City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, thank you. We have reconvened from our closed session and by a five to zero vote, the city council authorized and directed the city attorney's office to defend the case of Nassar V. Hanna and all as identified by the case number on the city council meeting agenda. With that, I will adjourn the special meeting at 6.28 p.m. And now it will turn over to our regular meeting. At this time, I would like to call to order the Elk Grove City Council regular meeting. Today is Wednesday, September 9th, 2026, and the time is 6.29 p.m. Clerk.

Yeah, thanks, Jason. Darren Soon here, Vice Mayor. There's no one in the room or around me period. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Next up is our land acknowledgement. Would Council Member Robles please read the land acknowledgement this evening?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We honor, respect, and acknowledge Elk Grove's first inhabitants, the Plain Miwoks, who lived as sovereign caretakers of this land in these waters since time immemorial. We commemorate and advocate for their descendants, the Wilton Rancheria Tribe, the only federally recognized tribe in Sacramento County who endured because of the bravery, resilience, determination of their ancestors, tribal members, and leaders.

Thank you. Next up is our Pledge of Allegiance. Council Member Spieth, please lead us. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. At this time, please join us for a brief moment of silence. All right. Next up is our approval of the agenda. May I get a motion? Second. So moved. Oh, we got to take roll call.

All right, thank you. Next up, we have a presentation, presentation of a recognition to Elk Grove youth's baseball 10-year-old and under all-star team for outstanding performance in the 2026 Regional and World Series Championship. So let's call forward. And reading the recognition will be Council Member Brewer. All right. Hi. All right, Council Member Brewer.

How are you guys doing? Good. Coach Bowden, thank you for having us here. Thank you for bringing the guys here. Definitely quite an accomplishment. You guys had a great summer. You had made great memories. You made some good friends along the way. And you played a fun sport. all summer long, and thank goodness that we had nice weather to make it all the much more worth it. But we definitely want to say congratulations and to say how proud we are of you, of what you've done this year, because believe it or not, you're the first Elk Grove baseball team to actually make it to the World Series. An

All right. Your city is proud of you. We're gonna come down and present you with the recognition. Congratulations to you all.

Rob, you want to come on? And who has the certificate?

All right, next up is our public comment for non-agenda items. I'm gonna go ahead and open up the public comment opportunity for in-person first. We will start with Lindsay Halsell, followed by Sappy. That's correct. Thank you.

Your time is up. I invite for, I, excuse me. If you are here to speak on ALPRs, flock cameras, I invite you to fill out a comment slip for item 9.1, which is where we will be discussing that. This public comment opportunity is for those on, for non-agenda items. So thank you. Thank you. Next up is Sappy, followed by Constance Conley.

Thank you. Next up is Constance Conley, followed by Eileen Conwell.

Thank you. Next up is Eileen Conwell, followed by George Murphy.

Thank you, Eileen. Next up is George Murphy, followed by Carlos Zamarripa.

Thank you, sir. Carlos Zamarripa, followed by Amelia Van Correa.

Thank you. Amelia Van Correa, followed by Ellen. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Ellen, followed by Sophia Singh.

Next up is Sophia Singh followed by Justin D.

Thank you. Next up is Justin Gee, followed by Allison Randall.

Thank you. Next up is Allison Randall, followed by Jerome Candelaria.

Sacrificing our civil liberties. Thank you. Next up is Jerome Candelaria, followed by Ricky Paul.

Excellent. All right. Next, we will go to our online questions.

Thank you. Are there other public comments online? Any other hands raised?

Okay, then I will go ahead and close the public comment opportunity for this item, or for general public comment. With that, I will move on to our next item, which is our city manager's report.

All right. Thank you for your report. Any questions or comments from colleagues? Seeing none. Yes. Council Member Brewer.

So with the opening of the library on October 10th, it's my understanding with the work of the Sacramento Public Library partnership that the city did. The main meeting room, conference room space at the new library will be named after Patricia Sandifer. And just wanted to make that as a note. She's been a very historical figure for the Elk Grove Library and someone that, she's still alive, we're still honoring her while she is here with us. So when we do open the new library, definitely take that opportunity to get a chance to meet with her. and she's a great conversation to have to learn abo

That's all. Okay, thank you. No other comments, questions? All right, with that, go on to our next item, our consent calendar items. At this time, I'll go ahead and open up the public comment opportunity for consent calendar items. I don't have anyone signed up in person. Anybody online?

All right, I'll close public comment on consent calendar and look for a motion to approve consent.

All right, thank you. We will go ahead and move on to our next items. There are no public hearings this evening. That takes us to our regular agenda action items or recommendations. 9.1, receive a presentation of the Elk Grove Police Department's automated license plate reader technology.

