hearing to conduct and receive comments on the City of Robinson's budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2026 and ending September 30, 2027. Can we do a quick introduction? Quick introduction.

All right, so this is a second public hearing on the budget for fiscal year 26-27. The budget was completed and presented to the council and the community on August 1st. At that time, it was posted on the website, both in an online format and a PDF format for public review. We did have a workshop on the budget the first Wednesday, which I believe was the 6th, August 5th, or... August 5th we had a workshop with the council this did go before the council last Tuesday August 18th for public hearing and we're here for public hearing again tonight not going to go through the entire budget because it will be here till tomorrow morning if I did that so but it has been online and available for people to review just real quickly go over the specifics of the budget The various funds that are listed, the general fund budget is $11,503,786. The debt service fund is $3,432,275. Utility fund is $12,866,374. Court building securities, 3,000. Court technologies, 5,000. Hotel motels, 31,000. Juvenile case manager fund is 9,275. Child safety fund is 5,000. Capital projects, which is... street projects is 8 million 521 000 in utility fund capital projects which includes new well plant improvements and uh sewer line improvements related to the greg drive project is 17 million 364 thousand six hundred ninety three for a total allocation of all funds of fifty three million seven hundred forty two thousand and sixty three dollars and i'll be happy to answer any questions after the public hearing all right thank you um

Thank you.

Thank you. Alrighty.

Good evening. My name is Sean ID address is you needed that right? 1, 1, 1, 3 Los Alamitos Robinson and I've been living in Robinson here for 8 years. 1st of all, I have gone through literally the entirety of the budget and initially I was not thrilled about a few of the things that I saw, but I took some time to. Email back and forth with Craig, and he had some really great responses to clear up the vast majority of my concerns. So, I was really happy about that and I almost didn't come here tonight, but going through this, I also spoke with director Hobbs and I got an open records request and I do still have a few concerns that I wanted to go over today. Like I said, my experience with Craig has been phenomenal, been very direct, very transparent with the budget with any confusion that I had. And if you are a citizen, and you've got questions about the budget, I'd encourage you. to reach out and I hope you have the same experience as I do. The first thing that I want to do is really emphasize my support for the new finance director position and the trajectory that's currently there. I know we have a lot of shake up with the finance area and I think that this gives us a real capacity, not just a title, to be able to move forward the city's finances in a clear way. And so, with that, he told Mr. Craig mentioned to me that there's a lot of issues with between the what's that called? Uh. The utilities being changed up with the smart readers on and so forth the accounting practices and potential reorganization of the finance area. I just really want to make sure that there's a lot of support behind that reorganization throughout the upcoming year. And yeah, there's people already being cross trade. I just want to make sure that continues to get support from the council. 2nd, the 1 thing that I was very concerned about, I got an open records request asking for the written job descriptions for the assistant city manager and the finance director position, which accounts for roughly 70,000 dollars increase in our budget for this upcoming year. And they told me that there is no, there is no job description at this given point in time. The city's 2018 comprehensive plan sets the population threshold at 20,000 to 2500 for adding an assistant city manager position. Uh, and we are currently at 13,000, so we're about half of that, which I understand. It's a little bit different because we are not getting a new 1. we're just elevating someone to that position. Uh, but to do that, I also want to mention that, uh, to put this into, um. this plan into place having a new hire or not having a new hire to have those job positions adequately defined with a with job descriptions would be great so like don't approve that until those job descriptions get in place to justify the $70,000 increase third the restructure of the proposed increase for the utility director I lost my time okay Keep moving quick. Okay. Um, so I'm genuinely concerned about his salary because he is literally the 2nd, highest person in the. Uh, entire city, which I'm not so concerned about that. It's the truth. It's long term impact of that. Um, I understand why he's here because he's got functional knowledge understanding, um, to really bring our water to the next level, but we are behind schedule right now. And so I would propose possibly making. Uh, his increases more of a bonus for completion. Um, and I think that would be a really good opportunity to incentivize him to ensure that projects are moving is that it's coming to him, but more can we structure that in such a way that it's a reward because he's supposed to be getting a 10% raise this upcoming year. And so that 10% raise, I feel if there were to be justified in a way, that's incentive based would be really phenomenal. Um, and then, lastly, there's no current formal city wide process for identifying cost saving and underutilized resources. Uh, I would ask, um, also to prioritize finding a way to, um, identify under underutilized resources in each department. Maybe a low impact method for, um, each department to be able to do. And, uh, lastly, thank you all. Um, it's been a really good experience interacting with this, uh, with Craig and the, the, the individuals at the city. So, thank you.

Thank you. Uh, your last name is. Is there anybody in the crowd that didn't fill out the blue card that had anything they wanted to say about the budget? Okay. If not, we'll close the public hearing at 6.39. Questions from council?

I have none.

Okay. We do appreciate all of them.

We'll take all of this. I would like to say that the comprehensive plan you spoke about is that. It's a plan. Doesn't mean it's set in stone. That's our goal. When it gets to $20,000 to $25,000, but it's not set in stone that we have to do this.

No, all that I was saying is to deviate from that, it's still good to have job descriptions. So we don't, we don't even have a job description and we're paying 70,000 dollars for something that doesn't have a job description.

So, to deviate from that, it'd be good to have some documentation as to why we are well, and I can address that if they approve the budget, there'll be a job description for the positions. It's 1 of those because we're so short. Short staff. You have to kind of figure what we're going to work on and I don't usually they know this because I tell them this all the time. I'm not going to spend a lot of time working on something until I know I need to. So, if they weren't going to include it in the budget, we weren't going to spend the time putting the job descriptions together. So, but they will be job descriptions. That'll be there and we'll meet all of our requirements.

And I think my purpose for that, I think, is just to raise issues that I still have, put them in front of the people that are making those choices. No, I agree.

But there will be job descriptions for those positions. And there is, I mean, tentatively, as far as list of duties, all that, I've got all that. It's just taking the time to sit down, myself and the HR director are the only two people we usually sit down and put those together ourselves. But there's many, many other things going on right now, so... If the council chose not to do it, then we didn't want to spend the time for that for no reason.

Mayor, I have one comment. I know that's just to invite anybody to our workshops to hear the discussion, not carry discussion tonight from council because we've already had that. And that workshop is a perfect time for it. But a couple people show up, but typically it's pretty light. So the workshop, I'd strongly invite you to come and hear what we talk about, hear what is presented to us.

And they do ask lots of questions.

Yeah. All right. With that, I'll entertain a motion. There's no motion. Oh, there's no motion.

No. That was just the public hearing. Oh, good. Now I got to do it. Yeah, now you can move to the next item.

Okay. Now, action on Ordinance 26015, adopting the budget and making appropriations for the support of the City of Robinson for a physical year 2627. No, I didn't.

Okay, so this is the ordinance to adopt the budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2026 and ending September 30th, 2027. It outlines expenditures for all the funds and the amounts that I stated previously for the public hearing. And the budget is attached to this as Exhibit A and will become a permanent part of this ordinance. Do we have any answering questions?

I'll make a motion to approve ordinance 2026-015, adopting the budget and making appropriations for the support of the City of Robinson for fiscal year 2026-2017. I'll second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Yay. So, and that passes. Now, we need to take action on ordinance 2026-016, adopting the tax rate and levying property taxes for 2026.

All right, so this is the ordinance to adopt the tax rate for tax year 2026. Those will be taxes that will be due on or before January 31st of 2027. The proposed tax rate is 53.5326 cents. That is the no new revenue rate. So what that means is that is the rate that will raise the same amount of taxes for the properties that existed in the 2025 tax year in the 2026 tax year so while the rate is higher it will actually raise a little bit less revenue and so under the state law it is not considered a tax increase questions

Motion.

I'll make a motion to approve the ordinance 2026-016 adopting the tax rate and levying property taxes for 2026. Also.

Aye. Opposed? Nay. Passed. Okay.

We have to ratify now.

The ratification. Ordinance 2. It's not a ordinance. It's not a ordinance. All right. So, City of Robinson Taxpayer Impact Statement. Pursuit to Section 551. Did I read that right? No. All right. They're going in the wrong spot.

Over here.

We need to take action to ratify the property tax increase reflected by the adoption of the budget which requires raising more revenue from property taxes than in the previous year.

So state law does require that any time the city council adopts a budget that's going to raise more tax revenue than the previous year, they have to ratify the property tax revenue increase reflected in the budget. So there is, even though we adopted no new revenue rate that is not raising any additional taxes on the properties that existed in 2025, we did have significant new construction that came on board for the first time. So those are dollars that were not previously Those are properties that were not previously taxed. So that is new revenue. But because it is tax revenue, the ratification is required. So there is a suggestion motion that's in there that is the motion suggested by the statute. I'll be happy to answer any questions.

I move to ratify the property tax revenue increase reflected in the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Nay. All right. I'm done with this.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you, Sean. Thank you, guys. Here's how we're going to do it tonight. So I have all these cards I've given to our Mayor Pro Tem, so he's going to grab one. When it comes time, I'm just going to have him periodically grab one out. We're not going to do them in any certain order, and we're going to have you come up, and you're going to speak, and you're going to get three minutes. I will do my best to give everybody ample time to say what they have to say. I put this on the agenda because, yes, I read social media, yes, I watch what we say, and I want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to say what their concerns are or voice whatever they would like to. What I don't want to happen tonight is I don't want people to walk up to the podium and go, why are we paying a million dollars for flight cameras? That's not... I want facts. We're going to deal in facts tonight. And the reason that I've got... Chief going first, the chief's going to give us what is going on in the police department, why we have them, how long we've had them, what they've done, what we've seen. And then we're going to go along, we'll have everybody come up, you're going to take your time. If someone, if we can make this go very, we can make this go a lot smoother. If you hear someone that addresses something that you wanted, then take your time to make sure you address the other things that they didn't. So, in other words, let's don't have all 10 people come up and just say the exact same things. If we agree with something that's going on, then I'll say, hey, how many of we got an agreement with that? Because obviously, we're up here at the podium looking for what people in Robinson are thinking, which way they're going, what their concerns are, and how many people are concerned about it. Okay? So, I want to be very respectful. Don't know arguing back and forth, so now I'm going to address the council. We're going to let everybody speak. they'll get their time we're not going to go back and forth with them we're just going to listen this is not tonight is not the night that we we vote to pass doing this again for another year that will be on the meeting on september 1st september 1st so we'll take everything that you say tonight we'll take everything that we hear from chief we'll put it all together and then the decision on what the council decides will be made on september 1st and you again will have the opportunity to be here And, uh, take part in that. Okay. Everybody good. All right. All right.

Thank you. Mayor council city manager. 1st, I want to go over kind of what brought us to flock. In July of 2025, we had a criminal mischief case in a burglary incident, which was reported to us by the Robinson High School. A suspect had driven his truck through the gate of the field, did donuts on the turf, causing significant damage, destroying electronic equipment, and tore up electrical wiring for the scoreboard, resulting in significant total damages. We obtained grainy surveillance footage of the suspect vehicle, but were unable to identify any suspects in the case. Going forward from January 1st, 2024 to October 1st, 2025, Robinson PD received 44 reports of burglaries involving vehicles, residents and buildings resulting in numerous firearms stolen.

How many?