Is it just muted? Is it me that's just muted?

Thank you for joining us, District Attorney Tianho.

Thank you. All right. Very thorough presentation, thank you. And before we go up to public comment, I want to thank our sheriff and our district attorney for also coming to the meeting tonight and providing additional information. All right, I'm going to go ahead and open up the public comment opportunity for in-person first. We're going to start with Lindsay Halsell followed by Logan.

Next up is Ellen, followed by Shauna Valencia.

Thank you. Next up is Shauna Valencia, followed by Warren Bell.

Next up is Warren Bell followed by Justin D.

Next up is Justin D followed by Jeff Toon.

Thank you. Next up is Jeff Toon followed by Yev Bergovy.

Thank you. Next up is Yev Bergovy followed by Ricky Paul.

Thank you. Ricky Paul, followed by Lorraine Pryor.

Thank you. Lorene Pryor, followed by Adela.

All right, Adela was our final in-person public comment speaker. We will now switch over to online.

Thank you. And just to clarify, that was the final online public comment? Indeed. All right. With that, then I will close public comment on this item and call back our police chief and on Ms. Cortez. So I'm going to give you an opportunity to speak before we then go into questions and comments for you. Yes?

I'll defer to you. If you want to go ahead and speak, and then I'll open it up to my colleagues.

All right, well thank you for that additional clarification. All right, I'm gonna open it up for council comments and any questions, I'll start to the right. Council Member Spies.

All right. So first, I want to thank all of my fellow technologists for being here. I don't think we've had a technologist in the audience for, gosh, at least as long as I can remember. I myself, I've been in the Department of Defense world for 40 years now, primarily dealing with nuclear weapons and cybersecurity. That's what my company does. And so I get it, I understand some of the concerns. I won't get into some of the deep technical stuff, because we'll really bore the heck out of a lot of people, and I'm sure you know that. So I wanted to express that first. Also, just one thing that I'l

But we audit a minimum of 90 days, which means that we're Auditing less. Yes. We're auditing more frequently is what you're saying. Okay. Specifically who, and I'm talking about like by job description or by job title, specifically who conducts that audit? Dre and her team.

Okay. So I'm going to ask that we stipulate a timeframe, which is no longer than 90 days, right? I mean, I would personally prefer 30 days, but let's do it practical, right? Okay. So by job title, then the director of the, I just forgot what it's called, does the audit. You do the audit.

Okay. Okay. What specifically is audited? What data fields are audited? And is that in a policy?

And in fact, I saw that actually Flock is now making that statement.

Okay. What specific positions in EGPD are provided access? So can a motor officer look in? Can a, I don't know, name, I mean, I don't know, can someone from, and I use this, I don't use this jokingly, but the animal services are within the police department. Can animal services look at these, specifically which positions are allowed to look?

And when you say ALPR committee, that is a committee that is within our department.

Right. Makes sense. Okay. I want to talk real quick about audit dashboard. So the community review that was done had really some interesting data points, right? So there was a long list of data requests that were received by our... Instance. Right. An important point of clarification is those were requests, not returns. OK, I can ask the chief to tell me Miss Cortez's home address right now. And what he should tell me is, thanks, have a good day, creeper. You're not going to get that. So when you see requests come in, as you see in the data, that does not mean that there was a return. But that

No, what I'm asking about is when the software changes or when data writes something in the contract, right, is when something changes. Just like the EULA on your phone.

Yeah. Right. So what I'm asking is who reviews the changes to the terms and conditions, right?

Right. I'm asking because I know that answer. And I'm hoping that Mr. Hobbs can step in because Ms. Suzanne told me that she reviews all those changes in the terms and conditions.

Right. So that's whenever there is a change or a software update that has a change determined conditions, it is reviewed. Yes. Okay. And again, I know the answers to these questions. I'm only asking them once again so I can foot stomp. Let's see. When... When the software is installed, and I'm going to say this is more of a statement than a question because I've read about it, at installation, the default sharing is set to none. What that means is, for those of you with least privilege, you understand that It's kind of like Linux where you install Linux and you have to grant permissions, right

Thank you, Councillor Spies. Councillor Robles, you're next.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. And thank you, Chief and Andrea, for the presentations. Thank you to everyone for being here. And thank you for continuing to come out and speak. And just thank you for just being respectful to each other. We might not always agree on certain issues. but we're respectful, and that's what matters, right? There's other cities that don't offer that respect, but we do. I also wanna say thank you to Council Member Spies. You definitely went in depth with your depth of knowledge of technology. I appreciate the lining of questioning that you did ask. I also appreciate some of