44. Say it loud. 44 reported burglaries. So we began exploring resources to combat these type of offenses. In June of 2025, Robinson PD sought council approval to apply for a grant from the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority to install flock cameras at ingress and egress points throughout the city and at the main intersection of Highway 77 and PEPLO and near our local schools. The grant application was approved and Robinson PD was awarded $21,600 from the MVCPA. Robinson PD contributed the remaining $11,400 from its asset forfeiture funds. These funds are generally derived from the assets associated with criminal activities such as drug trafficking that have been forfeited to the police department by court order. In July of 2026, Robinson PD requested Council approval to once again apply for grant funding from the MVCPA to continue the funding of the annual cost of maintaining the flock camera program. Robinson PD has again been awarded $21,600 for fiscal year 26-27 with the remaining balance to be paid from Robinson PD's asset forfeiture funds if the city decides to continue the FLOC program. And just a little note here about ALPR technology, it's been around for 45 years and has been used by departments across the United States for 25 years. This includes mobile units mounted on patrol cars as well as affixed to poles. And flock safety, which is our vendor, the ones that we use has been in business 9 years. So, our 1st cameras were installed September 25th at 25 with the last camera being stalled February 2426. And at this time, Robinson PD has no plan to expand the cameras or add any additional features. We currently have 11 cameras throughout the city. Uh, some crime statistics. I looked at pre flock, uh, versus with flock, um, for burglaries, January 1st, 2025. To October 1st, 2025 before we had flock, we had 39 burglaries from January 1st, 2026 to our current period. We've had a burglaries. Thefts on January 1st, 2025 to October 1st, 2025, we had 74 reported thefts. From January 1st, 2026 to current, we've had 44 reports. And warrant arrests from January 1st, 2025 to October 1st, 2025, we had 28 warrant arrests. From January 1st, 26 to our current time, we've had 41 warrant arrests. So those have gone up due to flock alert hits. Now, I just want to go over a few cases in ways that we've used these cameras. This was the case of online solicitation, a minor in September of 25. we conducted an online solicitation of a minor sting. A suspect agreed to meet at the location Robinson. Officers were able to track the movement of the suspect's vehicle on flock as he traveled to the Waco area. The suspect was arrested in his vehicle was seized. Uh, what this allowed for was better officer safety and planning on conducting the stop knowing exactly where he was coming to meet us. Uh, the next case is stolen vehicle and recovery and October twenty five, a twenty thirteen Ford escape was stolen from Brookshire's parking lot in Robinson. Later the same day, the vehicle was detected by a flock camera heading East and Kaufman County. At 11 PM, another flock camera to take the vehicle in Shreveport, Louisiana. Shreveport police located and recovered the vehicle, which was returned to the owner. This is a murder suspect vehicle stop in February of this year. Waco PD responded to a murder on 11th street at 1223 PM. Witnesses described the suspect vehicle that fled the scene and also gave the license plate to Waco PD. Waco PD had the suspect vehicle license plate entered into the flock system and at 1 55 PM a flock camera on highway 77 and Robinson. Alerted on the vehicle Robinson officers located the vehicle and conducted a felony stop. The driver was identified as 1 of the suspects involved in the murder and was taken into custody by Waco PD detectives at the scene. The other suspect had been dropped off by the driver in Bellmead prior to coming to Robinson and a flock camera in Bellmead assisted in his apprehension. And this case was pretty much wrapped up in an hour and a half from the time of the murder due to the flock camera system. Hit and run incident in May of this year, Robinson PD was called to the Robinson Elementary on the report of a parked vehicle that had been hit in the parking lot and sustained significant damages. Officers reviewed surveillance footage and located the time of the crash in a suspect vehicle with distinctive characteristics, which allowed us to search for the vehicle with these characteristics in the flock system. The suspect vehicle was located in flock both arriving at the elementary and leaving the elementary soon after the crash. A license plate to the suspect vehicle was obtained and this information was passed on to Robinson ISD police who were conducting the investigation. In June of this year, Robinson PD received two reports of burglaries of vehicles which had occurred overnight. A total of $15,000 worth of plumbing tools had been stolen. Surveillance camera footage showed a black SUV as a suspect vehicle and two males as suspects. The flock system was searched for black colored SUVs in the area at the time of the burglaries from the timestamps of the surveillance footage. Additionally, some of the stolen tools had tracking devices on them, which showed they went to the Houston area prior to the tracking devices being discovered and removed. A suspect vehicle was identified in the flock system showing a license plate, which returned to Houston. Robinson detectives conducted a thorough investigation, which include traveling to Houston and locating the suspect vehicle and registered owner. The 2 males seen on surveillance footage at the burglaries were identified and found to have lengthy criminal histories involving similar type offenses. The rest warrants were obtained for the 2 males, each of whom were eventually arrested by Harris County deputies. And this is a case that would have gone unsolved without flock because all we had was a black and the suspect was out of the area. So greatly assisted in that case. This is an interesting one. In June of this year, Robinson officers attempted to stop a vehicle for reckless driving. The driver fled at high speed from the officers who were unable to obtain a license plate number. A short pursuit ensued until it was learned that the suspect vehicle had passed a flock camera, at which point the pursuit was terminated for safety. A search of the flock camera revealed the license plate. Number of the suspect vehicle officers went to the registered address shortly after the pursuit was terminated, located the vehicle at the residence and arrested the driver for felony evading. So, this is an example of how it affords officer safety and public safety. Um, you know, this pursuit would have gone on without flat cameras and no telling what would have happened, but. Knowing it passed the flat camera, we terminated the pursuit and obtained the license plate from the cameras and investigated it that way. This is a stolen vehicle recovery in July of this year, a flat camera on highway seventy seven alerted on a stolen pickup truck. The truck was stopped by Robinson PD officers and was found to be stolen out of Dallas. 4 days prior. The vehicle was recovered and was released to the owner for the following morning. We also have what we call a hot list and flock, which means any vehicles that. Have drivers that have felony warrants we can put in a hot list and it alerts whenever they pass a flock camera. And these are just some examples of Robinson warrants that we've entered into the hot list and the. Suspects have been arrested and these include offenses, such as forgery, forgery, governmental document, credit card abuse, driving law, intoxicated and again, credit card abuse. And same thing with outside born. So these are other agencies that have warrants on subjects that alerted on our hot list and lets us know wanted person has just passed the camera and these people were stopped and arrested. For continuous family violence, driving while intoxicated and stalking the 1 on the bottom there, the stalking warrant was actually entered in by Austin PD 1 hour before they passed our flock camera. So they could barely drive on the warrant on that 1. This is an example of what we call a flock hit. This is what officers and dispatch see on their computers, and this is all the information they get on a flock hit. This one is alerting on a stolen vehicle. It says it's a Ford F-150, and it shows us a picture of the license plate and state, and then shows a picture of where the camera is and date and timestamp. There's no identifying information about the vehicle owner or anything in the flock system. So, once we receive a hit such as this, this is our policy regarding what officers must do. It says an alert through the system alone does not create probable cause to justify a traffic stop or detention. The officer must visually confirm the license plate and match it to to develop reasonable suspicion. That means confirming that the plate is actually stolen or the vehicle is actually stolen. Officers must verify and confirm each hit prior to taking any enforcement action as hot list may not always contain the most updated information. So once they see that hit, they go to the area, they locate the vehicle, they confirm the plate matches, they run the plate through our TCIC and confirm that yes, it is stolen. And that's when they're able to take enforcement action at that point, not just off the hit alone. This is an example of when we're doing a criminal investigation search for a license plate, the investigator must enter an office type up in the top left there a case number and reason for the search. These are all criteria that must be met. They can enter a license plate or description of the vehicle. The license plate is unknown. They select which cameras they wish to search in a timeframe of up to 30 days. The data is retained in the flock system for 30 days. And after that point, it disappears. And by policy and audit of these searches is required by administrators quarterly, but are routinely looked at day to day us being such a small department. You know, it's easy to go in and look at what searches have been conducted. Confirm that they were for purpose. and look at it that way. Now FLOC has released several updates. They've heard the concerns of many citizens and they're trying to put in safeguards into the system. So prior to a couple of months ago, they had a 30 day retention policy. So all the plate scans stayed in the system for 30 days and then they disappeared. Uh, they are now recommending departments go to a 7 day retention, which is what Robinson PD will be adopting. Now, we still can go back 30 days for criminal investigations that with a justified reason. So, if our detectives get a case 8 days after it was reported, they're investigating it. They just have to justify the reason going back that 30 days. Another thing they're adding is offense filtering for sharing. So right now, Robinson PD shares with only police departments in Texas. So if any other police department is looking at Robinson cameras, we can actually put in the offense, we will allow them to see. So we can select, hey, we just want them to see felonies, not misdemeanors. So they're giving more power over our data in order to restrict what other departments can see. Audit assist, so this is a system Robinson PD had already been using flock is now making this mandatory for all agencies. This feature flag searches by officers for administrative review. Uh, they have an algorithm in there that. If officers are searching a plate multiple times throughout the day, whatever looks weird to that, they flag it. A flock will now disable a user's login if the audit assist flags a search until such time an administrator reviews the search and unlocks their account. They also instituted multi factor authentication. This became mandatory August 1st. And it's currently in place for Robinson PD. That's the end of the PowerPoint I did. Uh, you know, I too have been looking at social media and saw several questions. Um. Some of the ones I saw there were inquiries if we share with any federal agencies, including ice and we do not, we do not share with any federal agencies. We do not share with any agencies. Outside of Texas. Uh, we do not have any live feed cameras here in Robinson, no audio detection on them and we subscribe to the basic plan. So that that hit, I showed you the example of all the information we see. So we. We use the Falcon cameras, which are a still shot of the vehicle as it passes in the picture of the license plate. And there was a question about where is this data stored flock utilizes Amazon web services cloud, which is encrypted for both data at rest and data in motion. And meet see just standards, which is our requirement. And that is all I have, and I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Well, we'll push the questions. Okay. Okay. Everybody's got their pad of paper in front of them. If somebody says something you want to go back to, write their name down, write what you want.

Already doing it.

We'll go back. If y'all come up and you want part of your three minutes, if you want to ask Chief a question, if you've heard, if something has come into your mind and you want to know, the expert's sitting over there in the chair. We've been learning as much as y'all have been learning. We learned when we started this. We continue to learn every day, and they keep making changes every day. So we're all going to see what everybody has to say. So with that, we'll start. Who's first?

Mr. Bridges. Stephen Bridges.

STEVE BRIDGES, 200 Block of Hillside. couple things you know we just watched this awesome presentation here and it was kind of like lopsided to be embarrassing you know everything up there is good it's good rah rah rah let's do it like this but what it failed to show is the hundreds, the thousands of abuses, the thousands of times the flock camera has screwed up and people have been arrested and people have been falsely this and falsely that, and none of that is brought forth. Let's show all the good, but you didn't get a fair picture tonight. That's a bunch of bull, and we know that. I mean, anybody go on the web, I mean, on the internet, and you know that's not accurate. and so it absolutely failed to be honest and that's just not you know if you're going to present it here for a vote or for people to look at and say you might as well do a good job and be honest about it and so uh Uh, as far as what's being used by what information is being gathered, Robinson may be using this, you know, little fine area, but the company that's collecting this, you know, they can take this information and use it for insurance companies. How many miles a month is this car driving? They can use, you know, how many times there's all kinds of ways this information is being gathered. That's not law enforcement based. And so that's a really big invasion of property for me, as you can tell, that that's a problem. And, you know, once you start giving up your individual privacy, your rights, where's it going to stop? Let's say it does do good. I mean, there's no doubt that some good comes out of it. And there's also no doubt that a lot of bad. A guy, a temple officer yesterday resigned before he got fired. He's facing charges for abusing the flock system. I mean, it's all over how many places in Texas alone in the last month had dropped flock. That would have been a good some good information. We could have seen up there. Uh, how many are considering dropping flock? The federal government is, you know, they've got, uh, in Congress, they're going to defund, uh, cities or, you know. That use the flock system. I mean, that's, you know, we don't have that's going to turn out, but there's a lot to this and it's way early in the game and we can obviously see how the abuses are coming back and forth out of that. And so, uh, I guess that's pretty much. Oh, I do have a question is when it was approved last year, you know, I really wasn't didn't know. Did the, when the council approved the flock last time, was that like a unanimous vote? It was unanimous. All right. And so that's good information to know. All right. Well, I appreciate your time. I do think on these presentations, they do need to be fair. And I think this was very lopsided unfair. And thank you for your time. Thank you.

Okay. Ryan Paulson.

Ryan Paulson 3 to 2 someone part, I just want to say, I do not want these cameras in my city. I think it normalizes government surveillance and I want to know part of that in my town. That's it.

All right, thank you.

Thanks Jonathan.

Just wanted to mention that I live in the Baker edition Robinson, and there are no less than 6 flock cameras within a half mile of my house. Going forward, my family will never be able to leave our subdivision without being surveilled by an opaque monolithic corporation, which is completely immune to. Freedom of information act auditing. I will oppose these as hard as I can. And that's my 3 minutes.

Okay, jean Smith.

If I have a panic attack up here, I'm not used to talking to people like this 1st off. Thank you very much. I appreciate what our officers do and what you guys do for us. I pulled up some information I've been learning about flock and the way it's sold is high investigation volume. This is internal performance data from flock and law enforcement. Their cameras support over 1Million investigations nationwide and assisted in solving roughly 20% of cleared cases. They say there's faster recovery and apprehension police departments routinely credit the cameras with triggering real time alerts that solve specific high profile crimes, including locating 10,000 missing persons in 2025. Recovering 22,000 stolen cars monthly and capturing homicide suspects. Company sponsored study a 2024, uh, flock back study claim that adding 1 LPR camera per sworn officer correlates to a 9.1% increase in crime clearance rates. Uh, now we'll go to the external performance data because. That's what sells us, uh. We're looking at Atlanta where it started. I believe that's where it started. No boost to clearance rates. Independent research from the Atlanta Community Press Collective found that despite Atlanta expanding its network eightfold from 3300 cameras in 2021 to over 28,000 integrated cameras, the Atlanta Police Department's actual crime clearance rate did not meaningfully increase. Declining homicide resolution despite being the hometown of Fox Safety, Uh, and I'm messing up on my phone here. Atlanta recorded a homicide clearance rate of 48% in 2025. 1 of its worst recent metrics. Even with over 5000 specialized block units operating, there's a negligible. Overall reduction analysis of broader FBI data indicate that the rapid rapid expansion of these networks has had minimal statistical impact on overall property theft and no documented impact on violent crimes like homicide, robbery or rape at a city wide rate level. Higher error rates at California Police Department's internal. Man, I need to quit touching my screen. I believe it was 31% failure rate. So beyond all of these things, this is an invasion of our privacy. I understand that there's good that comes out of it and I understand that completely. But when they can track, when Flock can track where we move, that's an issue. That goes against everything that we stand for. And cities are shutting it down because of that with Flock lying to them about what they can do. So thank you very much. I did break the rules. 1516 Downsville Road. Could you give us your sources?

You gave a lot of information, but there's a lot of information out there on Facebook and everything else. What's credibility of the sources?

Well, FBI data was one of them. The other one was the Atlantic Community Press Collective.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Who's next? Rick Mome? Mome. Mome. Sorry. That's all right. Everybody gets it wrong.

My name is Rick Mome. I work with... Address? 601 Lux Drive, Robinson. Okay, I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take a little more than 3 minutes. Okay. Just so just so clear. Okay. Let me, let me be abundantly clear. Any tool that helps law enforcement is a good tool. Okay. The problem is, is that we have men and women that are abusing it. Okay. At the end of the day, because that's who that's who we're dealing with. Okay. The problem chief. You quoted that flock keeps it for 30 days. That's what you were sold. The problem is that these cities, even here in Texas, like Dallas, that has over 670 cameras, their retention rate is a year. okay the backup auditing the two auditing tools that you have on the city safe that because they're using nova okay they're using the ai the backup stuff okay there's they can't even audit anything because they're the the retention is too big okay so they have to manually send somebody in there to audit everything that they're doing Okay, that's why the Texas Rangers have been called in. Okay. That's what we have officers in Lufkin that are getting charged with 100 count indictments. Okay, over this stuff. Okay. The problem is, is that from a financial aspect, because Texas has. Data law, okay, a lot of other states don't have. Okay, so we're responsible for that. Okay, we have to watch who we release our, our, our information to. Okay, these are all things and I'm gonna read this to you. Okay. That's why I said, I'm gonna take a couple extra minutes. Okay. But understand me, I work with this with this information all the time. Okay. I think it's, I think flock is is is garbage. Okay, because of what they, what they've done and they're, they're just because axon. Motorola solutions Vanguard, they've all they've all been in this business over 20 years. Okay. Look on look on the, the safety equipment that the officers are using. Okay. Everything is in place. Okay. That way the officers are required to have all of this information. Just like the chief showed us. Okay. If you don't have a. Court case, you don't have a crash crash report. You've got to have something in place for that for them to be able to release that information or for them to surveil somebody. Okay. An officer on a corner. Okay. He's making an observation. Okay. But if he sits there all day and comes home and makes a report and keeps track of all the paperwork. That's that's surveillance. Okay. Um, at this point, you know, to the city to the city of Robinson. council, and the mayor. I'm asking for a call for the immediate termination of contracts and usage of unmanned surveillance and auto license plate readers, deployments, and AI-driven mass surveillance networks. These automated pattern recognition systems represent a profound legal, financial, and operational liability to local municipalities and law enforcement agencies. Rather than acting as localized safety tools, third-party camera pools create warrantless digital dragnets that expose local governments to major civil rights lawsuits. breach involving statutory privacy protections and erode public trust by converting municipal property into nodes of continuous surveillance owned by a third party hyperscale corporation. Public outrage is rising around the country and is being acknowledged as at the highest level municipalities and law enforcement agencies are facing growing legislative and regulatory liabilities. Representatives Tim Burchett in Tennessee and Thomas Massey of Kentucky have both recently introduced pro-privacy legislation. Federal procurement and funding penalties, which is HR 9800, okay, and you can look that up, As the detailed and federal filings, the protection against mass surveillance act directly targets commercial camera platforms, like flock safety by prohibiting federal agencies from operating automated tracking tools and stripping federal grant funding from local police departments that maintain mass camera networks. Constitutional warrantless restraints, which is HR 1466. Okay. Reasserting 4th Amendment protections against mass surveillance. The Surveillance State Repeal Act introduced by Thomas Massey establishes the gathering or querying domestic location logs with an individualized probable cause warrant constitutes an unconstitutional search. Legislation like Michigan's SB 1131 demonstrates a rapidly growing state-level trend towards prohibiting automatic tracking, mandating strict data deletion windows, excluding collected logs as courtroom evidence, and expose municipalities to direct civil lawsuits and damages for unauthorized ALPR data collection. We demand that the City of Robinson take this immediate action to cease and desist and end all contracts, obligations, and usage of unmanned surveillance systems and ALPR devices specifically located within the City of Robinson. Protecting our community requires leadership that honors constitutional rights, shields public funds from mounting legal liabilities, and maintains the trust of the residents you serve. Okay? That's all I got, fellas. Thank you if there is any questions, or you want to catch me, or I'll leave you my phone numbers. If there's any questions I can give you and that goes for the chief as well. Okay, I'm here to protect my community. Okay, and if that's, that's, that's all of our responsibility. Okay.

i for one appreciate you showing up all of you thank you for being here normally it's empty right we want you to be here all right you can watch by the way we're gonna we're gonna continue on questions after okay okay jennifer crowe don't anybody leave we'll have time for questions jennifer crowe i'm at 192 hoffmeyer

And I just wanted to know, is there a written protocol for regarding accountability and records the uses of the access to the data? And how are we determining that the data stored at flock safety is indeed deleted after 30 days? Next question was, can you verify the cost? I know there was a $21,000 grant and $11,000 from the police department itself. So is it truly just a $32,000 cost? I can answer that one, yes.

We'll leave. I'm going to leave. Do you want to answer them now?

Yeah, so the last one is $33,000. It's $30,000 per year. me the first question so we have yes we have a written policy in place it's actually on the P Drive

And that's a state requirement too.

That is a state requirement. We had to send this to TCIC operations, DPS. They had to review it, approve it. It has our retention policy in there, all the requirements of the officers. And we are a Texas accredited agency through Texas Police Chiefs Association, which also require certain standards in our policy, which we need. There it is. So there's our written policy regarding ALPR readers. And it goes through with some definitions there and then gets into what must be done on a hot list alert, what you must do in order to search for license plate. It goes into the audits and data retention periods. Now, your next question was, how do we guarantee that FLOC does not retain this data past 30 days? I can't guarantee that. All I know is I can't see anything past 30 days. Like he said, they tell us 30 days it disappears. It disappears for months. We can't go back any further. So, you know, I don't know if there's a way to determine that.