I know we're talking about all of Elk Grove, but I'm going to stick to District 4. I know that the sheriff talked about... his ex-employee who worked, and he was also a resident of District 4. And I remember that day very clearly because for 24 hours or even more, I was heartbroken when I found out that in our own district, or my own district, that a resident would kill his child and attempt to murder his other child. had it not been for the hit that happened on the Flock cameras, this ex-sheriff wouldn't have been caught. I understand folks Like, we don't want the civil rights and civil liber

Has there been incidents that those triggers have not been met? Therefore, no car is pursued or vehicle? And then I also... Like, I understand, and I thank you, Council Member Spies, for talking about the timeframe on the 90 days. I agree with that. We should absolutely have a timeframe. Listen, I agree that what's going on in other states is very horrendous. I also agree that what's going on in these red states in Texas, in Florida, regarding, or Florida canceled, but every other state that's doing in Oklahoma, like, I would attribute that to bad actors and just bad policing, right? And even

Please, public comment is over. We are deliberating. Thank you.

I just want folks to make sure to know that we follow the rule of law here in Elk Grove.

Madam Mayor, I think it would be appropriate to waive the 10 o'clock rule, please.

Yes. Agreed. We're likely going to go past 10. Thank you. Council Member Brewer.

I don't filibuster that long. I don't know what you're talking about, Council Member Spence. I appreciate both of your comments because you're speaking to the larger issue from a technical standpoint and from a municipal standpoint. And make no mistake, This is a very controversial subject. It's not anything that we could sweep under the rug, and I'm glad we're having this full-throat discussion with everyone in the room, both the people who want to see the cameras gone and eliminated from our sheriff and our district attorney. I want to thank them for coming and providing their testimony. I w

And for parties who we do have an MOU with, do we have amendments in our agreement where they are required to not share our data with their partners in an MOU? No.

Okay, and for, And the reason why I'm asking these questions, because it's really leading back to the meat of the situation, Department of Homeland Security. Department of Homeland Security, they are not obligated to contact Elk Grove Police Department, Sacramento County Sheriff, or any law enforcement agency if they're going to be in an area.

And so it's one of those situations where I hate to invoke this guy. When you involve 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into this discussion, This is where all the anxiety and fear comes into play. And that's why we've seen so many people feeling really passionate about this device. And then when you factor in who owns Flock and another name who was invoked, Peter Thiel, that also creates another issue where people are like, What are we doing? We're trying to protect our communities. Elk Grove Police Department has done a really good job of protecting our community for many decades. And the one thing t

Thank you, mayor. Um, I also want to start off by, well, let me start off with a question. Andrea, I heard one of our public members speaking tonight talking about the tracking of our movements. But I also heard earlier our ALPRs take only photos and cannot track movements. Can you clarify for me?

Okay. Thank you very much. And so, again, I want to start first by thanking everyone for coming out and speaking. I echo my colleagues' sentiments that this is very good, transparent conversations that we're having. You know, it doesn't mean we're going to, you know, just say what we want to hear, right? We're trying to get the data out and hear all sides. I really appreciate the concerns that residents have raised and how they feel. I also appreciate the words of District Attorney Tien Ho and Sheriff Jim Cooper and Chief Bobby Davis and Andrea Cortez and how the technology benefits residents

Thank you. Thank you to my colleagues for your thoughtful comments. I took like two and a half pages of notes, so I just want to gather my thoughts on this a little bit. I am an immigrant. I was born in India. I'm from the Sikh community. And I remember a time in Elk Grove, not that long ago, in 2011, where two Sikh grandfathers were gunned down just down the street. That actually propelled me to serve on the school board at the time. Those are dark days that leave a deep pain in our community to this day. Why? Because it's still unsolved. I know without a doubt Had we had this technology, the

All right, with that, I'm going to move on to our next item, which is Council Comments, Reports, and Future Agenda Items. Council Member Robles, do you have anything to report?

Very quick like, the Sacramento Metropolitan Cable Television Commission met last week. We have a final budget. It is more fair for our member agencies. I'll take the opportunity to thank Mr. Prasad and I've just forgotten his name. He was there last week. Nathan Bagwell for being there and for supporting. So I just wanted to say thanks real quick on that. Thank you.

STA tomorrow. Yep, we'll be there. Council Member Brewer?

Okay. And yes, we have STA tomorrow. I do want to adjourn in the memory of a great man, Arnie Zimbelman. who passed away, he was a giant in our community, an educator, founder of the Straus Festival with his wife, and just a great human being who served and uplifted everybody around him. They say teachers teach eternity, and he had a lasting impact on everyone that he helped to mentor and guide. So we want to send out our condolences to the Zimbelman family. May his memory be a blessing to everyone that knew him. We will adjourn in his memory this evening at 10.08 p.m. We are adjourned. Thank