The problem with that is that you have other places like Dallas, and I don't mean to interrupt. Your phone. Dallas says their policy and their agreement, because they are on a multi-year, like we, ours is a yearly renewal, right? Yes. That's what, Dallas has a multi-year contract. So when they tell you that they're requiring everyone to bump it down to seven days, that's for only ones that are, those are for new people coming on. The ones that are their agreement in these multi-year contracts says they can keep that stuff as long as they want. Essentially grandfathered in. And all of it can be downloaded. So just like you download a movie off of Netflix to watch on the airplane, they're doing the same thing with all the information they have. Okay. But that's not something that Robinson is responsible for. Because in their agreement, it states that they're only going to have access to it for 30 days. All right.

We've got two more, and then we're going to start questions and stuff like that.

Garrett Malk?

I'm here at 7516 South 12th street. Thank you all for being here today. Appreciate it. You guys answer a lot of my questions already. So appreciate that. So I just want to start off by saying I want to start off with a quote from. Benjamin Franklin, he said, those who give up essential liberty to pursue a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. And that's where we're at with these cameras. I do appreciate the fact that the officer, the chief gave us this great dissertation on all these crimes that have been done, and that's great. However, it's not our job to give up our God-given rights and liberty to make the jobs of the police easier. And so, um, I don't remember this ever come before the people of Robinson to even take a vote on whether we want to fly cameras or not. That would have been nice. I don't think the cost is the issue for most people or where their money came from. I think it's the fact that we all have a right a 4th amendment constitutional God given. Right? To be able to move freely without being surveyed. This is tandem. These cameras are just in our face. They are in our face reminders every day. That it's tantamount to a warrantless search is what it is. It just reminds every day government's watching. See, I wouldn't have a problem with cameras if they were on private property. You know, if somebody wants to put 1 up in front of their shop or protect their house, that's fine. But once the government is now in charge of those cameras. That's a problem and I think the people runs and should have had a voice before they were put out and now we're discussing it after the fact. So that was that would be my recommendation is that we do not renew this come September and that you put it before vote before the people. Who are living in this fine city. So thank you.

I'LL TAKE A SECOND JUST ON THE PEOPLE UNDERSTANDING AND KNOWING. THE JUNE 2025 AND AUGUST 2025 COUNCIL MEETING was where these were discussed and voted on. They're always available to everyone.

I mean, on a ballot.

So the way that city government is run, this is not a put it on a ballot and vote. The reason that I have everyone here tonight to listen is because we care about what the people think, but we can only go and give people the notice of what we're going to talk about, the list of what we are, and the only time we ever hear from anybody is when after the fact they don't like what we did. And me as one, I took this job and I came in here and I went back and looked at a lot of things and we don't have we don't quite honestly we have almost no participation from our city but we have the one percent high argument mad you didn't tell me yes I did it's on there it's for everybody to see from as long as I can remember Looking back, the first Tuesday and the third Tuesday of the month, we have a meeting. It's 72 hours before it's required that the agenda be put out there.

I think a lot of the people are busy working, paying their taxes, and... Then how would you have... Let me ask you.

Hang on, John. Stop.

All right, okay. And what you're saying is true. Until we're violated, we don't show up because we put trust in each one of you to not do that to us. And so when you do that, now we're showing up. You see? And so that's, I think, the rub is, you know, to get here tonight, it's hard. People are getting off work at 5.30, 6 o'clock, and they're going to get their kids to volleyball and baseball and softball, and this is why we have y'all.

I understand. And we donate our time. None of us up here make a thing.

100%.

I spend a lot of time researching this, so I'm saying if I can do it, so can you. Sure. You have the right to research anything you want to and come up here and talk to us about it. Look how many people are here for Flock. We have what is called a representative government from federal on down. Representative government means that we, the people, elect our representatives to serve. Sir, I don't know you. I'm not upset one bit. I am not happy with the way that what Greg was saying is true. We've got all of this yeah, yeah stuff going on by people's opinions, and your opinions are based on no facts. It's my idea. But I'm saying that if you want to be involved, Be here like you are tonight. Sure. But you made a statement that what we're trying to address is you don't have time and people only have time to go to their ball games and things. Well, guess what?

We're here tonight. What are you going to do about getting rid of these boxes?

Mr. Mayor, I believe we're still in public comment. Yes. Okay. I got some more, but I'll save it for when we're done. Appreciate it. Okay. Last one.

Russ? Russ Horry?

Everything that I was going to say has already been said. Okay. And I agree with all of the comments.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right.

I'm going to go. I might go first. I don't know. So, Garrett, just because you went last, when you were saying what you're saying, If you walked in here tonight with a cell phone, I feel like it's worse than those fly cameras ever thought about being, okay? I just spent a week on a vacation six years in the making, and not one day of my vacation did I not try and answer someone on social media, talk to someone about what they had posted, answer questions that I had for a job that I not only don't get paid for, I don't even take the reimbursements that I'm allowed. Because I'm probably the only person that's ever been up here on this deal that's never taken $1 for anything. I go to a meeting. I pay my own way. I do my own thing. You know why? Because I want the people of Robinson to get every penny they deserve out of what we're doing up here. And it's my job. to make sure that I make the right decisions for everyone. And I'm starting by not using a penny of the taxpayer money for a position that I wanted to come up here and do so that I could do the best that we have for us, okay? But I just got through going through multiple TSA cameras, cameras off boats, cameras in Canada, cameras in all these places. They don't even need our passports anymore. All you do is walk by a camera and they go smile and they know exactly who you are, everything there is to know about you. If we're going to bitch about this, and I'm not saying I'm for or against, but if we're going to bitch about this invading our privacy, then we're going to have to bitch about your phone, about the TSA, about anything that takes a picture, takes your fingerprint. I'm having to go have myself fingerprinted for the umpteenth time after 35 years in the car business. You don't think they still have my one set of fingerprints? It's in everybody's, but they just keep wanting and keep wanting. And to do anything, to own my business, to do what I do, I don't have a say-so. I have to do what they say, okay? That's an invasion of my privacy as well, okay? When I step off anywhere in any town that I go to, what's the first thing your phone does? It tells you where you're at and starts throwing where you need to eat tonight. If you got social media, if your phone's on location, if you got Bluetooth and you pass the thing on the interstate and it says 14 minutes for the next 14 miles, how do you think they're doing that? They just hooked onto your Bluetooth, watched how long it took your car to get to the next point, and gave you the number. So we can't come in here after all this time and say this is the only thing that's violating our rights. Okay? It's not. That phone you hold in that hand, that passport you have, your driver's license, every time you go travel, you might as well say your rights are being violated. Okay? And they're spying on you. The government is spying on you. And you know what? They are. And let me tell you this, too. Your cars that you drive are spying on you. 100%. 100%. The cars you drive. And from 2027 on, it's only going to get worse. And I'm here to tell you.

Period. But you actually have a choice in this or not. You're saying you don't have a choice at the airport. You don't have a choice. You guys have a choice in Robinson to not do this. Not to participate in that. I have a choice not to carry my phone either.

I have a choice to make Robinson a safe place to live too. So I have to decide, not only me, there's seven guys up here. I just happened to get the spot that has the speaker in the gap. The first time that we went through this, I think every one of these guys would say that we listened attentively to what he had to say. It was a new thing that we were going to go and look at. And at that time, all the positives outweighed the negatives. A year later, It's gotten a lot of press. It's gotten a lot of news. Everybody has opinions now. Nobody really had opinions back then because nobody really knew. It was new, okay? Even we didn't. All we knew was what we heard it was going to be. But we took the information that we had, and that's what we did. Now we sit here a year later. The difference in this time is it's more out in public view, in the public eye, just like Rick said, House Bill, that's what I was up here looking to see when they introduced this House Bill 9800. I knew they had it, but I just didn't know when they did it. So it's got top of mind awareness, so whatever's on the top of our mind. But I laugh, and I don't want to, and this is the last thing, and I'm going to let some more people talk. My definition of hypocritical is we are a community of social media. We got multiple social media pages, and we have multiple social media pages Pirates, warriors, grinders, everybody trying to, you know, And on any given day, you can look up and see someone got mad at someone for pulling out in front of them, for going down their street too fast when their kids were playing in their yards. And they snap a picture of the car and the license plates on there. Who knows these people? Who is this running down my driveway? So the citizens are just taking their own flock cameras. trying to do their own detective work, but I call that a little bit hypocritical. And again, I'm giving you this because I'm not for or against at this point. I'm here for the same reason as you. I want to hear what you have to say, okay? But then there are some things that I have to think of of how many ways our privacy is violated, worn down, we we can't go anywhere and do anything that the government doesn't know everything that we're doing i agree you can't even pay if you pay your taxes online you can't even pay your taxes at the irs without having a real id number which which takes your fingerprints and your face scan so it to me there's a ton of ways that the government is wearing us out and i'm not happy about any of them okay and that's what i want to say so you have a question and then we'll let them you know use the word opinion several times and maybe last year when the council did this you got a one-sided

presentation again but now it's not necessarily opinion it's facts i mean you know the officer yesterday in temple these are facts you can go online and get facts like charlie said you know what your reference i mean you can go find the references and you can find the facts and it's not opinion the other thing was mentioned about that a lot of people show up these council meetings and i understand that you know on your side uh that can be kind of a right you know you wish more people be involved because you took the effort you did it you Got the position, whatever. And that seems like people don't care until there is an issue. And like he said, you know, if we don't come up here, the citizens, that means we're liking the job you're doing. You know, we don't have a problem with it. We're busy living life and kids and whatever else it is that you could be doing, but you volunteered for the job. And so we appreciate that. And happy to do the job. But when there is a problem and when they come up here, it's not necessarily that you get to get mad at us or whatever. We're just here because we elected you. We wanted just to say, hey, we don't like this. And like the gentleman, I can't remember his name, said, maybe it is time that we introduce something to end this contract. Definitely we don't want it going forward. But I think that there's plenty of people here that you can get the pulse that, that they're not happy with this at all. And so maybe there is some kind of way that y'all can either end the contract or, you know, I don't know what the process is to get some kind of poll or whatever. and get people to, you know, really get the pulse. I'm not finding anybody. And another thing is this, well, it does some good. Well, it would be more good if we took everybody's gun. It would be more good if we, you know, have, I mean, it's got to stop somewhere. We can't stop the airport. We can't do this. But this is something you can do, is stop this here in the city of Robinson. And you can only do what you can do, but this is what we can do.

Thanks, Garrett. I didn't mean to pick on you.

You know me. I'm hard-skinned. Me too. Yes, sir. I did want to... He kind of touched base on it at the end. We are in control in Robinson of what happens in Robinson. We have a choice whether to have this cell phone or not. I don't have a choice to drive by that camera every day. You guys have that choice.

so being hypocritical you're right i do have a choice on this i do not have a choice on that and that's what bothers me yeah exactly all right uh i'm gonna get the council let's just say something oh great i do i do want to make a point okay that because like and i brought this up earlier there's an axon there's motorola solutions there's there's much better options that are out there than Flock, okay? Flock is selling that data, okay, that we don't have any control over, okay? It's the biggest problem that I have with Flock, okay, is the fact that they're taking everything that they can, they're robbing us of our rights, right, okay? Because, you know, it's surveillance, it's not observation. OK, but they're taking information and data from us. OK, every one of us. And they're using that to their advantage. They're making money off of us. OK, do I think that that flock is really needed in Robinson? Not so much. Will it help? Sure will. But I would rather see Axon or Motorola solutions in that position rather than flock. Okay. Just so we're clear. Okay. All right. I'm gonna start the end with Jimmy. He's got a question. Yeah.

I'm really curious about something. I guess this is more for the sheriff. I had an experience recently that was very interesting to me about the flock camera. I had traveled out of state with a buddy of mine and two weeks prior to us going out of state, his front license plate was stolen. Now we were stopped six times and yet nothing was ever put in the system saying, She'd been pulled over. It was cleared through the driver. So why is the system, I guess, ignorant about communication between law enforcement?

So generally, local law enforcement don't have interconnected communication such as that. Now, when your front plate's stolen, you should go down to the tax office and get new plates because it's in the system. It's stolen. And if you still have the other plate on there, it's going to show stolen plate so that's why you're being stopped so generally what you need to do is go down to the tax office get two new license plates with different numbers let them know your plate was stolen and your report is stolen they give you different plates that way you're not being pulled over but you know we're not going to call Waco PD on the phone and say hey we just stopped a vehicle with a stolen license plate on it. Turns out it was on the right vehicle. They just hadn't gotten new plates and be on the lookout for them and don't stop them when they come through. It's just not logical, I guess to say.

That could have ended up real bad.

Yeah. Oh, you mean like the lady in California with the plate stolen, the report is stolen.

Go get new license plates. If you're not involved when it happens. Yeah. Yeah.

Did you? Yes. Go ahead. My big concern with the system is the fact that for a thought experiment, replace the camera eye that's up on these poles with some minder wearing a uniform with a clipboard saying, okay, Jonathan has driven his motorcycle past at 5.15 p.m. and he's connected to another system of minders. To me, that's no different than digital stalking. And the fact that my neighborhood is completely encapsulated by these cameras, we will never be able to leave our neighborhood without being surveilled. And that's what's upsetting. With Facebook or with these cell phones, you sign your end user license agreements to exchange your privacy for a product. With flock cameras, I never voted on these. I never volunteered to pay for it. I am the product that is being exploited and I cannot escape it.

Thank you. All right, Jimmy, let's be mindful of time, but use your time. That's fine. I'll give Lee one.

I'll give everybody a Lee one. Steve, I think I still have your number. I'd love to hear more. I think three minutes isn't enough. We can get together on that. Same thing, Annette, you, Rick, but I like some of the points. You seem to be, you like the technology, just not flock as a company.

Let me be clear. I do work with law enforcement all the time. That's what I do, okay? On the legal end within the court system and that kind of stuff. I use this every day, okay? Whether it's RDN, DRN, NVTRAC, okay? There's 12 other companies doing the same thing that FLOX is doing, okay? Just for LPR, okay? The thing is, is that when a company that is this large, you can't mandate and you can't watch what every single person is doing, okay? They're relying on us and luckily we're in a town small enough that they're not going to be, you know, we'll probably see 50,000 in another 20 years here in Robinson, okay? If Waco grows the way it's been growing, okay? We have a small police force. They need every tool they can get, okay? The tech is right, okay? It's just very flawed when it comes to flock, okay? So like I said, a lot of the things that the chief pointed out were great things. The problem is that when we have all of the other ones that are misusing it because those safeguards aren't in place. Axon has those safeguards in place. Motorola's solution's out. All of these other companies already have this stuff in place. If we're going to use it, at least let's use it responsibly. And the other thing is, don't sell my data.

right partner, right vendor, right policy.

Absolutely. The TCI operations stuff that you pointed out, I already know all about all that stuff. There are policies that are in place that even TCIC operations has to go back to these smaller towns about our size and Dallas and Houston because they have no written copies of their protocols in place. Which they're supposed to have before the cameras even come online. Okay. That's why I said, these are, these are things that axon or Motorola or any of the other ones would go. This isn't online. We're not going to give you any, we're going to shut you down until you get it placed. Okay. Where flock doesn't care flock just wants that information coming in.

I would love to spend more time with you on this topic. So. Before you leave, you can have it. And so. I'm not asking everybody. If you want to ask me questions, so please reach out to me on that. But these three gentlemen specifically, I have more questions for. Chief, just this cost was an issue brought to me. As I understand it so far, there's been no tax dollars spent. That's correct. So no tax dollars spent on any of this. That was another concern that was brought to me about how they didn't feel that their tax money should be spent on that.

Where does the grant money come from if it's not from taxes?

It is tax money. I hear you there. The government gets the money somehow. It's selfish.

It sounds better.

It's everybody else's money and less of ours.

$3,000 coming from cameras, what he said earlier. Plus $14,000 from our confiscated things from criminal activities.

And I understand that. But grant money still comes from taxes. That we all pay. Not local taxes. But it still comes from taxes. Hang on, hang on, hang on.

Chief. So the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, we all pay car insurance. There's like a $3 or $4 attachment on the car insurance that goes to Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority. That's where your grant money comes from.

Do us a favor. I think you may have the answer already. So I'm going to ask it to you. And that is this is not something that we can put on a ballot. Is that correct? That's correct. all going to claim and not claim but want to There's so much I could go all night. I'm going to reserve. I'm going to do the rest of my time, but I'd love to talk

And I'd like to clarify something when you want me to.

It's your turn, Charlie. It is my turn? All right.

So what I was saying earlier about us having a representative government is that that's how all of our government works. I'm sure you guys had government in junior high, high school, college, if you will. We have a representative government. We elect people to represent us. We're not a democracy in that we vote on every single item. In fact, there's very few items we do vote on. If you notice referendums that are brought up in our elections, there are some things we vote on, but very few things we vote on as a public. I read the book 1984 in 1972 in high school, George Orwell. I dread that day. My daughter was born in 1984. Yeah, so I don't like... my privacy being invaded either. I'm with you on that. Nobody wants big brother in our business, in our lives every day. Nobody wants that. I don't want that. I will tell you two primary examples why I'm for surveillance in our city. It's a personal thing that happened within my family. Chief Adams knows about it. My granddaughter was being stalked by a former boyfriend We had no evidence he was doing the things that he was doing, except for the cameras that caught his vehicle in certain times. He was here because he didn't live here. He lives out of town. That wouldn't have been stopped. It was stopped, trust me. He was arrested. He was dealt with. I have another granddaughter while we were at Peplow Park four years ago. We're there playing with our grandchildren. Four of them at that time were little. Two of them are almost adults now. One of them overheard, and she was like probably 18 at the time, she overheard this guy in a car talking to a child as if the guy was a stalker or a pedophile trying to recruit a child or meet up with a child. And she came to me and said, Papa, I heard this guy talking to this child saying, hey, this and that, meet me and whatever. And she wanted me to go over and whip his ass and get his phone. And I said, well, if I go over and do that, I'm in jail because it's a he said, she said thing. We can't prove that. So she got mad at me. She was really mad at me that I didn't do that, you know, because I'm her protector. She looks at me as a protector because we're close, right? I guarantee you that if that car, if that guy's driving and something did come up and his license plate, which we saw and took, were recorded, and then it was caught on the cameras he's talking about, he's caught. I'm talking about, I've been burglarized. Have y'all been burglarized at your house? Have you had anything stolen? I own property on my street and people have got $700 in a gun stolen out of the car and all kinds of stuff. Why does it stop? Why has it gone down? Because people know. The criminals know. I don't have anything to be afraid of. I'm not doing a crime. Why do I care if the camera's getting my license plate every day or not? I don't care. I really don't care. Unless somebody wants to take that information and do something bad with it. But look, it's innocent until proven guilty. In our country, isn't it? Innocent until proven guilty. So we've got laws to protect us from that stuff. But for me, I'm just going to tell you outright, my thoughts are that I want my family protected, I want my property protected, and I want something that's going to ensure that people aren't going to do crimes in my city and get by with it and get away with it. So if you disagree with me, then you know what? We can agree to disagree. I appreciate you being here and saying what you got to say, and I'm going to say what I got to say. But right now, I'm in an elected position, and I'm going to vote to represent you. And I'm going to do the best I can to represent you. I'm trying to make an intelligent decision based on all the facts, not just some blurbs on an email. That's why I asked you, sir, where you got that information, because there is so much information out there. We don't know. Where did that information come from? That's a big problem we have right now in social media is that misnomers are spewed and people pick up on it and start believing it before you know it's become this big thing that should have never been a big thing. You know what I mean? So all we can do is what we're doing is to try to represent you. I've lived in this city. You want to hear it again, Randy?

session.

I love that man. My wife taught his brother and I've been friends with his dad for many years. Many years. I love that man. I love his family. Thank you for being involved. Thank you all. caring about your city. I appreciate that. I really do. And run for office. You run fine. I'm up next November. Not this November, next. Please run. Please run. I need somebody to step up that cares and do something.

Step up.

Thank you for being here.

All right, Mr. Master George. Hi, I'm Jim Mastergeorge. I've been probably one of the longest serving members on the council. I'm also probably one of the oldest people in this room. When I grew up, there were no surveillance systems anywhere. There was no such thing. You reported what you saw and what you didn't see, nobody knew about. I've grown up with the systems as they've accumulated and gotten more technical and more efficient and more accurate. The system we have in place is accurate and used properly. It's just the fact that there probably are better systems out there. We need to take the time to research the other systems, see if they'll provide us the same result that we want without infringing on everybody else's personal property and lives. I myself am comfortable with the system because I don't have anything to hide at my age. I'm lucky to get out to the end of the road and get to the mailbox and back. When I drove just this past couple weeks ago, we went to Missouri. I'm driving up the highway and my phone rings to tell me where the gas station is up the road. 12 years ago, I drove to Big Bend and it asked me if I wanted to get cell service into Mexico. I didn't want this, but this is what I got. Every time I turn my cell phone on in the morning, the world knows I'm alive and well and where I am. And they can ping me on every tower they want. It's the thing I've grown up to use. But I want to make sure it's done right. And I want to make sure that we are spending our money for the right system to get the right result. I agree with Mr. Rogers. We need to get a representative survey or result from the other side of the argument. I appreciate all of your viewpoints. I understand exactly where you're coming from. But there are people on the other side of the coin. We can't assume that they're going to agree with what we say, and they sure as hell won't agree with what I say. But we have to give them the opportunity. I'm getting out of the council at the end of this term. One of the hardest things about being on the council, and I always tell everybody the hardest thing is to represent the ghosts. We come up here twice a month. 99% of the time, there's nobody else in the audience. Not one. And it's really discouraging because the city has 13,000 people that should have a say or even listen to what we do. We had public meetings for the budget. Nobody showed up. We have public meetings for different issues all year long. Nobody shows up. Yeah, we're representing all of you, but please give us some input. Let us know what we're doing is right or wrong. It's a really hard thing to come up here every time and we're talking to the chairs. The only permanent fixture in here is the mayor's wife and Misty. Chief and the Chief and the Assistant Chief and Destiny and the rest of us up here. Please participate and let us know we're spending your tax money right. Let us know we're making the right decisions. We're spending all this money in the city right now on the roads. Nobody cares until we fix their private pothole. Most of the time, they never show up here. And it's really hard to keep doing it over and over and over. I've enjoyed it, but my time is done. I need somebody else to sit in this spot and care and show they care. That's all we got.

Amen. Thank you, Mr. Matthews. All right, Jeremy.

So as we start coming down, I think we're kind of like the audience. We've pretty much hit every point that's out there. So I'm going to keep it factual, not personal, not beliefs driven. But as Jimmy mentioned and Jim mentioned as well, we have a little over 13,000 citizens here in Robinson. About 30 of y'all showed up. So that's 0.2% of our total city population, which I know you have kids and stuff like that as part of that headcount. But still, 30 members isn't much, but thank y'all for coming. Thank you for voicing your opinion. We don't know what's out there unless y'all show up and voice your opinion, so thank you. A couple of points I do want to make issues about costs. I think we've squashed that data retention issues. Okay. That's that's not Robinson. That's that's big brother, right? We can't. Handle that even if we went to maybe an ax on a Motorola solution, not sure how that would happen. The misuse of systems. Let me just say people. There are bad people out there. There are bad cops. There are bad teachers. We hear about it all the time. There are bad people in the corporate world. So people are going to misuse things, and they're going to be bad people that misuses things and There's policies and procedures to protect that and I think people are catching on that people are using these tools inappropriately and that needs to be dealt with whether it's in Robinson or outside of Robinson. Say we end flock cameras next week. Guess what? Flock cameras still exist in the city of Waco and everywhere else and people may misuse those cameras and we've just Bad people are going to do bad things. But the last thing, and this is the hardest part for me, is privacy. So to me, privacy, I think, is kind of an individual level of thermometer of what privacy really is, what it means, what they're willing to do. Someone said, you know, they signed up for the cell phone and some other things, and you agreed, hey, that was my choice to do that. There are other things that we actually do if you take a step back that could see us invading our privacy patrol cops sitting on the side of the road monitoring your speed i mean you didn't ask or sign up for them to watch you that closely so there's different levels of privacy and so for us what's hard is when we try to do the right thing and i promise y'all none of us even in the city of robinson our cops are doing a great job they are not just using the systems we are not it's hard to justify or hard to look at and go, what is the best way one of our kids get kidnapped? And all you know is it was a black truck. It took a ride up this red light. What if you never saw that kid for the next 20 years? You never see them again.

Or your granddaughter threatened her life. No.

What about the police that are getting fired? How valuable is that? What if they take it and they're getting fired because they're taking the same information and they're doing bad things to your children, your grandchildren, these other people, ex-wives and all that. And that's that two-sided story that's not getting told. You can look the facts up and how many police officers, police staff... And flock employees are getting this information and doing these bad things. And so you need to always look at it on both sides and not just, because it is the same thing. Praise God that your grandchildren are okay and all that worked out. But if it had been a police officer that did it or somebody that worked in police admin that did track your child using that camera, I mean, it can go both ways. And that's what we always need to weigh in. Yeah.

So all I'm saying is I agree with you 100%. As Mayor just said, there's no perfect solution. You know, what is that deal? So I just want you all to know, whatever we decide, whatever we talk through, thank you for being here. Thank you for providing facts and your opinions. That does mean a lot to us. And hopefully whatever decision we make next week, believe us, it is for the betterment of the community, whichever way.

It's okay. All right, let me finish it up here. First of all, I wanted to point out one thing. I have not even been on council for a year yet, so I wasn't here when this decision was made. So I'm not tied to whatever it is. And I can't say that I wouldn't have gone along with everybody at the time with the information presented. I don't know what I would have done or said at that time, okay? But a couple of things come to my mind. First of all, I'm not as personally concerned about privacy. Like I said, I give it away at my cell phone. I'm open to a million different people. So it doesn't affect me privacy-wise that much. However, having said that, I'm not here to make my personal decisions of what I think is absolutely best with no consideration for what the community out there feels. And I know a number of people said they don't, you know, they wish you'd be more participatory and that sort of thing. But I mean, personally, I look at it if you're not down here pointing something out, we're probably doing everything to suit you. You know, and so, you know, although I would love to hear any and all input, feel free to reach out to me personally or show up here. I encourage you to do that. But I'm not going to personally. Of course, I haven't been here as long as these guys, right? So, you know, so it doesn't upset me that nobody's here to say, hey, we just haven't upset anybody. So that's good. And so then having said that, you know, you know if i was on city council in atlanta i might be all for these things because i've been to atlanta a handful of times and i have never not witnessed a carjacking okay so in a situation like that i can these are extremely valuable tool that law enforcement can use and we have no good decision here We're either going to compromise privacy for people or we're going to compromise law enforcement's ability to more effectively or quickly make those decisions. And we make these decisions all the time. Back in the 20s when prohibition came in, did you know we had the lowest crime statistics the year after they instituted no sale of alcohol? I mean, murders dropped, everything dropped, right? But, you know, then of course they built the infrastructure outside of law enforcement to keep that up. So we know it would be a better society without alcohol. I mean, we know it. I mean, everybody's we know that yet our society decides to deal with that to get whatever it is that we get from that right and so my thought is here we're giving up privacy that we can't get back but if it comes in a year from now if we don't allow these things for another year and it comes back a year from now and you guys are all mad because your cars are getting stolen Maybe we can implement that tool, but we can't give you your privacy back after they've been up and running for another year. So, I mean, those are my thoughts on it. I certainly see the value of it, and I also certainly see the concern for privacy. And clearly, we're going to make a decision on the first whether to do this again. Is that basically it? So I encourage you all to show up in and anybody who is, encourage anybody who thinks these things are very beneficial to show up and give us their input. And I do think this would be a perfect example of a time to put a referendum on the ballot, but that is not legally possible. talked to pat curry about getting that change at the state legislature but we can't put that on the on the ballot for you and this would be a perfect example i would i would feel far more comfortable if that was the case but we can't and i have to make a decision um and each of these gentlemen have to make a decision with all the information that they have and i really appreciate you guys coming and giving us your perspective you've all been very respectful which is not always the case i've been planning and zoning for years and years. Not everybody's happy when Airbnb comes in their neighborhood. But you guys have been great. I really appreciate all your input. And I think we all have a wonderful city here. We have some wonderful law enforcement folks. We really do. They have a job and that's to protect us and to do it as best they can and to cast these things. And this is a tool that they can see help them with their job. But it's our job to take

the you know the benefits of that and the negatives of this and Each of us individually decide what we think is best for the community I hope everybody understands it all of the seven people sitting up here We have opinions, but we did this because we wanted to hear your opinion and If I haven't answered your Facebook comments where you went and told me personally, it's just because there's so many, I got lost. But I'm doing my best. These guys up here are not shy about where they stand or why they stand. But I believe that you should understand that every one of them said they were going to listen to you tonight. And take what you had to say. I don't believe anybody up here is 100% know what they're gonna do next Tuesday night. I know that I'll single out Rick for a minute.

He did a whole lot of background.

We did a whole lot of back and forth. That's my job. That's what I do. He's got a lot of knowledge, okay? He's got a lot of knowledge. And I take that knowledge, and I take what he has, and I go back over to the chief, and I pound on the chief, and then I look back at what he's saying, and we talk about what he has, and we learn some things, and some I agree with, some I don't. And Rick's the same way. Rick might agree with some of the things I do up here and some of the things that I don't, but that's kind of how our system works. That's right. That's right. I, again, appreciate everyone here. I appreciate that we did this in a very nice way. It's funny. Everybody thinks when it comes like this, it's going to turn into a circus. And we just showed them that that's not the case here in Robinson. Before we leave, I want to make sure I got you here, I drug you here, and I've kept you until now, that no one has anything else they want to say before I gavel us out. So does anybody, if you thought of anything or got any other questions or anything else you want to say, last shot. I don't want anybody leaving saying I wish I would have said it. So, all right. Yes. Oh, my gosh. Charlie always wants to say something.

We've got a great city manager that we've had for going on 10 years. Craig LeMann, I want to publicly thank you again. I had no idea until I got on council who did what or why or anything else. Now we kind of know more into the details because you get involved, you have to be involved in detail. We don't make all the decisions. This is called a win-win. Weak mayor, weak council, strong management system. That's what we have. We oversee this system. We don't make day-to-day decisions on what happens in our city. We don't operate the day-to-day solution. We hire people to do that. This set up government. I didn't know that until I got into this. We've got a great one right there, and I dread the day you retire, to be honest with you, Craig. And every person here, I've known you before or I know you now, that's

serves. Chief Smith did an awesome job before even Larry is carrying that on in our new assistant chief.

We got to be thankful for the blessings we have in our city. We are blessed with quality, good people. Greg Hobbs, I've known almost all of his life. We are We need to be grateful for the people we have serving. We may disagree, but as you said and as I said earlier, we can agree to disagree until we get things worked out. The biggest problem our country has right now is that we can't have civil political discourse. I saw a guy's service, a Democrat had died. I saw a Republican's service. Give his eulogy 30 years ago on C-SPAN because I'm a freak, I'm a nerd, I guess, on C-SPAN. But, you know, I saw that. And I'm thinking, that doesn't happen today. We've got all this fighting and stuff going on. Why? Why? It's unnecessary. Let's just agree to disagree and be civil about everything. And that's my thoughts. I mean, you know, maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. But that's my opinion right now. And like I said, until November of next year, I'm sitting here. I hope you run for my office. Please, somebody run in November of, what is it, 2027. God bless you. Thank you for being here.

I'm going to tackle Charlie now. Gee whiz. Y'all got to see. That's why y'all don't come. That's why you need funny gabbling. Yeah, I know. We got a great mayor too, by the way. I'll go ahead and say that while I'm at it. I didn't know about him at first. He always wants something. Like I said, new car. Everybody, look, we have one week. you have something else every one of our email addresses that are our city email addresses are on the city website go look for the city council you'll see the email i have a facebook page that everybody knows i answer all the messages comment rick knows that a lot of other people in this room know that ricky knows that if you have anything else to say or you know anything else anybody else has anything to say have them send it so that we can review everything before next tuesday night next tuesday night we will make a decision one way or another with that we are adjourned